In the iconic movie, The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow sang: “I’d unravel ev’ry riddle for my Individdle, In trouble or in pain…if I only had a brain.”

Great marketers anticipate every customer’s needs – and unravel any of their needs. And to do that takes brains.

Marketers have taken the first step to deeper intelligence by gathering customer information into one centralized depository of the truth in a Customer Data Platform (CDP). Nearly half (44%) of companies responding to Gartner’s Cross-Functional Customer Data Survey said they rely on a Customer Data Platform (CDP) for a 360-degree view of customers.

But a CDP alone is a repository of information. Accessing and acting upon that information in real-time to exceed customers’ expectations is one of the holy grails of marketing.

Recent history shows that companies started to embrace CDPs at the end of the last decade. The catalyst was the explosion of data from computers, phones, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, streaming media, and other sources.

Marketers and other data users wanted a central repository for all this data. CDPs fulfilled that promise. With a CDP, marketers can now create unified, persistent customer profiles needed to maintain rich, accurate, and current customer data.

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While CDPs do indeed provide companies with plenty of value, they only go so far. Relying on a CDP alone for a marketer’s data needs is not enough. Simply having a central repository for data is only the first step.

While purchase history, loyalty information, and other data points are crucial for marketers, some companies become enamored with gathering as much information as possible, including data points that provide no marketing value and will never be used. That additional data only takes up space, making it more challenging to analyze and use the meaningful data marketers collect.

Good analysis is the blind spot with many CDPs. While many CDPs house the data, many can’t do anything with it. Instead, the analytic capability is housed in a separate decision engine with little or no innate connections to the data. The further decisioning is from the data itself, the more complex and inefficient the workflow is.

A far superior structure is to have the “brain” inside the CDP. If a CDP has no inherent intelligence, marketers can’t extract the value of the data gathered by a CDP.

However, as Gartner points out, customer data projects have a high risk of failure. Often the problem lies in unrealistic expectations, like the ability to support customer engagement (CX) use cases that fall outside marketing’s direct control due to dependence on cloud-based data warehouses.

Such a disconnect makes it much more difficult to align a company’s data strategy with its marketing technology strategy. Gartner recommends using a CDP platform that takes advantage of integration with supporting systems, marketing orchestration, and connection to CX channels.

A simple CDP system enables marketers to execute “dumb” automation that treats all customers equally regardless of the situation. Decisions can be made in three places:

1. Separately for each channel,

by the delivery systems (email, website, mobile app, call center) that manage those channels. It is the least desirable option since it requires great effort to coordinate treatments across channels, and any “smart” automation must be re-created separately for each channel. The CDP only feeds raw data to the channel systems.

2. In a separate, central decision system

that pushes choices out to the channel systems to execute. A central decision system avoids the inefficiencies of channel-based decision systems. Although, it does require connecting the decision system to the CDP. While CDPs are designed to allow such connections, there’s still considerable work involved to make them happen. There are likely limitations to how quickly and thoroughly the CDP data becomes available.

3. In the CDP itself,

avoiding the need for separate integration. This is much more efficient than the two previous scenarios. However, it only makes sense if the CDP has “brainpower” and provides a powerful decision capability. Otherwise, the system will only be an efficient way to deliver dumb automation.

The “brain” elevates CDP from “dumb” automation to “smart” automation. The brain connects to all channels to incorporate the available, meaningful data. A CDP with a brain creates more harmonized journeys for a marketer’s customers. All decisions are made at the central point – the brain – creating robust interactivity between the different options.

To obtain optimal value from a CDP, centralized decisioning is far superior to separate/siloed decision engines operating in each delivery system.

While a decision engine embedded in the CDP is often the right choice for many, marketers should examine their company’s situation, analyzing the costs of integrating an existing system versus switching to a new one. Working with a trusted CDP partner who can advise on the advantages and disadvantages of each type of solution will help ensure a marketer has an intelligent CDP system that empowers the marketer to “unravel ev’ry riddle for my Individdle, In trouble or in pain,” – or exceed customer expectations.

Optimizing a CDP does not take a wizard – it takes brainpower.

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