For those organizations who want to make a difference in the world of customers, listen to us!

The idea of building a 360° customer view has been around for a long time. In that regard, HubSpot and Salesforce have made a tremendous impact by collecting account information, contact profiles, sales pipelines, and marketing activities. However, there is a space requirement for a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to support these things.

In recent years, it has risen to a high level because these CDP platforms allow non-technical stakeholders to perform tasks by assessing high-quality customer data through a simple workflow in the User Interface (UI) and connecting that data to the tools in use.

But, firstly, understand the meaning or basics of a customer data platform.

What is a CDP?

Customer Data Platforms, or CDP, provides two-way data integration, management, and primary analytics around events, profile data, and signals. They bring supreme data management capabilities (data integration, data matching and management, stitching and aggregation, and reporting and analytics) to unite all the information around a customer and then serve as a real time platform to capture and manage it.

Also, they provide out-of-the-box analytics and integrate third-party machine learning and data visualizations. Their Application Programming Interface (APIs) helps developers use CDP as a central source of truth to get real time customer data.

Tom Treanor, CMO at Treasure Data, says that CDPs are important. He says, “As companies increasingly compete based on customer experience in addition to products or services, CDPs are becoming an essential part of the tech stack. To deliver seamless and personalized experiences, every customer-facing touchpoint needs access to the same unified customer view.”

Things to consider while developing a CDP for your organization……let’s have a look…..

Building a customer data platform

No matter how strong is your domain expertise in building CDP, the development of one will take about 6 to 12 months. And when there is no expertise, the development will take about 18 to 24 months. Other than this, there are several more constraints, such as personnel turnover, shifts in organizational priorities, and budget limitations. So, people who requested a CDP may not get access to it for a year or more.

Bespoke factors of building a CDP

  • The complication of building a CDP is never going to fade away. The success of a creating a CDP will depend on collaboration across multiple departments, across the organization and, working with external parties.
  • Gartner reports on CDP building – “homegrown CDPs require the full range of IT development roles, including the ability to build a business-friendly user interface.”
  • It’s often senior team members with extensive experience with current architecture and institutions that will have to give good time in building the CDP, increasing the cost of each hour.
  • Frequent CDP maintenance and integration will take resources away from core development, increase cost, and affect the whole team’s productivity.
  • Lastly, you will need to put frequent significant updates for the organization, and it will be on your shoulders to build them.

Buying a customer data platform

Even buying a CDP will take time, unless you buy it from a CDP vendor. There are several benefits if you buy a it from an established and most preferred vendor.

  • If you notice, the most significant benefit is realized when the CDP is already up and starts running in the perfect condition. Some CDP vendors will offer specialized services to assist with the implementation and ensure adopting a CDP doesn’t necessitate strains on engineering.
  • Also, working with a CDP vendor can be cost-effective; instead, building a CDP internally can be expensive. The reason is involvement of senior engineers, alignment of stakeholders across the organization for a long time. Plus, more the delay, more the expense.
  • The development process cost will be eliminated, and there will only be a subscription cost that comes while engaging the internal team and upskilling them for the dedicated process of buying a CDP.
  • Data strategies evolve over time. A good customer data platform can help you keep up with the changes without limiting your team’s ability to adapt. With its built-in integrations, CDPs can easily transform your data pipeline to meet the needs of your business.
  • When you need to collect new event data, a good CDP tool such as mParticle’s Smartype can help you create a type-safe code base to collect your data correctly.

What to choose?

There is a significant time difference between buying and building a CDP. If your company is in an evolving industry and needs to keep up with the competition, working with the correct vendor can help you get started in as quickly as 90 days as building one would stretch for about 12-19 months.

Matt Belkin, COO and General Manager of Data at Terminus, explains CDPs’ important roles in marketing to prospects, selling to target accounts, and growing the business: “A CDP is your most trusted source of customer engagement at your target accounts. By continuously cleansing and enriching your data across the entire go-to-market funnel, CDPs allow go-to-market teams to precisely engage buying committees every time. This level of accuracy allows marketers to reach more buyers efficiently and gives sales teams the confidence they are connecting with exactly the right people at each account at the right time.”

Take away

I want to tell you that the goal of any project is to build as little as possible. There is more to any project than you actually see. The development of any CDP is time-consuming and drenching. However, the case is different if you go ahead and buy it. Buying a CDP saves efforts, time, and strategies that may or may not work out. So, if there is a good buy option, it should get you to value faster.