How we leverage data at Stylight – Part 2
At Stylight we practice data-informed decision making every day. This is a challenging task and involves people throughout the company from various departments. We established Data Heroes in each team to deal with our data challenges and have a continuous exchange about business-relevant data topics.
Last week we had an interview with Masha from the Performance Marketing Team sharing insights from her journey as a Data Hero. This week our Data Hero Michael will answer our questions.
Let’s hear what our Data Hero Michael has to say:
Tell us about your position at Stylight
Freshly graduated from university, I am happy to have the opportunity to start my career at Stylight as a Junior Controller in the department Finance & Legal. We as a team take care of the cash flow and tackle legal questions that arise during the day-to-day business of Stylight.
I am creating a variety of reports and make sure that the Stylight landing pages meet the conditions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The reports contain financial and operational key performance indicators (KPIs).
How do you use data for making data-informed decisions?
A major task of my role as a Junior Controller is to inform and supply relevant data to the parent company. In periodic calls, my division depicts the activities and development of the business. This way, I learn a lot about how the business of Stylight works and I can therefore contribute more to overall improvement. The reports we have built visualize major trends, which are discussed in detail with the parent company.
What is your biggest struggle when you work with data?
The biggest struggle is validating the data. It is fetched from a variety of sources and processed throughout a couple of stages. This system generally runs stable, however, at times minor errors occur that are not obvious. Then it is on us to track down the data issue.
How does Data Heroes help you to overcome these problems?
I could approach the Data Heroes to solve specific problems. Especially because I am still kind of a newbie in this field I often asked the Data Heroes for their opinion. In some cases, they could tell me the solution from a similar issue, that had happened before I started at Stylight. In other cases, we could discuss the issue, see whether the other teams were affected by the issue too and work it out as a team. On top of that, I was always welcome to ask questions on the journey of learning SQL or about third-party tools we use like Periscope Data or Supermetrics.
What is your background in data?
Datawise and SQL-wise I started from scratch at Stylight. Having had contact with some programming languages was a benefit for learning SQL.
How did you decide to become a data hero?
In the beginning, my boss suggested I should participate in a session of Data Heroes. I was excited about this opportunity since I enjoyed the programming subjects in my studies. During the first couple of sessions, I found it tough to follow the discussions as the data universe was totally new to me. At the same time, I saw the possibilities of what one can do with data, was keen to learn more and become a Data Hero. Today, my learning process has not been completed yet, but I can increasingly support my team when it comes to data.
This was the second post of our data hero blog post series. Next up is Ankita from the Data Platform team to share her ideas.
Get in touch with us – How do you ensure data insights within your organization?
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By Michael Schemmerer – Junior Controller and Stefan Tippelt – Lead Analytics
