TechBytes with George Corugedo, CTO and Co-Founder at RedPoint

Could you tell us about your role and the team/technology you handle at RedPoint Global?

As one of the Founders of RedPoint Global and the Chief Technology Officer, I have the opportunity to help materialize a vision of empowering marketers with a technology platform that defragments the world they work in.

Every day marketers are mired in the logistical challenges of mastering data, deriving insights and precise execution. These are simple ideas in theory but hard to achieve in a world where every vendor wants to control your data. RedPoint brings control back into the hands of the user by creating a single point of operational control for all channels, data, content, rules, and processes.

We hear a lot about the exciting opportunities in Data Science, but what data-related challenges do you deal with at RedPoint Global?

We’re tasked with ensuring that all data – from various sources and in various forms – is available to the organization in a shape and timeframe that’s needed to drive best customer engagement. Delivering the right data and insights requires comprehensive, automated and scalable data-management capabilities.

Additionally, we’re challenged with streamlining the processing of Big Data at scale to ensure timely data availability with near-zero latency. We leverage Machine Learning to make a more effective offer and message decisions that help us to keep pace with today’s always-on customer.

What makes RedPoint Global different from other Marketing and Sales tech companies?

Technology works as advertised and people deliver as advertise. That is a rarity today.

We offer brands a single point of control over the three key areas that impact customer engagement: data, decisions, and interactions. This allows anyone in an organization – regardless of where they sit – to access customer data, gather insights from the data and then orchestrate the next step. As a result, brands have a “Golden Record” of customer identities and can use that to inform interactions.

We’re also committed to an open garden approach – one that allows brands to harness the best-of-breed technologies they prefer without being locked in to one vendor for all their needs. For customers, this means less disjointed experiences. For brands, it allows for seamless integration of their entire Marketing Technology stack, providing a holistic – rather than segmented – view of all data and interactions.

Lastly, our speed to value is unmatched by any other customer engagement tool available today. In fact, we’ve been referred to by customers as their “#1 revenue-driving application.” This is because RedPoint solutions are implemented quickly and provide business value immediately, allowing brands to rise above urgent customer needs.

Salesforce, Adobe, and Oracle have announced CDPs in the past few months – what do you think of this growth and how does RedPoint differentiate?

Customer Data Platforms have gained significant momentum over the last few years ever since the emergence of an official category in 2013. Due to the explosion of data across touchpoints, brands need a way to manage it all and put it to use in a way that improves the customer experience.

There is confusion in the CDP market, which has been made worse by Marketing Clouds claiming to also have a CDP offering or strategy – walking back their initial positions. While many tech vendors offer aspects of a CDP, they don’t provide a full solution. CRM, DMP and tag management vendors are just a few of those making CDP claims that don’t truly provide the full capabilities. DMPs specifically can take up to 24 hours to update, so cannot gather data in real-time. This results in brands that are looking for a unified data standard with real-time capabilities not getting what they need. The devil is always in the details. If you don’t want to get duped, ask lots of questions and make sure you understand how it be solution will deliver your requirements.

RedPoint was architected to be a CDP with real-time, advanced data management capabilities. Based on an open garden architecture, it has been engineered as a native CDP from the beginning. CDPs are much more than databases – and should be able to provide a single point of real-time control over customer data (both batch and streaming), by unifying all types and sources, including first-, second-, and third-party data.

I’m happy to say that RedPoint’s CDP is ranked first for operational and transactional data quality as well as for data integration, according to Gartner’s Critical Capabilities for Data Quality Tools report. How many CDP’s can claim that? Answer: none

Which industries and markets have been the fastest and most agile to adopt your technologies?

We transform how brands deliver customer experiences, an overarching objective that spans categories, industries, and markets. Success is primarily driven by the markets ambition and audacity.

However, the retail sector (eCommerce, grocery, direct to consumer, etc.) is one that arguably has the direst need to improve the customer experience. Shopper expectations are growing by the day – each stellar retail experience sets the bar for the next brand the consumer interacts with. Customers expect brands to know and engage with them in meaningful, frictionless ways in real-time across any touchpoint they use. While certainly a tall order, we’re proud to help retailers drive these personalized engagements across the enterprise to increase revenue, profit, and lifetime value.

Another industry that has been fast to adopt is healthcare. We allow healthcare payers to take control of all member data – across consumer, clinical and claims sources – to deliver unique member experiences that increase engagement and improve performance metrics.

Looking ahead, travel and finance are two industries that we’re seeing express demand for customer engagement solutions.

Do you see Data Science becoming the core of all MarTech and SalesTech companies? How can product and innovation teams work with the Data Science team to make these products better suited to market demands?

Yes, I do see Data Science becoming the core of Marketing tech and Sales tech companies. Data Scientists do so much more today than just build models and provide reports. It’s become essential that they understand the importance of customer experience and can act as storytellers, translating data into insight that marketers can use to deliver a superior customer experience.

Simply put, Data Scientists have a big role to play in the end-user experience. They must work with marketers and product teams to create a single point of control over data and interactions – one that provides a holistic customer view and connects data from across sources: batch and streaming, internal and external, structured and unstructured, transactional and demographic.

This collaboration allows for all facets of an organization to develop a deep understanding of the customer and deploy the models and personalization strategies that have maximum impact.