An Introduction to Customer Data Platform (CDP) for Engineers
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A customer data platform (CDP) is a powerful tool that enables companies to create a unified customer profile. This can help businesses drive better results by connecting with customers across channels.
But what exactly is a CDP? Why should you use one? And how can engineers benefit from this technology? In this post, we'll explore all of this in deeper detail.
There Are Way Too Many Types of Data Platforms Out There
You may be confused by all the jargon.
What's a data warehouse? What’s a data manipulation platform? How is a CDP different from a CRM? And what does it have to do with marketing automation?
These tools are solutions that help companies make better use of data. They combine multiple tools into one, so you can manage all your customer experience efforts in one place. This makes it easier to track your customers’ behaviour and build more personalized experiences for them.
One of those tools that we’re going to explore is the Customer Data Platform or CDP. A CDP can be so powerful that you might want to include it in your stack.
What is a Customer Data Platform (CDP)?
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a new type of data platform that combines the best features of a data warehouse, a data lake and a data catalogue. CDPs are designed to help companies organise, manage and leverage their customer data by merging real-time data into one single source of truth. This will tell you about your unified customer profile and what have they done within your company’s digital space. With this approach, you and your organisation can make better decisions and stay ahead of the competition.
A unified customer profile from a variety of data sources can help drive better business results. Data is the new currency, and CDPs are the tool that will enable you to leverage your data to be competitive in today's market.
Why Use a CDP When You Have All of These Data Platforms?
As an engineer, you may be wondering how you can make use of a CDP. CDPs can be incredibly useful for engineers who are responsible for building and maintaining the infrastructure that supports a company's data efforts.
By using a CDP:
- You can ensure that your data is organised and accessible to all relevant teams.
- You’ll be able to streamline your data management processes by processing what is in and what is out to/from your CDP — which can save you time and make it easier to troubleshoot issues as they arise.
- And because CDPs are designed specifically for product analytics, it can provide engineers and related stakeholders with a level of visibility into customer behaviour that they may not have had access to before.
Let us examine each point in greater detail.
Organise Your Data in an Accessible Manner to All Relevant Teams
CDPs are able to handle all of the information that comes from different sources — such as social media posts, website interactions or even purchase history — and combine it into one place so you can see what's happening across all channels at once. Moreover, you can also push relevant data that you’ve obtained inside your CDP into different tools that is relevant to other teams.
For example, you can push customer data who have purchased a certain product inside your digital platform to a certain marketing automation tool or advertising platform — without the hassle of manually querying from your databases. CDPs has done the heavy lifting for you to create relevant customer profiles.
Manage and Streamline Your Data Flows
CDPs are also able to help manage and streamline data that flows in and out from the CDP itself. You can control what things you want to track and things that you don’t want to track.
In Devhaus itself, our favourite CDP, Segment, has a feature called Protocols which helps enforce data governance across all of our channels. With vast amount of data coming in and out from our CDP, Protocols helps us tremendously by enforcing rules and keeps our data clean.
See Your Customer Behaviour Like Never Before
Because of CDP’s nature of collecting real-time data from various sources, you can ingest this data to your product analytics tools. This allows related stakeholders to gain a deeper understanding of customer behaviour and experience. By analysing this data, the organisation can identify areas for improvement and make better decisions to drive better results through data analytics.
If you're an engineer, all of this business jargons might confuse you. But having a CDP implemented within your stack will help your organisation to scale faster by having the right source-of-truth — which is your own customer. You need to know what to scale before you can even know how to scale.
If you're interested in incorporating a Customer Data Platform into your tech stack but need help assistance in planning your dream stack or implementing it, check out our Solution Architecture Services. Our team can help you build a custom plan that fits your specific needs.
Using Grants to Help You Subsidise Your Next Digital Marketing Project
If you're new to the concept of growth we'd strongly advice to work closely with subject matter experts, and explore Growth services to help you through this journey.
Here are some of the top grants that could help get your Project subsidised by up to 70 or 80% ( for certain industries ). To help you understand better, our VP of Advanced Services - Dom has taken the time to explain. Watch the overview video below:
Our Top Grant Picks
We would highly recommend the following grants to help with your business growth:
- EDG Automation Grant: Allows you to adopt cutting-edge technology and automation which can result in tangible benefits, significant growth and resource efficiency.
- EDG Product Development Grant: Help your company develop innovative technology and products with the end goal of commercialisation.
Expanding Your Business Internationally? Consider Singapore's Market Readiness Assistance Grant
The Market Readiness Assistance (MRA) Grant is a program offered by Enterprise Singapore, aimed at helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) based in Singapore expand into overseas markets. The grant provides funding support of up to 70% of eligible costs for activities such as market assessment, market entry, and overseas promotion.
This initiative also offers SMEs access to a range of in-market services such as business matching, market intelligence, and networking opportunities. The MRA grant is designed to help Singaporean businesses become more competitive in the global market and to encourage them to explore new opportunities beyond their domestic borders.
If you're an SME looking to expand your business internationally, the MRA grant could be an excellent opportunity for you to take advantage of.
If you're keen to explore the grants further, book a call with our lovely team today!
Get up to 70% subsidy for your next project
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- Prepare your problem statements
- Align on your desired outcomes and the timeline
- Let us know your budget constraints if any
