Zoopla's Relationship with Data is its Hidden Blade

As one of the Big 3 in the UK market, Zoopla holds its rank in a number of ways, but its data is an outstanding difference. With listings, leads, and sessions in the millions, it’s no wonder the company needs tech to back up this amount of data. 

So how does it accomplish this? 

Antje Bustamante, Director of Data and Analytics at Zoopla, spoke on this at the most recent virtual Big Data LDN event. She explained that Zoopla has looked up to how companies like Amazon, Google, and Netflix approach data. 

Bustamante has been with Zoopla for a year and since her hiring, she has interview 80 of her colleagues to figure out what was missing within the company when it comes to data. She rated Zoopla as being ‘data proficient’ but not ‘data literate’ and looked to change that. 

Bustamante said:

“We are aiming for to be data literate. What that means is to speak data as a language, just like any language. Where everyone in the company can not only use data but draw the right conclusions from it.”

She also highlighted the importance of people when it comes to a successful data culture. To answer this need, Zoopla has made moves to integrate two disparate BI and analytics teams. 

On the two teams, Bustamante explained:

“That's a true, true game-changer. We are right in the middle of implementing that, but it ensures that data always has a seat at the company's table. You can't have business impact if you don't know what product is thinking about, what marketing is thinking about, what the problems are of our customers and consumers.”