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Customer data platform


A customer data platform (CDP) is a type of software application that provides a unified platform for customer information so it can be collected, viewed or accessed by other systems.
A CDP unifies customer information in a central location so that it is accessible to marketing, sales, customer support and finance teams. It combines customer data from internal and external sources in a variety of formats, including structured and unstructured data, to create a single profile for each customer.

Unlike a data warehouse that is developed and managed by an internal IT team, a CDP is packaged software or software as a service (SaaS) that is sold by a vendor. Because a CDP is commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software, it is quicker to implement than an internally-sourced, custom development project.

In addition to being able to handle queries like a regular database, CDP software can also include tools for data management and operations, along with ancillary features, such as analytics and reporting. Some CDP products include artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) components in their feature sets.

The term "customer data platform" was coined by marketing technology (martech) consultant, David Raab, in 2013. In a blog post, Raab defines customer data platform as any system that can gather customer data from multiple sources, identify when data is related to the same customer, perform predictive analytics using the database and use the results to make informative decisions surrounding marketing campaigns.

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