There have been a number of recent announcements about new ways to link customer data tools and move data around between them: solutions for connecting your CDP to a data warehouse; new evolutions of “customer experience platforms;” adding a real-time layer to CRM.
We notice that none of these solutions address the fundamental problem of getting the data into a workable state in the first place. They all point to an enterprise data warehouse and assume that the data in it is already sorted out, which unfortunately is all too often not the case.
Getting value from customer data does involve moving it around smoothly between tools, and it does involve generating intelligence on it, but first and foremost you need the data to be in a condition where you can make sense of it.
That means unifying and stitching data from all the different systems that touch the customer, so that the profiles you’re analyzing and activating are accurate and up to date, reflecting both a full customer history and also any recent interactions. This is often called a unified view of the customer, or a customer 360, and it’s the prerequisite for successfully putting customer data to work.
Without that critical first step there are all sorts of downstream headaches: clunky personalization, ineffective ad targeting, unnecessary onboarding costs, duplicate marketing, and inaccurate pictures of business health, among many others. It’s that old familiar problem of garbage in, garbage out, still rearing its ugly head in the era of the modern data stack.
You don't want garbage in your pipes. Of course these solutions can provide great value, as long as they're fed with trustworthy, unified data that can power the whole stack. But when vendors push the responsibility back on the user for figuring out where that high quality input comes from, it’s the SaaS equivalent of “batteries not included” — you buy the thing, but it doesn’t work unless you go buy something else.
At Amperity, we believe that you need to account for the whole supply chain of customer data, from stitching it all together, to learning from it, to putting it into action. This can happen all in one toolset, or by using multiple tools together, which is why we have connections and partnerships with so many of the leading tech solutions out there, including organizations involved in these new announcements.
When evaluating any of these new solutions, first ask: What’s the input? What is the state of the data going into it?
Because no matter what elements you have in your stack, if you don’t solve the foundational challenge of unifying the data, it won’t matter much what other tools you’re using — it’s like having fancy remodeled kitchen sink fixtures that only run murky water.
Learn how Amperity solves the problem of building a unified customer view and getting data into a workable state to power the whole stack.