1、1An IT managers guide to building or buying a CDP.Sponsored by:601 Townsend Ave San Francisco,CA 94103 Published by:231 Second Avenue Milford,CT 06460 www.cdpinstitute.org2Customer Data Platforms(CDPs)have been gaining popularity in the marketing world for nearly a decade.The idea is simple:put all

2、customer data in one place so that marketers and all other userscan easily use it to build better customer relationships.In a world where actionable customer data is critical to business success,this is a powerful promise to make.Yet many IT departments are skeptical of the concept.To them,the CDP o

3、ften sounds like another name for their existing data warehouse,data lake,or CRM system.The last thing any IT manager needs is one more system to manage,especially one that holds sensitive customer data.So the first question they ask is,Can the goals of CDP be better met by extending their existing

4、systems?Its an important question that deserves careful consideration.The right answer for any company will depend on the state of existing systems,exact user requirements,and available resources,among other considerations.This paper will identify the information needs to make a sound decision.3Need

5、s addressed by a CDP.The Customer Data Platform Institute defines a CDP as“packaged software the builds a unified,persistent customer database that is accessible to other systems.”That definition implies a number of specific capabilities,encapsulated in the Institutes RealCDP certification.But the t

6、erm Customer Data Platform is often understood more loosely to describe any system that delivers unified,actionable customer profiles.Lets accept the looser definition for the moment,since it brings us directly to the most important question:What does it take to deliver the unified,actionable custom