Questions to Ask Before Starting a Customer Data Platform Project

Embarking upon a Customer Data Platform project is no small task, as it will impact the entire customer experience and the departments responsible for managing that experience.

With so many vendors to evaluate, even choosing the right CDP to work with can be complicated, so Hilary Noonan at Tealium has put together the following list of questions to ask before beginning your CDP project...

Questions to Ask Internally...

Do more than ten customer data sources exist within your organisation today?

Most companies have a wide assortment of customer data sources, but they are often siloed. These silos keep teams from working together to create a seamless customer experience - the primary objective of a Customer Data Platform is to unite these siloed data sources into an actionable view of the customer.

Does your organisation use more than ten different MarTech vendors?

Today’s marketers and analytics professionals are building best-of-breed tech stacks to stay competitive. A data-first CDP takes a vendor-neutral approach and enables seamless data flow to power a unified experience.

Does your CDP need to serve both marketing and the rest of the organisation that touches Customer Experience?

CDPs have largely been relegated to the MarTech stack, but the customer experience and the data associated with it extends far beyond the marketing department... It is important to bring in stakeholders from a range of departments such as Analytics, Data, Customer Service, etc., to ensure that the CDP will work to improve the customer experience across all touchpoints.

Is your IT team wrangling with multiple ETL processes or integrating different channels, apps, and data sources together?

Today, companies without a CDP who want the benefits of unified customer data are forced to do manual processes to import and export data from channel to channel and build ad-hoc integrations. Understanding how a CDP will impact this work is an important part to realising the full value of the technology.

Do additional lines of business such as Customer Service, Analytics, IT, Finance, Operations) need to leverage correlated customer data within their tools and processes?

Most people view CDPs as a marketing technology, but Customer Experience doesn’t stop at the marketing team. A data-first CDP allows you to build a data foundation for the entire customer lifecycle by creating a unified way to gather and disseminate all the data your company has on a customer.

Are you concerned about your organisation's ability to audit your customer data and comply with privacy regulation?

Of course you are! But governing and controlling all of the sources and outputs for customer data without a CDP requires labor-intensive work from IT... A data-first CDP provides an auditable trail of data from creation through transformation to activation, reducing the amount of work needed to govern your data and keep it secure.

Questions to Ask CDP Vendors...

How is data collected and who owns that data?

Now more than ever, companies need to take control of their data, but too often it is being created within a silo that you may or may not control. Creating a single view of the customer is difficult if your CDP provider doesn’t give your company the ability to collect and own data from every channel and source in your technology landscape... If you don’t own the data, how can you ensure the compliance and security of that data? Your chosen CDP solution should transform all of your customer data siloes into a First Party Dataset that you control.

What is the history of the company’s CDP offering? Is this CDP technology built natively, or has it been purchased through acquisition?

Today’s CDP landscape is extensive, but not all vendors are created equally. Some CDP vendors built CDPs in-house to seamlessly bring together the data from all your company’s sources - other CDP vendors have been built through the acquisition of other technologies to produce a CDP offering. The latter, as a result, can create a more cumbersome approach to customer data that is often reliant on Professional Services to make it work.

How many data sources will this CDP enable me to collect from?

Your CDP should be able to collect data from anywhere and everywhere covering both client-side and server-side, whether that be through tags, APIs, SDKs, JavaScript, webhooks, file imports, etc. Tealium uniquely brings an enterprise tag management system and API Hub to provide complete oversight on your event and visitor-level data.

Does it integrate with the tools that I have already invested in?

The value of your CDP is limited by the number of technologies it can integrate with in your tech stack. When you are already heavily invested with your existing MarTech stack, if the CDP cannot work with all of these technologies then all you are achieving is another customer data silo. 

Does your CDP come with tools, product features, and services to meet the robust privacy data regulations and standards unique to your geography and industry?

Privacy and trust are key components of your brand. Customer data is becoming increasingly regulated and consumers are increasingly aware of how their data is being handled. Ensure your CDP vendor takes security and compliance as seriously as you do and look for privacy certifications such as HIPAA, PCI, SOC 2 Type II, Privacy Shield Framework, ISO, etc.

Is it reliable and scalable?

Customer data is one of the most valuable assets for any enterprise company. Even a tiny blip in uptime can create problems in compliance and personalisation when that data gets delayed or lost. Make sure your vendor can meet your global and regional data hosting requirements and has a proven track record of reliability and availability.

Looking for more help? Reach out to me directly for further support, or you can find additional resources at www.tealium.com