If you want to offer better security for customer data, build CDP into your data warehouse

Every day, businesses of all types are generating an enormous amount of data from many different sources. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems, enterprise resource management (ERM) systems, social media, you name it and insight can be derived if you know where to look.

But at the same time, that data needs somewhere to “live.” It needs to exist in a centralized location so that it can be useful to everyone within an organization. Not only that, but it needs to make sure that data silos are a thing of the past – that employees can communicate and collaborate with one another in a way that furthers the unique and satisfying customer experience that you’re trying to offer.

That is largely what a data warehouse is all about.

A data warehouse is a specific type of information management system that is built to support organizations as they work towards accomplishing their long-term strategic goals. However, the information contained within that system needs to be protected at all costs – especially given the increasingly dangerous digital world that we’re all living in.

To accomplish this, some organizations turn to a CDP or “customer data platform.” For the best results, these two concepts need to be married together. Getting to this point isn’t necessarily difficult, but it does require you to keep a few key things in mind.

Bringing the CDP and data warehouse together

At its core, a customer data platform is a collection of software-based tools that are intended to create a consistent, single view of customer data that is both comprehensive and accessible to all other systems. Indeed, this is a big part of what will help empower communication and collaboration across an enterprise.

Data in a CDP is retrieved from a multitude of different sources, including but not limited to the aforementioned ERP and CRM platforms above. At that point, everyone has access to the same information at the same time – making it easy for people to serve any customer, regardless of who they happen to be or who they interacted with in the past.

For the very best results, the concept behind the CDP should be baked into the very DNA of your data warehouse at the time of creation. This is true for a few different reasons.

For starters, this helps tremendously when it comes to data ingestion – arguably one of the most crucial elements of both systems. Many CDPs get to this point by way of an API that is intended to work with a lot of the various systems that you’re already using. Therefore, as soon as customer information is brought into the CDP, it is stored in the data warehouse as well.

The advantages of a CDP

CDPs also bring with them a number of other helpful functions, too – with identity resolution being chief among them. This is another one of the big ways that this process will help manage data security. All user profiles are essentially mapped back to a particular user identity, be it by way of the device they’re using, a cooking that was installed on their computer or other elements. That way, you always know exactly who was doing what at which particular moment in time. If any data was accessed without authorization, or if changes were made that shouldn’t have been, it becomes easier to figure out who took the action you’re examining and what, if anything, you need to do about it.

Finally, many CDPs have what is called an audience builder – something that allows you to take those massive volumes of data that are being created and extract as much insight and value from it as possible.

Think about it like this: data is usually separated into two types, structured and unstructured. Structured data is that which already “makes sense” for lack of a better term in that it exists in some type of formatted database, where unstructured data needs further analysis in order to be useful.

An audience builder helps with a general understanding of both types of data, allowing organizational leaders to get access to the insight they need as quickly as possible regardless of where those data sources exist.

In the end, all of these benefits are in the name of perhaps the most important quality of all: security. Time has shown that customers are more than willing to give over their data, which of course allows you to serve them better both by way of your products and services and in terms of the experience you can offer. But if you don’t protect that data, they will leave and head right into the arms of a competitor. Building CDP into your data warehouse helps to make sure that isn’t going to happen.

Customer data security: Simple with Lytics

If you’d like to find out more information about why you should build a CDP into your data warehouse, or to get answers to any more specific questions you might have, please don’t hesitate to contact us today.