Rise of Composable Customer Data Platforms (CDP) or Unbundled CDP
Pranav Kumar
Digital, Data & AI Business Leader | Chief Architect |Trusted Advisor | Innovation | D,E & I Champion | Keynote Speaker | Advisory Board Member | Mentor - Atal Innovation Mission (Niti Aayog) & Technovation
Composable CDPs, or unbundled CDPs, are emerging as an alternative approach to building a customer data platform. But can a composable CDP really be called a CDP?
Composable CDP
Composable customer data platforms (CDPs) are a new category of software that enables companies to stitch together customer data from disparate sources in real-time. Unlike traditional CDPs, which have a rigid architecture that limits flexibility and scalability, composable CDPs offer a modular approach that allows companies to easily add or remove data sources as needed. In this blog post, we will explore the benefits of using a composable CDP and how it can help your company better manage customer data. We will also look at some of the challenges involved in implementing such a platform.
What is a Customer Data Platform?
A customer data platform (CDP) is a type of software that helps companies unify their customer data and then use it to personalize their marketing efforts.
A CDP can be used to collect data from various sources, including website interactions, CRM systems, and offline data sources. Once the data is collected, it can be cleansed and unified into a single view of the customer. This allows businesses to get a complete picture of their customers and better understand their needs and interests.
With a CDP in place, businesses can then use customer data to personalize marketing campaigns across all channels. For example, they can send targeted emails or display personalized ads to specific segments of customers. By delivering more relevant messages, businesses can improve customer engagement and loyalty.
Overall, a CDP can help businesses create a more holistic view of their customers and deliver more personalized experiences. This can lead to improved customer acquisition and retention rates, as well as higher sales and ROI.
Evolutions of CDPs
As data-driven organizations strive to become more customer-centric, the role of the customer data platform (CDP) has become increasingly important. However, the concept of a CDP is still relatively new, and as such, it is constantly evolving. In this article, we will take a look at some of the major changes that have occurred in CDPs over the past few years.
One of the most significant changes to CDPs has been the move towards cloud-based solutions. This shift has been driven by the need for organizations to be able to access their customer data from anywhere in the world. Cloud-based CDPs also offer greater scalability than on-premises solutions, which is another key advantage.
Another major change that has taken place is the move away from traditional relational databases. This is due to the fact that these databases are not well suited for handling large volumes of customer data. Instead, many CDPs now use NoSQL databases, which are much more scalable and can handle big data loads more effectively.
In addition, there has been a trend towards real-time data processing in recent years. This means that CDPs are now able to provide up-to-the-minute insights into customer behavior, rather than relying on batch processing of data which can often be out of date by the time it is processed. Real-time data processing is made possible by stream processing technologies such as Apache Kafka.
Finally
Introducing the Composable CDP
In order to provide a more comprehensive and complete customer view, CDPs must be able to ingest data from a variety of sources, including first-party data, second-party data, and third-party data. However, most CDPs on the market today are not built for this purpose. They are either siloed within specific departments or they require IT assistance in order to set up integrations with the various data sources.
The Composable CDP was designed from the ground up to be ingestion agnostic, meaning that it can easily ingest data from any type of source without the need for IT assistance. This allows businesses to quickly and easily get started with a CDP without having to worry about complex integrations. In addition, the Composable CDP is built on a microservices architecture, which means that each component can be updated or replaced independently of the others. This makes it easy to scale the system as needed and ensures that there is no single point of failure.
Behavioral Data Creation
Composable CDP is a new type of customer data platform that enables businesses to easily create and manage customer data. It offers a simple, yet powerful set of tools that allow businesses to quickly and easily create customer profiles, segment customers, and track customer behavior.
Most importantly, Composable CDP provides businesses with the ability to easily create and update customer profiles. This is done by providing businesses with an easy-to-use interface that allows them to input customer data into the system. Once the data is entered, it can be used to automatically generate customer profiles. These profiles can then be used to segment customers and track their behavior over time.
In addition to creating customer profiles, Composable CDP also offers businesses the ability to segment their customers. This is done by providing businesses with a set of powerful tools that allow them to quickly and easily identify groups of customers that share similar characteristics. Once these groups are identified, businesses can then track the behavior of these groups over time, allowing them to better understand their needs and preferences.
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Finally, Composable CDP also offers businesses the ability to track customer behavior over time. This is done by tracking the interactions that customers have with the business’s website, products, and services. By tracking this information, businesses can gain a better understanding of what customers do on their site, what they are interested in, and how they interact with the business’s products and services. This information can then be used
Storage and Data Modeling
In a composable CDP, data is stored in a lake. This lake can be a Hadoop file system (HDFS), an object store such as Amazon S3, or a cloud-based data warehouse such as Google BigQuery. The data in the lake is organized into tables, with each table containing records for a specific type of entity (e.g. customers, orders, products).
The schema for these tables is defined by the data model, which describes the structure of the data and the relationships between different types of entities. The data model can be represented as a graph, with entities represented as nodes and relationships represented as edges.
A composable CDP provides APIs that allow developers to query the data in the lake and build applications on top of it. These APIs are based on standard SQL, and they support common operations such as filters, aggregations, and joins.
The benefits of using a composable CDP include:
- Reduced complexity: because all of the data is stored in one place (the lake), there is no need to maintain separate copies of the data in different formats or locations.
- Flexibility: the schema can be changed at any time without affecting existing applications.
- Scale: the system can easily scale up to accommodate more users and more data.
Data Activation
Data activation is the process of making customer data available for use in marketing and other customer-facing activities. This data is typically stored in a central location, such as a Customer Data Platform (CDP), and is then made available to various marketing and other customer-related applications through APIs or other means.
The benefits of data activation are many, but perhaps the most important is that it allows organizations to make better use of their customer data. By making this data available in real time, organizations can more easily create customizations and experiences that are relevant to each individual customer. Additionally, data activation can help reduce the overall cost of customer acquisition and retention by making it easier to target specific customers with tailored messages and offers.
Ultimately, data activation provides organizations with a powerful tool for understanding and engaging their customers. When used correctly, it can help create lasting relationships between an organization and its customers.
Benefits of a Composable CDP
A composable CDP is a powerful tool for managing customer data. It enables businesses to collect, cleanse, and normalize customer data from multiple sources and then make it available for use in marketing and other customer-facing applications.
There are many benefits of using a composable CDP, including:
1. Increased Customer Insights: A composable CDP gives businesses greater insights into their customers by providing a 360-degree view of the customer. This allows businesses to better understand their customers’ needs and preferences and create more targeted marketing campaigns.
2. Improved Data Quality: By collecting customer data from multiple sources and cleansing it, businesses can ensure that the data is of high quality. This improved data quality leads to better insights and decision-making.
3. Enhanced Customer Engagement: With a composable CDP, businesses can create targeted marketing campaigns that are more likely to engage customers. Additionally, the increased insights into customer behavior can be used to create personalized experiences that improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
4. Greater Operational Efficiency: A composable CDP can automate many manual tasks related to managing customer data, such as data entry and cleansing. This frees up resources that can be used for other tasks, such as analysis and reporting.
5. Reduced Costs: By automating manual tasks and improving data quality, businesses can save money on customer data management costs over time.
Great article on this topic. Given that many CDP's are starting to offer components of their platforms speaks to this trend.
Digital Transformation Executive
1 年Excellent article Pranav. CDP is a key topic for our clients and I really appreciate your thought leadership ??
Strategy & Leadership | Advisory MarTech Architect - CDP | Marketing Intelligence & Personalization | Customer Experience - AI/ML
1 年This is super insightful. Thanks a ton for this :)