So, What Do You Actually Do in a Strategy & Ops role in Tech?

From crunching OKRs to tackling daily challenges, I will share my experience at DoorDash and ByteDance.

Strategy and Operations is perhaps one of the most ambiguous job titles for a non-tech role in the tech industry. It can mean everything and nothing at the same time.

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In this article, I'll give you the inside scoop on what it's really like, diving into OKRs and daily grind from my time at DoorDash and ByteDance.

1. Mandate and OKRs: My Scope at DoorDash

2. What do I actually do on a Strategy and Ops team in tech?

   1. Data Analytics

   2. Strategy Development

   3. Execution and Collaboration

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Mandate and OKRs

Let me start by explaining my role at DoorDash. As a member of the Merchant Strategy and Operations team, my mandate is to:

Drive restaurant success on the platform by onboarding new restaurants through strategic go-to-market initiatives.

Still sounds vague? Let's quantify it with my key OKRs (Objectives and Key Results):

1. Number of New Restaurants Launched

2. Percentage of Sales Target Attainment

In a nutshell, I'm all about getting new restaurants onboarded and hitting those sales targets. Here's how I tackle it:

1. I set the bar: I cook up some ambitious (but achievable) goals for myself (and with my team). Think 'launch X new restaurants' or 'hit Y% of our sales target'.

2. I make it happen: Then, I roll up my sleeves and figure out how to crush those goals. This means brainstorming new ideas, testing different approaches, and rallying the troops to make it all come together.

What do I actually do on a Strategy and Ops team in tech?

My daily responsibilities can be broken down into three main parts:

1. Data Analytics

My day resolves around analyzing input and output metrics related to my OKRs to understand what's performing well and what needs improvement.

Data is my compass. I’d be operating in the dark without deep understanding of input and output metrics to my OKR.

Every successful initiative, every strategic decision, and every OKR achievement is rooted in rigorous data analysis.

1. New Restaurant Onboarding: I regularly analyze the number of new restaurants onboarded last week against our target. If we're behind plan, I dive deeper to understand the main blockers. Are we facing slower than expected menu ingestion? Are there technical issues with a POS partner? This analysis allows me to strategize on resolving the biggest issues and get us back on track.

2. Sales Performance: When sales are lagging, I dive deep into the data to uncover patterns. Here's an example of my process:

   • I identified a group of restaurants that were falling behind their sales targets.

   • Looking closer, I noticed something interesting: these restaurants had decent impressions (many people were seeing them in the app) but poor conversion (few were actually ordering).

   • This led me to investigate further. I checked various factors that could affect sales, including: Menu health, Open hours, Price points and Photo coverage

   • After analyzing these factors, I developed a hypothesis: customers were interested enough to click on the restaurant, but without appetizing photos to entice them, they weren't placing orders.

It's like window shopping - if you can't see appealing products in the display, you're less likely to enter the store and make a purchase.

2. Strategy Development

With my hypothesis from data analysis, the real magic happens when I transform these insights into actionable strategies. Let me break down how this works with the same example from above on poor photo coverage.

I brainstormed a few different ways to improve their photo coverage under each of the below 3 general areas:

1. Incentivize restaurants to upload photos of their menu items

2. Facilitate photo uploads on behalf of restaurants

3. Leverage user-generated content

I will bring ideas to my team with the problem statement, hypothesis, initiatives and estimated impact and costs of each initiative in a team brainstorming session or during a weekly business review. By the end of this process, we have a clear roadmap to improve photo coverage and maintain healthy conversion rates, with specific actions we can implement immediately and larger initiatives to develop over time.

3. Execution and Collaboration

When it comes to executing strategies, I will need to collaborate with different teams on implementation details. One direct approach was offering free professional photo shoots to selected restaurants. Here's how I orchestrated the execution across multiple teams:

• Restaurant Communications:

  • Coached customer support specialists and sales teams to leverage the outreach materials I developed (phone call scripts and email templates highlighting the benefits of the free photoshoot )

  • Managed specialists to coordinate scheduling and to track outreach responses

• Photographer Vendor Coordination:

  • Partnered with Vendor team and photographer agency to ensure photographer supply and quality in key markets

• Measurement and Iteration:

  • Monitored and analyzed the quality and impact of new photos on restaurant performance

  • Leveraged learnings refine the photoshoot program

My role is to ensure that strategic initiatives translate into effective execution and to continuously analyze and iterate the process.

A role in Strategy and Operations is far from ambiguous when you're in the thick of it. The ability to translate data into action is the key.

I hope this article is helpful. Please feel free to leave any comments or questions. I am excited to write more about this and look forward to any suggestions.

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Check out my other articles

• How to be scrappy in tech and why it’s important?

• Decoding the S&O interview process

• Tips on crushing the take-home case interview