The name “Customer Data Platform” literally means a platform dedicated to the field of customer data.
At a time when many companies are adopting enterprise data platforms, what is the connection between the CDP and this ‘Data platform’?
Is the CDP simply a “pipeline” of the enterprise platform dedicated to customer data, or a platform in its own right?
Let’s look at the specifics of a CDP to answer this question.
A CDP must cover the following ambitions:
- Consolidate the single customer view.
- Regroup the necessary data to engage the customer.
- Offer marketing teams an ergonomic and comprehensive solution to boost customer value.
Are these ambitions covered by a simple data pipeline?
1. Achieve the client's unique vision
Data platforms natively ingest, transform, store and expose customer data.
The CDP also requires :
- Modeling that expresses the customer’s business vision, with object relationships and hierarchies.
- Advanced standardization and enrichment functions, such as calls to service providers for address correction and behavioral information, etc.
- Functions for single-client consolidation: matching and merging rules.
- …
2. Have the data necessary to engage your customers
Data platforms integrate transactional and behavioral data.
Combined preparation and governance efforts allow this data to be associated with a single client and to expose, share, or simply query it easily (SQL…).
Today, it’s also possible to generate even more relevant data thanks to “Machine Learning” and “generative AI”.
The CDP also requires :
- Algorithms related to the marketing field.
- The calculation of individual-level indicators that will serve as attributes for Customer Journeys and Mass Campaigns…
- Population-based analyses for relevant segmentations.
3. Offer marketing teams an ergonomic, comprehensive solution to boost customer value
Platforms make data accessible for all kinds of analyses and processing, ranging from simple to sophisticated, based on SQL, Python, etc.
The CDP also requires :
- To empower marketers to set up their operations in drag & drop mode or equivalent.
- Purely marketing functionalities: audience calculations, sales pressure management, control groups, etc.
- Orchestration and overall monitoring of actions over time and according to the different engagement use cases …
Does combining these requirements mean setting up a dedicated platform?
✅ Yes, if you have the means to do so and if marketing engagement is at the heart of your business development.
❌ No, if you want to pool your skills and avoid duplicate processes across several tools.
In conclusion, what is the best solution?
Combine and supplement the enterprise platform with dedicated solutions:
- Build a Unique Customer Repository (UCR) on the customer data pipeline.
- Synchronize and build a platform dedicated to marketing indicators, based on high-performance technology.
- Select a “front-end” solution for marketers, offering the functionalities needed in marketing.
- Ensure that this “front end” is directly synchronized with RCU platforms, corporate data, and indicators, so you can benefit from data without the need for synchronization or reprocessing, while maintaining the best performance.