DataScience Archives - bol.com Techlab

Predict the Unpredictable – Podcast

How Data Science supports us to predict the unpredictable Just like for any store, forecasting is an important tool to support the business and its profitability. At bol.com we have worked on several major iterations of our forecast. One of the hosts worked on a large leap in forecast performance over 8 years ago. You can check some another leap we have made while listening to our podcast episode from May 2019 – nom more crystal ball for forecasting, Data Science it is. In this episode, we explore how we…

Data Maturity and Data Literacy – Podcast

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 5-05-2021
Category: Podcast Tags: DataScience data driven data maturity data literacy

Data Maturity Model as common ground, Data Literacy Model to measure the level of speaking, writing and reading data To state as a company we want to become more data-driven is the first step. To truly understand what this means and define a common ground to discuss the progress is the second. Back in the eighties, the Capability Maturity Model was defined to develop and refine software development processes. Later on, many more Maturity Models were introduced like the Business Maturity Model, the Lean Maturity Model and Agile Maturity Model.…

Data Maturity and Data Literacy – Podcast

Creating a paradigm shift for bol.com marketing attribution

Ivan Budincevic, on 8-09-2020
Category: Data Science & AI, Development Tags: DataScience Machine Learning Spaces Summit Marketing Attribution

This year at Spaces Summit, the bol.com annual internal IT conference, I presented a talk about the work our team, Team SmartAds, has been doing in creating a new marketing attribution truth for our platform. About the talk How do we verify that we are using our marketing budget effectively? As bol.com, we are spending a considerable amount of our budget on digital marketing. Because of this, we need to be able to allocate this budget in the most effective, data-driven way possible. The four main methods for determining marketing…

Creating a paradigm shift for bol.com marketing attribution

Simulation, building the digital twin of our warehouse on experiments

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 29-07-2020
Category: Podcast Tags: DataScience Innovation BFC Warehouse Experiment Simulation Digital Twin

In this episode, we take another look, a fresh perspective on Data Science for Logistics. In earlier episodes, we talked about related topics like Forecasting and crafting a Picking Algorithm using Data Science. With the guests of this episode, we dive into two specific challenges in the warehousing domain, the cost-based selection is the first one and the second is put-away with simulation as the red line. During the recording, we found out that our guests have a big dream: realizing the Digital Twin of the bol.com fulfilment centre. But…

Simulation, building the digital twin of our warehouse on experiments

Spaces Talk #1: They took our jobs!

Asparuh Hristov, on 13-07-2020
Category: Blog, Data Science & AI Tags: BigData DataScience Machine Learning Spaces Summit forecast

Spaces Summit is our annual internal bol.com conference for IT, by IT, and friends: Two fun days of inspiration, knowledge sharing, bragging, and community. This year we had our first digital version of the summit. My name is Asparuh Hristov and working as a Data Science Craft Lead in the Forecasting team, I keep encountering people that believe Machine Learning can automate all existing jobs, including Data Science itself. I hope that this talk can bring a bit more of understanding what Data Science is, which steps can be automated…

Using Data Science for Marketing Attribution

Peter Paul van de Beek, Peter Brouwers, on 20-05-2020
Category: Podcast Tags: DataScience Innovation Marketing Marketing Attribution

The topic of this show is exactly why we like to be the hosts of this podcast. We learn a lot about all areas in our business. In this show, we dive into the marketing domain. We will learn about models like multi-touch, lift studies, time decay, and more. We talk about Data Science for Marketing Attribution. Put simply, marketing attribution is the analytical science of determining which marketing tactics are contributing to sales or conversions. And then there is a Data Science twist to this. Guests Ernst Kuiper; Data…

Using Data Science for Marketing Attribution

Python for Tools, Data Science and more

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 15-04-2020
Category: Podcast Tags: BigData DataScience software engineering python programminglanguage Tools

Let’s look at another programming language we use at bol.com: Python. At bol.com we use Python for Tools, Data Science and more. It has been around since 1991. It was created by a Dutch guy: Guido van Rossum. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability. The language’s core philosophy is summarized in the document The Zen of Python (PEP 20), which includes aphorisms such as: Beautiful is better than ugly. Explicit is better than implicit. Simple is better than complex. Complex is better than complicated. Readability counts. All well, but what…

Cloud as Enabler to become more data driven

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 7-08-2019
Category: Podcast Tags: BigData DataScience cloud Podcast Business Intelligence

Cloud as Enabler to become more data-driven. The adjective data-driven means that progress in an activity is compelled by data, rather than by intuition, personal experience or a gut feeling. Googling data-driven gives you over 637 mln. results so time to add an extra result to this with this episode. But we wanted to make it more specific. We moved our big data into the cloud and we got some nice insights that we wanted to share. We asked our two guests of this episode to do so. It turned…

Improve the customer journey with Intent Recognition and Conversational Analytics

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 23-05-2019
Category: Podcast Tags: DataScience Machine Learning Natural language processing Customer Support Predictive Models Comprehender

In this episode, we talk with Daniel and Emiel, software engineer and product owner in the customer support domain. In this domain, the focus is to help our customers in the best way possible. But what if we can prevent the customer to feel the need to contact bol.com in the first place, they asked themselves. They realized this can be possible using the analyses of the various customer interactions we have via the Chatbot “Billie”, live chat, phone and email. For these analyses, they introduced techniques from the Data…

Improve the customer journey with Intent Recognition and Conversational Analytics

No more crystal ball for forecasting, data science it is

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 7-05-2019
Category: Podcast Tags: BigData DataScience software engineering Artificial Intelligence Podcast

As long as retail exists, people tried to predict the future. An accurate forecast makes it much easier to buy the correct amount of products from suppliers, know what you need to keep on stock and even know what the sales will do with specific promotions. Over the last couple of years, this domain changed dramatically because of the introduction of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. In this episode, we chat about this changing playing field to share our experiences with you. Guests Harmen Prins Erick Webbe Hosts Peter Brouwers…