Dear CDP, get over yourself. You’re important, but not “that” important.
I recently heard someone use the phase that they were going to take a “solar system” approach to implementing a Customer Data Platform (CDP), making it the center of everything. I didn’t love it. Because while on the surface, it may sound logical, it’s really just another example of what’s wrong with the CDP category today as people continue to fan the flames of CDP hype. The reality is that while CDP is really important, it doesn’t actually do anything of value on it’s own.
THE SUPER-IMPORTANT-YET-NOT-SO-CRITICAL-BUT-USUALLY-NEEDED ROLE OF CDP
I get asked all the time what are the top CDP use cases. Usually people will almost reflexively rattle off: Single View of the Customer, Unified Segmentation, Closed Loop Reporting, Data Governance, etc… but those are so high level, they are essentially more like L1/L2 categories or themes. If you were to actually take a CDP use case, break it down so that it is documented and spec’d out to the point it’s “project ready” for design and implementation, what you will soon realize is that there are dependencies galore.
Take it from someone who has had a few CDP projects under their belt…you have the obvious ones like the unavailable datasets from key data sources that just aren’t quite ready yet — but soon. Or enhancements to an existing web landing page template that still needs to be developed and tested. Or maybe you are waiting for creative assets to be approved. Or perhaps you need an Email engineering team to update their data model and setup a new trigger. Then maybe you need the Mobile app team to update an SDK. Oh right, nobody told you that you had to submit the intake request to the Experimentation team to queue up the task to setup/configure the A/B tests. And on and on it goes…
The CDP plays an important role, but it can’t succeed on it’s own. At this point you might begin to wonder whether a CDP is even necessary to enable all your use cases. It’s a fair question.
And the answer is no.
You don’t actually need a CDP to enable any of your use cases. There are ways to duct tape your way into enabling any and all of your use cases — it becomes more a question of what does your world look like with a CDP versus without?
HERO-BALL FOR ALL
There is a phrase used in sports called Hero Ball where one player tries to shoulder the burden for the entire team. Sometimes they are glorified for it (e.g. they are viewed as selfless, covering for weaker teammates, leadership exemplified) and sometimes they are vilified (e.g. they are viewed as selfish, stats hoarder, glory seeker). Regardless of which side of the fence you are, most can agree that their true intentions notwithstanding, these individuals expend tons of energy, often having adding stress to their bodies and exposing themselves to more injury risk in the process.
In the same way, most business operations teams can brute force any use case without a CDP. They can move heaven and hell to pull off these miraculous feats but let’s be clear, there is a tax to be paid.
Burn out. Exhaustion. Complex mental gymnastics. Tribal knowledge that disappears whenever that team member gets sick, goes on vacation, or at worst finds a new career opportunity.
You can pull off any use case without a CDP but at what cost?
PERSONALIZATION IS A TEAM SPORT
Often times companies purchase a CDP assuming it will act as a silver bullet and solve all their personalization problems. Unfortunately that is not the case. Not only will CDP fail to be the personalization savior you’ve been looking for, CDP will likely shine a spotlight on all the operational inefficiencies that’s been black-boxed for so long. You have to be prepared to confront that reality (good, bad, ugly) and have a plan to address it…and it will require a lot of reaching across the aisle and cross-team collaboration.
I’m a big fan of CDP. Just make sure to temper your expectations of what CDP can do on its own and make sure you build a supporting cast around it. Have a process and trust the process. You’ll be well on your way to hitting touchdowns and dunking homeruns!