Customer data platforms have become a widely accepted solution in the martech world today, and rightfully so with their powerful and highly scalable data collection, activation, and analytics capabilities. As an organization, you can be in any phase of the CDP journey: Assessing if it’s the right solution for you, selecting a vendor, migrating from a data management platform, or even just considering it. No matter which stage you’re at, there are several key considerations that you must know ahead of time. I’ve developed a cheat sheet to help!

This cheat sheet includes pointers on where to start and what to consider as you plan for your CDP implementation. Let’s dive in!

1. Define use cases

Start with a use-case-first approach. Organizations who successfully implemented CDP have:

• A defined set of use cases that align with the capability of the CDP and broader tech stack to demonstrate value of the platform
• The right prioritization incorporating business impact and level of effort

2. Understand the differentiating value of the vendor

CDPs are a combination of multiple capabilities, and each vendor is different. So as an organization, what business problems are you trying to solve? Are you driving orchestrated journeys, identity resolutions, better real-time personalized experiences, etc.? Depending on your focus, choose the vendor / platform that helps solve that efficiently. Each vendor can cater to specific needs. Check out this article for more in depth overview of how to select a vendor.

3. Don’t use a CDP as a CRM

CDPs are purpose-built platforms designed to unify, centralize, and orchestrate omni-channel campaigns and activations. It’s not a replacement of CRM capabilities.

4. Prepare data ahead of time

The CDP is a valuable component of the martech stack because it unifies multiple data sources together, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. It doesn’t solve for all the data management problems, such as customer identity, data complexities, and data enrichment. Ensure that your organization has the right partners and processes in place to collect, prepare, cleanse, transform, and enrich the data to then load into the CDP.

5. Build a Value Realization and Measurement Framework

Success is subjective, but we all love to see great ROI and above benchmark performances. So, as you stand up the CDP, make sure you have well-defined success criteria, both at the organization level and individual business unit level, as well as a framework and approach to realize and report on that.

6. Develop a Scaled Adoption Plan

CDP implementation comes with its own share of change management. It is critical to redefine the operating model as needed, provide enablement sessions to your teams, and identify where staff augmentation is needed.

Want to learn more? Check out our guide, A Collection of CDP Fails: 5 Stories to Learn From.

Struggling with an aspect of your CDP buying journey or implementation? Schedule time with our experts here.