What is CDP? | Customer Data Platform, defined
Businesses have lots of data - but what do they do with it? Discover how a CDP helps organizations reach customers, identify intent, and personalize messaging to exceed KPIs and bottom line projections.
Picking a customer data platform is hard when you might still be wondering: What are CDPs?
It can be daunting to get started. So, what are CDPs?
When it comes to CDPs for retail, during initial research brands often wonder if they should build the solution using internal talent or buy the solution from a vendor. Let’s break down the choices.
In the race to deliver the shopping experiences customers love, retail companies are increasingly adopting omnichannel customer engagement strategies.
This makes good business sense, after all, 71% of consumers want a consistent experience across all channels, but only 29% say they actually get it.
Despite the critical nature of a great CX, delivering personalization is proving difficult for many retail brands. Case in point: 75% of online shoppers said they fail to regularly see product recommendations that interest them.
In their initial research into customer data platforms (CDPs), retail brands often ask: Should we build the solution using our internal talent or buy the solution from a vendor? While assessing the options,
Thanks to recent innovation in this space, CDPs have expanded their reach beyond marketing engagements to impact commerce, sales, and service interactions. They’ve also incorporated a strong data privacy and governance core, which means engagements will only be fueled by permission-based data.
Businesses have lots of data - but what do they do with it? Discover how a CDP helps organizations reach customers, identify intent, and personalize messaging to exceed KPIs and bottom line projections.
Who will build the system?
Building your own CDP allows you to learn about your customer base – as long as you have engineers to keep it running, talent to analyze the information for your specific business, and the vision to select which challenges you’ll act on first.
In the war for talent, almost all organizations face challenges in hiring and retaining the type of data engineering, data science, security, and privacy staff needed to support personalization at scale.
Without the right combination of skills, you won’t be able to build, test, and measure the analytics required for accurate and effective personalization. This will limit the value created by your personalization efforts.
How will you create integrations?
In order to deliver personalization across channels, companies need to integrate a broad set of technologies. This can result in a complex and ever-expanding technology stack—and can be very hard to manage.
Admittedly, some companies have made substantial investments and have pockets of excellence in their technology ecosystems. But the lack of proper integration keeps most companies from delivering a seamless one-to-one customer experience across channels.
How will you maintain the integrations?
CDP value is derived from its ability to connect to other internal as well as external third-party systems. Since end-point systems are often updated, these connections must be maintained through APIs. Will you have the capacity, knowledge base, and continuity to maintain these integrations over time?
Who will use the CDP?
Many stakeholders can use a CDP to improve business outcomes. Here are some main considerations for the primary users:
There other potential stakeholders as well (sales, marketing, logistics, product development, finance, fraud, and risk). As you look to build a CDP for retail, determining who will use it and what they need to be successful will help bolster its ultimate effectiveness.
Benefits of building your own CDP:
Improving the customer experience is mission critical for brands. Here's a checklist to help you make your CX resolutions – and keep them.
All CDPs are not equal
As the CDP market has grown, so has confusion about the solution. Vendors sometimes sell to their capabilities instead of actual customer need, and choices become increasingly complicated.
Here are a few points about CDP vendors to consider:
No matter which direction you take, formulated use cases should drive any decision to realize the CDP promise of bringing all your customer information, from multiple channels, brands, and geographies into a single system for a unique customer view.
Benefits of buying a CDP: