How connecting your customer data drives powerful analytics and insights

The data challenge has become increasingly difficult right now with the continuous expansion of data sources, events and data points. Many companies are struggling to make sense of this information in a meaningful way while realizing that the customer experience is the new battleground.

76% of customers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations in real-time.

This only underscores the fact that the stakes are high and many companies are launching analytics initiatives without understanding how to interpret and analyze their data.

So how do they start learning this so they can better understand what their data is telling them?

Customer and engagement data is more than simply connecting the silos as any given transaction or event can often span several disparate applications collecting data at varying degrees of granularity. Each data point is a valuable insight for companies and determining which silos to connect is usually a conversation limited to individual lines of business attempting to solve a point to point problem. 

Connecting the data to seize opportunities is critical and the focal point of the conversation needs to be the customer, not the internal business challenge or metric in order to provide a more comprehensive analytics and insight opportunity for the business. 

We’re seeing that it’s putting many clients into the role of data management and that is exposing several new concerns and challenges. A recent study highlighted that the top three addressable areas for a CDP initiative are adhering to data privacy and collection standards, driving analytics and predictive insights for competitive advantage, and leveraging data-collection and a CDP to grow and acquire new customers. Add in the demands from the consumer to make this real time and a customer needs to be in the position of managing the collection, organization, and activation of customer data in real-time which is a pretty daunting task.

In order to improve the customer experience we need to collectively understand what a complete view of a customer is. The answer is the “right” customer  which is typically a blend of several systems including sensitive, omni-channel, customer level data, along with anonymous data. 

The immaturity curve of the analytics capability also sits with the requirements and latency from an organization and the ability to connect two sources to drive meaningful interaction. Achieving real-time, data driven analytics requires a combination of several key elements including client-side and server-side raw data along with audience and enrich data. This access allows the data supply chain to pull data from various sources, hence standardizing, transforming and enriching, integrating, and activating this to provide the real time experience customers demand.

The orchestration of customer data from end-to-end in real time is the playing field that will differentiate the winners from the losers in today’s digital economy.

Creating trust to drive impactful insights in real time is critical and knowing your industry and meaningful metrics is a step that any analytics initiative should take into consideration. In combination we need to understand the trends globally as CDP initiatives are growing at a accelerated rate and the market for customer data platforms is expected to grow from $2B to over $10B in the next four years.

With the impeding events of third-party cookie loss and the emergence of conversions APIs it is clear that clients will have to better understand how to build a first-party data core to better market to their clients needs. Any analytics professional embarking on a project or program should take into consideration the key business metrics that will be measured as a gauge to success of the insights that come from the initiative. 

Better data, better alignment with teams, and a better understanding of the business outcomes will help make your data a way to gain insight into opportunities for your business to scale.

Real time is a new ability that clients need to embrace in a secure, adaptive, and future-proof way to allow you to become the hero in your organization.