CDP Institute

Japanese tech giant Fujitsu has announced a technology-plus-consulting offering to support real time marketing through data integration. The “eXperience Data Platform” (XDP) is built around the Tealium customer data platform, which ingests data from Web, CRM, call center, inventory, and other systems; consolidates and loads it into a customer database; and makes the information available for analysis and marketing programs across all channels. For the moment, it’s available only in Japan.

Reflecting its focus on complete customer view, Customer Data Platform provider AscentCRM has reinvented itself as Ascent360. The three year old firm delivers integrated customer data, marketing analytics, and strategy for more than 100 brands in the outdoor, resort, and sporting retail industries.

Customer Data Platform mParticle was one of handful of audience providers selected for a new partner program announced by Pinterest. The arrangement makes it easy for clients to upload audiences to Pinterest to target and to find similar audiences. Other vendors in the program are Epsilon, Experian, Krux (Salesforce), LiveRamp (Acxiom), and Neustar. mPartner is specializes in combining mobile and other data within its CDP.

This post takes a close look at ActionIQ, a Customer Data Platform with deep roots in big data.  The system loads source data in its original file structure.  Users can then define derived variables to create their preferred view of the data and see the results in seconds.  We could tell you how it’s done but then we’d have to…well, you know.

Couchbase, one of the leading NoSQL databases, announced new capabilities including full text search and real time analytics. NoSQL databases are the foundation of many CDPs because they are much easier to work with than standard relational databases, especially when it comes to adding new data sources.

In case you’re wondering why we need all those fancy analytics and database technologies, here’s one reason: to use the new streams of customer data gathered by beacons and other sensors.

CallidusCloud, which offers sales support and enablement applications, acquired Datahug Limited, a SaaS predictive forecasting and sales analytics company. Datahug’s specialty is predictive analysis of sales pipelines but it will be the core of a new Predictive Analytics, AI and Machine Learning innovation center that will presumably develop other applications in the future.

Tableau announced plans to become a complete data platform, extending backwards from its data visualization interface to data preparation tools, a high-scale in-memory database, natural language queries, and machine learning-based recommendations. Customer data is just one part of the picture but surely an important one.

Customer support giant Zendesk has relaunched itself as a collection of products including a customer data collector called Connect, which will unify customer interactions from all systems and make them available for segmentation, analysis, and campaigns. This isn’t quite as unprecedented as it might sound: customer success firms like Gainsight have built unified databases for years. But it’s definitely another contender hoping to be the center of your customer data universe.

Everybody wants to get in on the act.

Customer Data Platform vendor Treasure Data announced a $25 million funding round, bringing its total investment to $54 million. The four year old firm has recently extended its focus beyond data integration for analytics to include data integration for customer management. It has over 200 clients.

Austria-based B2C marketing cloud Emarsys has raised $22.3 million to expand R&D and fuel growth. The round is the 16-year-old company’s second, following a $33 million raise in September 2015. Emarsys has roots in email marketing but now builds a unified customer profile to supports mobile, SMS, Web personalization, and advertising with a heavy dose of machine intelligence along the way. The company has more than 1,500 clients, mostly outside the U.S.