CDP Adoption and Change Management
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a marketer managed system that helps organizations create persistent, unified records of all their customers and their attributes. [1]
Countless companies across industries rely on CDP to unify all their first-party customer data and enrich it with third-party data to create a comprehensive single view of the customer. This unified customer data is used to create powerful segments, analyze the needs of prospects and customers, and orchestrate marketing and sales processes throughout their life cycle.
CDP Market Trends
The global customer data platform market size stood at USD 772.1 million in 2019 and is projected to reach USD 4,364.7 million by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 24.5% during the forecast period. [2]
According to a research published by The CDP Institute, over a thirty-month period, from December 2016 to June 2019, the number of CDP vendors increased from 23 to 96. [3]
There are some distinct characteristics of a CDP that explain why organizations are looking at them instead of relying purely on other types of data systems like CRM or a DMP.
How is a customer data platform different from what we know?
Benefits of a CDP –
1. Single View of the Customer: Primary focus of CDP is to collect customer data from multiple sources and stitch it together under single customer profile, creating a complete picture of the customers and their needs.
2. Dynamic Segmentation: Having all the customer profile and interactions unified, CDP can enable complex, real-time segments to make the marketing and sales process more targeted to drive effective engagement and conversion.
3. Data Democratization: CDP platforms can be easily integrated with other MarTech systems to send the unified customer data for various purposes. For example:
· Data can be synced with CRM systems to keep the sales teams informed about customer profile and activities
· Data can be sent to marketing platforms to orchestrate highly personalized campaigns in real-time
4. Personalization and Customer Experience: The unified customer profile and interactions can be used to make the marketing messaging and sales conversations highly personalized and relevant to the customers.
5. Operational Efficiencies: CDP can enable various use cases that can improve overall operational efficiencies. For example, using tactics like pre-qualification to remove bad leads early in the marketing and sales processes; creating refined target audiences for marketing campaigns and using suppression segments to improve the quality of target audiences for display ads, can result in higher efficiency, better conversion rates, and cost/effort savings. [4]
Successful CDP Adoption Is Tied to Good Change Management
Like any other marketing technology, the success or failure of a CDP depends on how effectively the change has been managed within the organization. Effective change management can enable the organizations leverage full potential of a CDP in terms of the value and enhanced operational efficiencies that it delivers. [5]
For successful implementation, a balanced focus on people and processes is essential.
· People — The addition of a CDP fundamentally changes the functioning style of organizations. These fundamental shifts require that the goals, use cases and expected outcomes of a CDP implementation are understood by all the employees and are actively supported and prioritized by the senior management. Alignment at all levels will ensure quick decision making and efficient resource allocation thereby ensuring smooth delivery through a combination of governance and functional roles.
· Processes — A CDP provides the marketers the necessary tools to perform critical marketing processes like customer segmentation, consumer lifecycle orchestration and modelling and analytics — processes that are likely being performed by other teams and resources.
Therefore, organizations must assess their core processes to ensure that the concerned teams are ready for the implementation of the CDP. Organizations must assess how the processes are being performed currently and how will it change post the CDP implementation.
A structured approach to ensure successful CDP adoption is –
· Well defined and communicated vision
· Alignment between IT and business
· Roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders involved
· CDP organizational readiness assessment
· Training and Coaching
References –
[1] https://exponea.com/blog/customer-data-platform/
[2] https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/customer-data-platform-market-100633
[3] https://gopages.segment.com/rs/667-MPQ-382/images/Segment-Customer-Data-Platform-Report-2020.pdf
[4] https://www.capgemini.com/in-en/service/capgeminis-customer-data-platform-cdp/
