In our recent Future of Customer Data report, we surveyed 1,200 business professionals across various levels of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) maturity. We’ve rolled up a snapshot of the results in this blog. Here, we’ll cover CDP ownership, and the best team sizes and stakeholders to ensure CDP success! 

Which Department Traditionally Owns A Customer Data Platform (CDP)?

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) have long been spearheaded by IT departments, with their expertise in data management and infrastructure making them natural leaders in implementation and maintenance. According to the Future of Customer Data report, this trend will persist in 2025, as IT continues to play a dominant role in CDP ownership. However, as organizations mature in their CDP adoption, marketing teams are taking on a larger role, with their management of CDPs rising from 12% to 22% over the past year. This shift suggests CDPs are becoming more integral to customer engagement strategies across departments.

Which Team Sizes Work Best For A CDP?

Larger teams are often associated with more established and enduring CDP initiatives. The report highlights that 68% of organizations with CDP programs running for over four years have teams of 10 or more people dedicated to managing the platform. This expansion reflects the growing complexity of CDP use cases, requiring contributions from multiple disciplines, including IT, marketing, analytics, and customer success. As CDPs become more embedded in an organization’s infrastructure, cross-functional collaboration emerges as a key driver of success.

The increasing integration of CDPs across various teams underscores their strategic importance in business operations. IT, marketing, and customer success departments are the primary users of CDPs, but sales, product, data science, and business intelligence teams are also leveraging the platform more frequently. With steady year-over-year growth in adoption across these functions, CDPs are transitioning from a specialized tool to a fundamental component of customer engagement and business intelligence strategies.

As organizations deepen their investment in CDPs, data quality becomes a critical focus. Early-stage CDP teams prioritize implementation, but as their experience with the platform matures, ensuring high-quality, reliable data becomes the foremost concern. This evolution aligns with the increasing sophistication of CDP applications, demonstrating that as team sizes grow and cross-functional usage expands, so too does the need for refined data management practices. Ultimately, the synergy between team size and CDP maturity highlights the platform’s evolving role in driving business value through high-quality customer data.