Shafaq Abdullah, a data science leader at Honest, discusses leveraging Spark for data democratization in omni-commerce. The presentation outlines Honest's journey from descriptive to predictive and prescriptive analytics while addressing challenges such as data silos and the need for alignment within the organization. Key initiatives include implementing machine learning APIs through Insnap and fostering a data-driven culture to enhance decision-making and operational efficiency.

1. SHAFAQ ABDULLAH,
DATA SCIENCE @HONEST
LEVERAGING SPARK TO DEMOCRATIZE
DATA FOR OMNI-COMMERCE JUNE 7,2017

2. WHO AM I?
▸ Serial Tech Entrepreneur, Heading Data Engg at Honest.
▸ Cofounder & CTO at Insnap
▸ Led Realtime Analytics platform at GREE.
▸ Pivotal in Zenprise (acquired by Citrix)
▸ Cloud and Mobile Platform Engg at Nokia
▸ MS from Tampere Univ of Tech
▸ 10 patents in areas of Enterprise Security-aaS, BigData, ML
2

3. DATA IS THE NEW OIL 3

4. HONEST JOURNEY: DESCRIPTIVE -> PREDICTIVE-> PRESCRIPTIVE
AGENDA
▸ Status quo at Honest (pre Insnap)
▸ Data Initiatives
▸ Alignment of Team, Culture, Tech
▸ Sparking Tech
▸ Conclusions

5. INSNAP
INSNAP- INSTANTANEOUS PERSONAS
▸ Problem: Beating Cold-Start
▸ Product: Multitenant SaaS ML API
to drive monetization &
engagement by interest inference

6. THE HONEST COMPANY
THE MISSION-DRIVEN
▸ Honest is dedicated to
providing trusted, effective
products across a wide range
of consumer categories,
including baby,
beauty ,personal care, home
care, and vitamins &
supplements.
▸ Bundle based Subscription
Model for e-commerce

7. THE HONEST COMPANY
STATUS QUO AT HONEST (PRE-INSNAP)
▸ Silo’d data and org
▸ Data Integrity ?
▸ Great potential to become data-driven

8. LEGACY ARCH
ECOM APP MYSQL
MASTER
SLAVE
SLAVE2
SLAVE 1
Replication

9. INSNAP ACQUISITION BY HONEST

10. TEXT
DATA INITIATIVES
▸ Break away data and org silos
▸ Instrument logging
▸ Use ML to turn data into actionable insights
▸ XFunctional teams aligned to business goal
▸ Self-Served Model for decision-making folks

11. TEXT
CULTURE
▸ What cannot be measured, cannot be improved
▸ Transparency around decision-making
▸ Empower users via self-served platform
▸ Fail-fast

12. HONEST’S BIG CHALLENGE
DATA DRIVES OMNI-CHANNEL SOLUTION
BRICK &
MORTAR
OPERATIONS
HONEST.COM
SOCIAL
SEARCH/
DISPLAY ADS
CALL
SERVICE
DEMOGRAPHICS
DATA UX
$

13. DATA PLATFORM

14. • S3 datalake 50TB
• 100s Device Types
• 100M+ Monthly Events
• Spark is 10x faster
at computing than
legacy
• Used for Scoring
Models
NEW ARCHITECTURE

15. TEXT
ADVANTAGES OF SPARK & DATABRICKS
▸ Scaling code, scaling teams
▸ Elastic Store & Compute - Spark
▸ Collaborative & Interactive
▸ Infrastructure Efficiency

16. DESCRIPTIVE -> PREDICTIVE -> PRESCRIPTIVE

17. CONCLUSIONS
▸ Invest in Infrastructure & People
▸ Embed Analytics in Business & Org
▸ Keep calm and let the Data speak

18. THANK YOU -
@shafaq110
Questions