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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