Glossary · Digital Transformation
What is a CDP (customer data platform)?
Short answer
A CDP (customer data platform) is software that collects customer data from every channel, including website, apps, CRM, e-commerce and support, and merges it into one persistent profile per customer. Marketing, sales and service tools can then use those unified profiles for segmentation, personalisation and analytics. Segment, Salesforce Data Cloud and Adobe Real-Time CDP are examples.
What a CDP does
- Collect: ingest events and records from websites, apps, point of sale, CRM and support tools.
- Unify: resolve identities, recognising that an email signup, a mobile login and a store purchase are the same person, and build one profile.
- Activate: send segments and attributes to email, advertising, personalisation and analytics tools.
CDP, CRM or data warehouse?
- A CRM manages relationships and sales activity, mostly entered by people.
- A data warehouse stores everything for analysis, but isn’t built for real-time activation.
- A CDP sits between them: automated, behavioural, real-time customer profiles ready for use. “Composable” CDPs now build directly on top of the warehouse instead of copying data into a separate system.
Before you buy one
Define the use cases first, such as abandoned-cart flows or churn alerts, check data quality and consent records, and plan identity resolution rules. Most failed CDP projects are data and process problems, not tool problems.
