How do Organisations Buy, Implement and Use Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) and what’s the state of the customer data platforms across Europe? The latest report “The State of the CDP” done by Tealium brings many updates and takeaways for marketers in the process of acquiring, building or improving this function and provides data and insights on top 3 ways CDPs could improve:
Managing and utilizing data — an organization’s most valuable asset — is the driving force behind any digital transformation strategy if it is to achieve the success the investment demands. If companies want to solve business challenges brought about through organizational silos (leading to poor customer experiences and subsequent loss of sales and revenue), they need the ability to orchestrate data across the enterprise. That means taking a universal approach that connects data in real-time — especially in operational sides of the enterprise such as cross-team working practices, company-wide technologies, and internal processes.
Poor data yields poor insights
The value of unified customer data becomes even clearer when you consider the future challenges that marketers and data professionals will face. Technologies are increasingly becoming walled gardens, threatening to silo away valuable insights. Machine learning is becoming an integral part of any data-driven business, but in order to maximize the opportunity it brings, it has to be seen as a whole rather than in fragments. Furthermore, it needs to be as clean and precise as possible — poor data yields poor insights.
Unfortunately, the majority of organizations are not equipped for this new reality. The multiplication of new data sources makes the task even more difficult, and underinvestment in the right technology to solve these challenges becomes an avoidable danger to the business. As the CDP ecosystem matures, the absence of this functionality will become a growing liability.
How are organizations addressing this challenge and overcoming risk?
This is the enormous promise of Customer Data Platform (CDP) technology. By providing a single source of truth for customer data across all departments and functions, from marketing to data and analytics to IT, CDP technology can orchestrate customer data across an organization and help protect against that risk. A full-featured CDP can power real-time activation of marketing campaigns and other events, enable compliance with increasingly complex data privacy legislation and — for data-mature organizations — supply rich, high-quality datasets to advanced machine learning applications.
What Roles Comprise a CDP Initiative?
Many of the most important roles will align with current marketing roles. Some of the key stakeholders that make up the day-to-day operations will include:
1. A CRM operator
2. Customer Insights
3. Marketing Analytics
4. Technical resource(s).
Beyond core team members, there will be many stakeholders and executive sponsors that need to be aware of the impact of the CDP. Any team that has a hand in data orchestration — i.e. any team responsible for a tool the CDP will integrate with — will need to be in the loop. Executive sponsors will be critical for enforcing the new processes from the top down.
Key findings
On average of 48% of European organizations said that CDPs will be absolutely essential for complying with data privacy regulations by 2025.
An average of 16% of respondents said their current CDP had built-in privacy and consent management features.
When respondents were asked how their CDP could improve, more real-time functionality was the third most important response across Europe.
86% of European organizations said their main motivation for implementing a CDP was the desire to engage with customers in real-time, unrestricted by rigid paths or campaigns — making that the third most popular response.
“The State of the CDP” report explores the behaviors and attitudes of 873 European decision-makers in marketing and data/analytics. The survey was conducted in March and April of 2020 and sponsored by Tealium. The company is a US headquartered American company founded in 2008 in San Diego, California that sells enterprise tag management, an API hub, a customer data platform with machine learning, and data management products. It has offices in the US, Singapore, UK, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, France and Australia.