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Allard de Boer on scaling data literacy, overcoming challenges, and building strong partnerships at Adevinta - owner of Marktplaats, Leboncoin, Infojobs and more.
In this podcast, Allard de Boer, Director of Analytics at Adevinta (a leading online classifieds which includes brands like Marktplaats, Leboncoin, mobile.de, and many more) sits down with Rewire Partner Arje Sanders to explore how the company transformed its decision-making process from intuition-based to data-driven. Allard shares insights on the challenges of scaling data and analytics across Adevinta’s diverse portfolio of brands.
Watch the full interview
The transcript below has been edited for clarity and length.
Arje Sanders: Can you please introduce yourself and tell us something about your role?
Allard de Boer: I am the director of analytics at Adevinta. Adevinta is a holding company that owns multiple classifieds brands like Marktplaats in the Netherlands, Mobile.de in Germany, Leboncoin in France, etc. My role is to scale the data and analytics across the different portfolio businesses.
Arje Sanders: How did you first hear about Rewire?
Allard de Boer: I got introduced to Rewire [then called MIcompany] six, seven years ago. We started working on the Analytics academy for Marktplaats and have worked together since.
We were talking about things like statistical significance, but actually only a few people knew what that actually meant. So we saw that there are limits to our capabilities within the organization.
Allard de Boer
Arje Sanders: Can you tell me a little about the challenges that you were facing and wanted to resolve in that collaboration? What were your team challenges?
Allard de Boer: Marktplaats is a technology company. We have enormous technology, we have a lot of data. Every solution that employees want to create has a foundation in technology. We had a lot of questions around data and analytics and every time people threw more technology at it. That ran into limitations because the people operating the technology were scarce. So we needed to scale in a different way.
What we needed to do is get more people involved in our data and analytics efforts and make sure that it was a foundational capability throughout the organization. This is when we started thinking about how to scale specific use cases further. See how we can take what we have, but then make it common throughout the whole organization and then scale specific use cases further.
For example, one problem is that we did a lot of A/B testing and experimentation. Any new feature on Marktplaats was tested through A/B testing. It was evaluated on how it performed on customer journeys, and how it performed on company revenue. This was so successful that we wanted to do more experiments. But then we ran into the limitations of how many people can look at the experimentation, and how many people understand what they're actually looking at.
We were talking about things like statistical significance, but actually only a few people knew what that actually meant. So we saw that there are limits to our capabilities within the organization. This is where we started looking for a partner that can help us to scale employee education to raise the level of literacy within our organization. That's how we came up with Rewire.
We were an organization where a lot of gut feeling decision-making was done. We then shifted to data-driven decision-making and instantly saw acceleration in our performance.
Allard de Boer
Arje Sanders: That sounds quite complex because I assume you're talking about different groups of people with different capability levels, but also over different countries. How did you approach the challenge?
Allard de Boer: Growth came very naturally to us because we had a very good model. Marktplaats was growing very quickly in the Netherlands. Then after a while, growth started to flatten out a bit. We needed to rethink how we run the organization. We moved towards customer journeys and understanding customer needs.
Understanding those needs is difficult because we're a virtual company. Seeing what customers do, understanding what they need is something we need to track digitally. This is why the data and analytics is so vital for us as a company. If you have a physical store, you can see how people move around. If your store is only online, the data and analytics is your only corridor to understanding what the customer needs are.
When we did this change at Marktplaats, people understood instantly that the data should be leading when we make decisions. We were an organization where a lot of gut feeling decision-making was done. We then shifted to data-driven decision-making and instantly saw acceleration in our performance.
Arje Sanders: I like that move from gut feeling-based decision-making to data-driven decision-making. Can you think of a moment when you thought that this is really a decision made based on data, and it's really different than what was done before?
Allard de Boer: One of the concepts we introduced was holistic testing. Any problem we solve on Marktplaats is like a Rubik's Cube. You solve one side, but then all the other sides get messed up. For example we introduced a new advertising position on our platform, and it performed really well on revenue. However, the customers really hated it. When only looking at revenue, we thought this is going well. However, if you looked at how customers liked it, you saw that over time the uptake would diminish because customer satisfaction would go down. This is an example of where we looked at performance from all angles and were able to scale this further.
After training people to know where to find the data, what the KPIs mean, how to use them, what are good practices, what are bad practices, the consumption of the data really went up, and so did the quality of the decisions.
Allard de Boer
Arje Sanders: You mentioned that in this entire transformation to become more data-driven, you needed to do something about people's capabilities. How did you approach that?
Allard de Boer: We had great sponsorship from the top. We had a visionary leader in the leadership team. Because data is so important to us as a company, everybody from the receptionist to the CEO, needs to have at least a profound understanding of the data. Within specific areas, of course, we want to go deeper and much more specific. But everybody needs to have access to the data, understand what they're looking at, and understand how to interpret the data.
Because we have so many data points and so many KPIs, you could always find a KPI that would go up. If you only focus on that one but not look at the other KPIs, you would not have the full view of what is actually happening. After training people to know where to find the data, what the KPIs mean, how to use them, what are good practices, what are bad practices, the consumption of the data really went up, and so did the quality of the decisions.
Arje Sanders: You said that you had support from the top. How important is that component?
Allard de Boer: For me, it’s vital. There's a lot of things you can do bottom up. This is where much of the innovation or the early starting of new ideas happen. However, when the leadership starts leaning in, that’s when things accelerate. Just to give you an example, I was responsible for implementing certain data governance topics a few years back. It took me months to get things on the roadmap, and up to a year to get things solved. Then we shifted the company to focus on impact and everybody had to measure their impact. Leadership started leaning in and I could get things solved within months or even weeks.
Arje Sanders: You've been collaborating with Rewire on the educational program. What do you like most about that collaboration, about this analytics university that we've developed together?
Allard de Boer: There are multiple things that really stand out for me. One is the quality of the people. The Rewire people are the best talent in the market. Also, when developing this in-house analytics academy, I was able to work with the best people within Rewire. It really helped to set up a high-quality program that instantly went well. It's also a company that oozes energy when you come in. When I go into your office, I'm always welcome. The drinks are always available at the end of the week. I think this also shows that it is a company of people working well together.
Arje Sanders: What I like a lot in those partnerships is that it comes from two sides. Not every partnership flourishes, but those that flourish, those are the ones that also open up to a real partnership. Once you have that, then you really see an accelerated collaboration. I like that a lot about that, working together.
Allard de Boer: Yes. Rewire is not just a vendor for us. You guys have been a partner for us from the start. I've always shared this as a collaborative effort. We could have never done this without Rewire. I think this is also why it's such a strong partnership over the many years.
About the authors
Allard de Boer is the Director of Global Data & Analytics at Adevinta, where he drives the scaling of data and analytics across a diverse portfolio of leading classifieds brands such as Marktplaats, Mobile.de, and Leboncoin. With over a decade of experience in data strategy, business transformation, and analytics leadership, Allard has held prominent roles, including Global Head of Analytics at eBay Classifieds Group. He is passionate about fostering data literacy, building scalable data solutions, and enabling data-driven decision-making to support business growth and innovation.
Arje Sanders is Partner at Rewire.
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