CDP buyers

Digital transformation is not as clean as diagrams make it out to look. Not that the diagrams are clean in the first place. I did find a pretty clean one that I love in "Beyond Big Data Basics: In-Stream Processing Cures Batch Processing Blues" on iamwire.com shown below. This diagram is clean because it is not a detailed infrastructure diagram, it is an explanation of how stream and batch data can be combined with data science for positive improvements across a business. One of the things I love most about this is that it inadvertently articulates some of the non-marketing needs for customer data platforms.

There is room in the original diagram for a customer data platform to help organize this information; to allow channels to interact with, collect, and make use of this data. Imagine inside-out parentheses overlaid on the diagram to the sides of the data lake, so that the arrows hitting "online applications" and "technical support" are all intersected by the parentheses )( ... or don't. Let me show you what I mean:

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There are dozens of software companies pitching their product, or one of their products, as a customer data platform. How is due diligence possible with such a crowded field? While some customer data platforms are similar, some are actually quite dissimilar. This can be used as an advantage to narrow down the list pretty fast as long as a high level plan for the platform has been formulated.

New to CDPs? Here are a few tips to get you acquainted.

[October 2018 edit] Here's another tip -- our buyers' guide comes out at the end of October! Click below for access:

To start, consider the first set of features in the CDP Institute’s vendor comparison chart, the “Shared CDP Features” list:

These are just five of a list of dozens of potential features that David Raab categorizes these 24 customer data platforms against. As of the release of the comparison chart, the five shared CDP features are:

Retain original detail
Persistent data
Individual detail
Vendor-neutral access
Manage PII

An exercise: how does your organization need to make use of these shared CDP features?

How does this set of features apply to your plans for a customer data platform? What does your organization need and want from a customer data platform on just these five topics? This is a critical exercise for those shopping around for customer data platforms. It is critical because as David points out in the document heading:

“Yes” answers mean only that the system meets the minimum requirement in that definition. This may not be adequate for a particular buyer’s needs. Buyers will need to explore the details of individual systems to find out.

All 24 vendors “manage PII”, for example, but they do not all manage it in the same way. What you need from a customer data platform will dictate the right level of data governance (e.g. validation, history, privacy) to look for in relation to PII.

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Category Archives: CDP buyers

Are customer data platforms really the anti-suite?

How to sort through dozens of customer data platforms

An exercise: how does your organization need to make use of these shared CDP features?

An exercise: how does your organization need to make use of these shared CDP features?

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