A strategy that works for a business today won’t necessarily continue to work well tomorrow. Market conditions change, new opportunities arise, and technology shifts. If your enterprise doesn’t respond well to these changes, your business could be in trouble. That’s why business agility and adaptability are fundamental to success.
But how can you make the right business decisions when key factors can change instantly? You need the most up-to-date information possible at your fingertips to do that. You need to know exactly what’s happening in your business environment at all times. You need a real-time CDP.
What is a Real-Time CDP?
A customer data platform (CDP) is a software tool that creates a unified, centralized database of all your first-party customer data. The customer data platform collects data from all your various data sources, like your website, customer service portal, and CRM, and brings it together in one place.
A real-time customer data platform does all that without any delays. In real time, this type of customer data platform aggregates your data from all your data sources and makes it available to you. These CDPs allow you to make business decisions based on current, accurate data. That way, you don’t have to worry about basing decisions on outdated information. You’ll be able to react to changes in your business environment right away.
Is Real-Time CDP Different from Traditional?
You may wonder whether there is any meaningful distinction between a traditional customer data platform and a real-time customer data platform. Though it seems small initially, the difference between a traditional customer data platform and a real-time CDP can significantly affect your business.
Many CDPs operate with at least a small delay. For example, if you tried to look at customer data in a traditional CDP right now, it wouldn’t show purchases customers made a second ago.
Some of the time, that discrepancy between the data you see in your customer data platform and the accurate, up-to-date data is insignificant. However, there will be other times when not having the current data will lead you in the wrong direction. If you want to be able to count on your customer data platform for complete to-the-second accuracy, a real-time CDP is the best option.
Unlike traditional customer data platforms, real-time customer data platforms allow for data streaming and analysis without delay. Your real-time CDP will show the most current, accurate data from your data sources. You’ll never have to wonder whether you’re looking at the best data to base your decisions on. That’s what a real-time customer data platform offers.
How Real-Time CDP Helps Businesses Remain Agile in Uncertain Times
A real-time customer data platform is the ideal tool to help your enterprise remain agile in these uncertain times. Here are some of the key ways that real-time CDPs enhance business agility:
See the Whole Picture
Business agility is all about being responsive and adapting to changes in your environment. You can’t do that unless you can see the whole picture of what’s going on in that business environment.
Consider all the sources of customer data that your company uses. In most cases, businesses have many different data sources that come together to form all the information they have about their customers. By bringing all that data into one centralized location, the CDP allows you to pull back and see exactly what’s happening. Your business will be much more agile and adaptable when you have all the information you need right in one place.
Eliminate Data Silos
Data silos occur when access to a relevant data set is limited to one department or business area. Take your customer support data, for instance. Your support team likely has easy access to this data, but do people in other departments, like sales or marketing, have convenient access to the information, too? If not, you’re dealing with data silos.
Beyond being frustrating, data silos also slow your business down. They prevent your team from reacting to changes in your business environment as soon as possible. Luckily, real-time customer data platforms eliminate these costly data silos for your customer data. Instead of separate, isolated data sets, you’ll have one unified customer data set in your CDP.
Get Notifications about Relevant Events
Some customer data platforms include the option to set up alerts. For example, you may want to know right away if something significant changes in your sales data. Rather than assigning someone to watch that data all the time, you can simply tell your CDP to alert you right away if those changes occur.
With real-time notifications from your customer data platform, you’ll never miss crucial changes in your business environment. You’ll know what’s happening immediately and be able to begin developing your response. Alerts can save you time and offer peace of mind.
Utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning
Even with alerts, teams of people can only make decisions so quickly. It takes time to sort through the relevant data and formulate the best response to changes. That’s where AI and machine learning can help. Many customer data platforms include AI features to help your team find patterns and make decisions faster. Take advantage of these features to become even more agile and adaptable.
Don’t let your Enterprise get left behind
In these quickly changing markets, businesses that can’t respond quickly and adapt will get left in the dust. Business leaders and their teams need up-to-date data to use in their decision-making process. After all, if you don’t know exactly what’s happening in your business environment right now, how can you respond appropriately?
Use a real-time CDP to ensure you always operate with reliable, up-to-date information. You’ll know immediately when things change in your business environment, so you can take action immediately. The current data in your customer data platform will help lead to the best decisions in your situation.
See Live Earth — a real-time data streaming and analysis platform — in action by scheduling a demo today.