In the webinar Actionable Data behind Digital Transformation, we discuss the benefits of both Master Data Management systems and Customer Data Platforms.
In the first blog series, which included some real world examples of MDM and CDP working together to form the best customer experience, we covered concepts like digital transformation and the experience economy. We broke down digital transformation into bite-sized parts, including how transformation may benefit digital experiences, digital operations, and digital innovations.
In the second part, we covered some notable considerations for technology. These considerations included customer data, who needs access to a company’s data platform, use cases, personalization, and the data and/or IT maturity of that company.
In this final section, we include some final thoughts on actionable data behind digital transformation, and compare MDM systems and CDPs even further.
System Ownership
It is important to think about system ownership. MDM is traditionally owned by a data and/or IT team, but consider some of the following ways you can treat data as an asset within your organization:
- Accurate data for Analytics & Reporting
- Streamline processes and collaboration across Data Stewards
- Provide on-demand access to trusted data within systems and teams
While, IT, data architects, and others who work with data governance, will be the day to day owners and users of your MDM system, transforming your business with data requires even further distribution of information across your organization.
When it comes to CDPs, marketing teams generally drive day to day usage of these tools. Daily hands-on-keyboard owners may be marketing technologists or audience managers inside your company.
Implementing a CDP may require collaboration initially between marketing and IT teams to provide access to source systems, but ensuring you have accurate and cleansed data flowing into your CDP can become a chore for your IT team if the appropriate infrastructure hasn’t been put in place first.
To sum up, if your company’s goal is to have a strong, robust understanding of its customers, and you hope to have this data available to any number of systems in real time, an MDM is probably your best option.
On the other hand, if your company needs to have customer data at your marketing team’s fingertips, and you need that data to be easily grouped into segments and/or power experiences, consider a CDP instead of an MDM. This will benefit the company when time-sensitive situations arise, where marketers need customer data soon to take advantage of a certain marketing campaign.
Thankfully, having two entirely different systems and platforms to choose from, with defined boundaries to what they can and cannot do, can help you consider what is best for your company and if you would like them to work together.
Building Into Your Ecosystem
Another important consideration when choosing between MDM and CDP is building the chosen system into your company’s current ecosystem. Think about where your customer data is coming from, and where your customer data needs to go.
Above all, the goal here is to ensure that both your MDM and CDP are compatible with your existing architecture. Look into open APIs that you may build on, integration frameworks, different data models, and the compatibility of each element.
And, dive deeply into any pre-configured integrations within your CDP vendor. One of the best features of CDPs are these added features and connectors that build the bridge between the marketer and the customer, like point-to-point solutions between the CDP and their email tools and ad networks. Before choosing a CDP, make sure you understand what each one offers, and consider which one would be the most effective in your business, instead of assuming that each one will fit your goals the way you hope.
Note: while CDPs and effective marketing content go hand-in-hand, many CDPs only dabble in content management systems. There isn’t an all-in-one solution in this space yet.
Reltio and CDP Integration
Now, let's take one final comprehensive look at Reltio MDM and CDP integration. First, Reltio is a cloud-based master data management system. Reltio uses standardization, cleansing, deduping, segmentation, consent, GDPR, audits, history, and lineage to manage thousands of pieces of data. This data can include consumer identification, location, organizations, products, relationships, and interactions.
Data then travels in and out of data lakes and/or warehouses and back to Reltio, or to your CDP for segmentation and activation. Once in the CDP provider, data can be executed into marketing campaigns and personalization efforts.
It’s important to note that without the use of an MDM for matching and merging your data, before it reaches your CDP and your campaigns, you may not have the most succinct and accurate data available. Use an MDM to first match and merge to get a much more accurate view of your consumer.
The ultimate goal is to have data flowing through a perfectly integrated system of MDM and CDP working together, hopefully leading to a closed feedback loop from those systems.
MDM’s Advantage Over a CDP-Only Tool
There are many advantages that Reltio has over a tool that is CDP exclusive. The first advantage is that it is the leading multi-domain enterprise data platform. This means that you will not only have the ability to master customer records, but also accounts, physical locations, employees, products, and more. Alternatively, CDPs are usually completely customer focused.
Having an MDM like Reltio will provide an enterprise-wide source of truth to help drive important decision making outside what only customer data can tell you. It will also give context to all users, beyond your marketing team. It does this by delivering role-based, consumer grade applications for all business users. Finally, Reltio moves at the speed of your business, and is configurable in real-time.
Reltio and CDP: Better Together
With Reltio, you will be able to feed excellent customer records into the CDP of your choosing. Thus, you will get a customer data record that is very accurate. You will also have persistent unique identifiers, and be able to progressively stitch updates.
You will also be able to store thin-anonymous records into your CDP, and leverage MDM as a source when merge activities occur. Then, you will gain a deep understanding of all of your interactions across all of your systems.
So, what is best for your company? Could it benefit from just Reltio MDM? Perhaps it will be best complemented by the use of both Reltio and an effective CDP. Take all of these considerations into account before choosing, and begin to digitally transform your company into today’s data driven world.
For more information, or to ask a question, visit the Reltio Community. And, keep an eye out for more informational webinars, blogs, and discussions.
Make sure to check out the webinar I did around Actionable Data behind Digital Transformation: A Discussion on MDM and CDP