Customer Data Platform

The popularity and need for a CDP is growing at a very fast rate of speed, the reason for that is simple to determine when we think of the services it provides. CDP’s help organizations unify or integrate their data to get a better understanding of their customers and to create personalized marketing campaigns. There are various CDP’s designed to help companies of all levels and sizes and to pick the best of them for your organization is rather a priority than just a need. 

Here are the 6 STEPS to pick the best customer data platform for your organization:- 

1. BRING STAKEHOLDERS INTO THE PROCESS; before you start wondering which CDP would be the best option for your company, you should first bring in your internal stakeholders into the process of choosing. A CDP works with all the data that a company stores in all departments, therefore it is best to bring in everyone in the process of picking the best CDP. You won’t need each stakeholder evaluating CDP, but rather you need their input in the buying process for your business. Also, when everyone’s opinion is asked, they feel that they are a part of the organization too and a valuable asset.  

2. DEFINE USE CASES; it is easy to decide why you need a CDP for your organization because of the fact that a CDP consolidates your data into a single customer database.  Consolidating isn’t going to make your organization magically data-driven, it is just a way to get ahead with the process and to move onto the next step. You will need to define your use cases, for that you should discuss it down with your stakeholders and sales team management. 

  Here are some of the use cases that might be the best reason to get a CDP for your company. 

• To fully understand your customer journey 
• To create a more personalized customer experience for your website 
• To create more targeted multi-channel advertising campaigns 
• Combining online  and offline data  

Once you have listed down tour use cases of CDP, then the next thing to do is to market research. Check how many companies are already using CDP and which platform is better to use. Check their reviews and ratings and through vendors. And later discuss with your team and include everyone’s opinion when it comes to choosing the best data CDP for your organization. 

3. DETERMINED THE TOOLS NEEDED; To start with this process of choosing the best CDP, it is best to determine which tools that your company uses that will get connected to CDP later on. You need to set an idea on what tools and functionality will you require after you have decided and listed down your use cases of CDP for your organization. The next step would be to make a list of the tools that will help you connect with the customer in one way or another. It would be more likely that you want to include website tools, CMR systems, real-time live chat, payment processors, email platforms, and help desk platforms and few more according to your company’s requirements.  Make sure to double check the tools that you listed, in case you want to add another to connect with CDP. Some of the tools that most organizations start with are:- 

• Analytics tools such as Google Analytics  
• Advertising tools such as Facebook 
• Customer success and live chat tools  like Intercom 
• Business intelligence tools such as Looker 
• Data warehouses such as redshift 

4. GATHER REQUIREMENTS; after listing down the tools, check what requirements that your organization has associated with CDP. One of the requirements could be to get a complete understanding of each data piece that your company has been collecting, for that you need to build a data-tacking plan with CDP. Here down below is a list of some of the most common requirements that organizations  seem to have with CDP :- 

• It helps with GDPR and CCPA compliance 
• It helps in getting full view of your customer journey 
• It does have a top-notch security  

5. COMPARE VENDORS; by this step, you must already have a few option of CDP to choose, but don’t take prizing as an only factor to determine which CDP would be best for you. Instead, you should start by considering you industry and your customers and pick the CDP that has the most similar features compared to your customer requirements and industry size. Find a CDP that has a track record of working with businesses at that level. Here are a few points to consider which CDP would best fit you and your company’s requirements; 

• A good track record of use cases that you have already listed and defined 
• A solution for data compliance 
• The right integrations for your current and future use cases of CDP 
• Excellent customer service that can help you when you need help in using CDP and can answer CDP related questions.  

6. CONSIDER ROI (RETURN ON INVESTMENT); Consider ROI when you are choosing a CDP for you company, the best way to do is not to have the cheapest option intact but rather you should consider the time that your employee’s would be spending building and maintaining integrations for each tool in the absence of CDP in your organization. Those hours spent can result in significant costs that your company is spending on building just one integration. If you have tens or many more integrations to build, you will soon realize that it is becoming unmanageable and time-consuming which in turn costing more than the money you would spend on buying a CDP. 

A good CDP should reduce the amount of time and cost with respect to your organization. That’s why you need to evaluate and calculate ROI much ahead of time, and choose the CDP that give you maximum time-savings.