Product Owner

‘Just order from bol.com’ has been a frequently heard quote since 1999. Where the company started as an online webshop, it has grown into a market-leading platform organization on which third parties also sell their products. The Product Owner plays a crucial role in generating the best offer and thus bol.com’s ambitious growth ambitions.

About bol.com

From books and baby items to garden furniture and fashion, with a range of some 30 million articles and more than 11 million active customers, bol.com is the online market leader. Every day around 2,100 employees work in an analytical and data-driven way to improve the customer journey. Bol.com knows what the customer wants. And this fact is the key to the great success and the lightning-fast growth of the innovative platform.

The main driver of the rapid growth is the platform function. Since 2011, bol.com has also opened its online store to third-party sellers, which means that the range has grown exponentially. Today, a total of 39,000 business partners are connected who sell their products through the now largest online retail tech platform in the Benelux. This segment now accounts for more than half of the turnover, which reached a record of 2.8 billion euros last year. That their approach is successful is also evident from the bol.com prize cabinet, which is richly supplemented every year. Thus, the platform invariably ends in the top 5 of the most customer-friendly companies in the Netherlands, best social media and strongest retail brand.

Offer Highway
Bol.com would not exist without product information. And with this essential information the recently introduced Offer Highway works. This product is the link between bol.com and the supplier and collects, processes and publishes the enormous amount of product information. Every day this amounts to about 50 million data changes that were sent from suppliers through the Offer Highway to bol.com. The Offer Highway ensures that the supplier sees these changes reflected in the platform in real-time.

The Offer Highway product is divided into three different product teams, each responsible for their own part. One of these is the best offer. Multiple suppliers can offer the same product on bol.com. Based on various factors, the specific best-offer algorithm decides which supplier gets the coveted buy button for the best offer. This means that the algorithm not only greatly influences customer propositions, but also the sales opportunities of suppliers. The upcoming Product Owner manages this unique algorithm and surrounding parts and takes it to the next level.

Vacancy: Product Owner

The Product Owner is fully responsible for the best offer team. Together with a team of four Software Engineers, this person keeps the best-offer algorithm and other parts of the best offer process up & running, improves it where necessary and maximizes its effectiveness. With a holistic view of IT, data and machine learning and a sky-high interest in data, they immediately tackle this role with both hands.

Creating the very best algorithm of its kind is the credo. To achieve this, the Product Owner works in a coaching manner with their team on the development, optimization and fine-tuning thereof. The ideal candidate thinks in steps, oversees complex processes with ease and recognizes opportunities and bottlenecks. From research into the offers that best match customer preferences to experiments around algorithm improvements, scalable and reliable offer processes are the ultimate goal.

“We bring together many talents and changes in the Offer Highway department. The attractive thing about this role is that you really are in control to create this product and put your own stamp on it. ” – Gaia Lupo, People Lead

In addition to the team, the Product Owner works a closely with their colleagues within the Offer Highway domain. But because this product also has a major influence on the daily commercial and technical operation, the Product Owner has to deal with a much larger number of stakeholders within bol.com. Therefore, they will establish strong stakeholder management in a binding manner and knows exactly who to join when. Thanks to the positive and uplifting spirit of this person, working with the Product Owner is always a joy.

How do we make the platform better and more future-oriented? The Product Owner answers this question with a powerful long-term vision and knows how to get others enthusiastic about it easily. Thanks to sufficient data knowledge, the Product Owner can dive swiftly into the matter and is immediately on the same wavelength as the Engineers. They know how to inspire and challenge them with stimulating questions and recommendations about new services in which the seller is central.

Developing yourself a little more every day is deeply woven into bol.com’s DNA. The Product Owner therefore feels at home in an ambitious and pioneering environment that offers them many opportunities for further development.

Interested?

Bol.com works with Top of Minds to fill this vacancy.
To express your interest, contact Hayke Tjemmes at hayke.tjemmes@topofminds.com.