Nearly a decade ago, advances in digital transformation and big data put achieving a 360-degree view of the customer on the roadmap for many organizations. Along the way, many companies focused their efforts on the experience layer, hoping to keep up with industry disruptors like Amazon and Apple, which have consistently raised consumers' expectations for what makes a great experience. As companies try to catch up, many miss the critical component behind this success; excellent customer data management.

In this newsletter, Tealium features the Gartner report, Market Guide for Customer Data Platforms for Marketing. We aim to identify obstacles caused by fragmented customer data silos & establish how CDPs can help data & analytical professionals at enterprise companies improve their first party data management. The recommendations come as the result of a yearlong study, in which Gartner analysts surveyed more than 400 martech end users and technology vendors, and collaborated with high-tier industry publications & reports for secondary research. Consequently, they offer comprehensive insight into CDPs available from a variety of vendors, and factors to consider when evaluating implementation.

To stay competitive in an increasingly digital world, businesses must become masters of data. By 2020, more than seven billion people and companies, and at least 35 billion devices, will be wired to the web. Success now depends on not only keeping up with fast-paced digital innovation, but also harnessing the continual data explosion it creates; and this will mean a sizable shift in the way companies handle their insights.

In this new report, Gartner identifies the challenges digitization presents for organizations, and how professionals such as CIOs can harness its key drivers; focusing on six core strategic planning areas. This research provides a multi-regional, cross-industry view of the approaches and tools that will be critical for organizations to not only survive, but thrive.

With the growing importance of customer insights in organizations, the role of analytics to extract insight from customer data and embed it back into organizational processes is at the forefront of business transformation. This increased profile has elevated the customer insights role from data geeks feeding the marketing funnel to critical change agents and strategic business partners. It has also made it crucial for companies to have a coherent and consistently executed customer data strategy. In order to seize the opportunity presented by this shift in data’s role, companies must plot a deliberate strategic course — beginning with a clear-eyed assessment of their current capabilities and needs.

In late 2018, Tealium commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate the state of customer data strategies today. We found that very few companies can claim to have mastered customer data today, but those who achieve the highest levels of maturity enjoy significant benefits and support for their business initiatives.