Everyday life of analysts at M.Video-Eldorado
Many people associate the profession of analyst with data analysis for the sake of finding non-obvious patterns and trends. However, this is just one of the areas of activity, which in Russian is called “data processing and analysis”, and in English – data science, the science of data. Another area of activity in analytics is devoted to the development of new and optimization of existing business processes. And there are even more such specialists than “data satanists”.
My name is Dmitry Koltsov, I am a Delivery Manager at M.Video-Eldorado, and I want to tell you about how business and systems analysts are embedded in the organizational structure our company and what tasks they solve. By the way, at the end of the article you will find the announcement of our first online competition for analysts.
There are about 100 information systems in M.Video-Eldorado. Starting from large ones such as retail systems, websites, CRM and SAP with numerous modules – ERP, TM, PI, POS DM
etc., to relatively small, but no less important for the company, such as the M.Processing system for processing discount funds or m_queue, a self-service application in the service area.
Our service platform also belongs to large systems, which is the core of services that are used by other systems of the company. And almost all of these information systems have analysts who work in teams.
What analysts do
We have about 80% of tasks for analysts related to systems analysis, and the rest is business analysis. Moreover, many tasks are cross-system.
Analysts work with business units to model business processes, describe use cases or user stories, and look for ways to improve existing processes. After formulating business requirements, analysts, together with developers and architects, participate in the design of systems, formalize functional and non-functional requirements, describe data models, and develop documentation for microservices.
Analysts also participate in e2e testing and implementation of improvements into operation. That is, these are specialists who support the development from the moment the idea appears, during its development, and until it goes into operation.
We adhere to a spiral development model: we make some feature or MVP, and then we consistently develop. Take, for example, the delivery of purchased goods by taxi.
First, we made an order placement with a taxi call in the suppliers’ personal account and a manual ordering process.
Then we made the registration of such delivery already in our system. And then we finalized the process, automating it as much as possible: the system itself chooses the best store from where the goods will go, and automatically orders delivery.
That is, we go from minimal functionality to almost complete automation of processes. And analysts are actively involved in all stages of improving business processes and developing implementation in systems.
Task categories
We have analysts solve many interesting problems, because the processes in the company are rapidly developing and digitizing. In our market, we are perhaps the largest retail company in the country. We have a lot of clients and orders, and therefore requests to systems. There are few such high-load systems that automate various and long-term execution processes in the country.
The company is actively developing a product approach. Analysts work in product teams for the development of the new M.Video website, the development of the M.Video client and seller mobile application, the development of the client mobile application and migration to the microservice architecture of the Eldorado website, as well as a large number of other products.
Product teams also receive tasks to implement projects. All projects our analysts are working on can be divided into three categories:
• necessary to comply with legal requirements;
• strategic projects;
• regular projects.
For example, the first category includes a project to take into account the mandatory labeling of certain types of goods. The strategic project is the creation of a single delivery platform. We have many stores and we can deliver most of the goods very quickly.
We are now integrating with various taxi aggregators and courier companies, as well as networks of pick-up points. And in parallel, we are implementing the concept of Distributed Order Management: the client first places an order, and then we choose the most efficient delivery method – the algorithms will choose from where and by whom to deliver the goods. Also, within the framework of this project, we plan to develop ways of receiving an order by a client.
Probably, we all came across a situation when we want to receive the goods here and now, and delivery is either within a day or in three days within 4 hours. Therefore, we want to implement the following scheme: the client places an order, the goods are brought to the store closest to him (if the goods are not in the required store), and when the client is convenient to receive it, for example, he comes home from work, he clicks a button in the application and the goods deliver quickly. Or, for example, delivery by time – when the client chooses not the delivery interval, but a specific time when it is convenient for him to receive the order.
An important part of our unified delivery platform is LARDS – a master system for working with geoinformation data. It allows you to define company objects that meet the specified geocriteria, calculate the distance from the client to company objects, and so on.
For example, the system can create geographic zones that will be used in various processes: delivery availability zones, service areas of taxi fleets or service centers.
Another strategic project is the new Last Mile forwarder app. It will help to build routes and calculate the arrival time to the client. That is, the accuracy of delivery planning will be much higher than “within 3-4 hours”, and the number of devices required for the courier to work will also decrease.
All this is just a small part of projects in which analysts are actively involved. The pandemic turned their work upside down. Previously, a change in a business process on average affected 3-5 systems and took several months.
It was necessary to carefully plan the improvements, put them in the backlog and wait for the implementation. But last April I had to learn how to do it all in a week or a month. And today the pace of digitalization is even higher. This is illustrated by an example with order delivery within 1-2 hours, for this we had to develop a system that allows us to automatically select a reservation store and create a taxi ride, integrating with several partners.
How analysts work
Our teams are often product teams, and each such team has one, two or more analysts. Most teams work on Kanban and Scrum, the team receives prioritized tasks from the product manager, analytics tasks are assigned either by the team or by the team lead, and can also participate in the development of the backlog together with the business and product manager. And there are also outdated systems, whose teams work according to the waterfall model, and in them tasks are distributed by the head of the analytics department.
Basically, analysts interact in a team with a product manager, developers and testers, as well as business users, an architect, analysts from related teams and systems.
We try to assign people to teams based on their interest. During interviews, we tell analysts what projects and products we have, and ask what we want to do. If a person has worked in a team and realized that it is more interesting for him to engage in another direction, then he can go to the corresponding team.
Internship
In the last year, many companies have begun to actively develop, create and refine information systems. therefore the IT market has a growing shortage of specialists, including analysts. We partly solve the problem of recruiting employees with the help of an internship program, in which we recruit people once a year. Usually these are promising young professionals or university graduates whom we find at job fairs. Many interns then stay with the company and quickly grow to middle positions.
To become an intern, you need a minimum knowledge of analytical theory: understand what business analysis is, what systems analysis is, what types of requirements are there. A person’s way of thinking is important to us. For example, as a test task, we often ask you to simulate a certain business process that everyone understands. It can be placing an order on the website, or planning a vacation. And we look at how a person thinks, how he approaches the solution of the problem.
We invite you to the competition for analysts
And now the promised announcement! From February 26 to February 28, we will be hosting an online challenge for advanced digital analysts. We invite you to participate in it.
What for:
1. The prize fund is 360,000 rubles.
2. The ability to test yourself and solve interesting problems for system, business and cross-system analysts.
3. The opportunity to receive an interesting offer from a potential employer.
Registration of participants is available until February 23: here…
