welcome to season four of the agile
brand with Greg kilstrom where we
discuss business agility through
customer experience employee experience
and digital transformation I'm your host
Greg kellstrom vaginal World podcast is
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my name is Greg kilstrom and I'm the
host of the agile Brown podcast today
we're going to talk about the future of
cdps and how composable customer data
platforms point away to how Brands can
utilize their data in a flexible and
sustainable manner action IQ recently
put out the Enterprise guide to
composable cdps which helps shed some
light on this topic to help me discuss
this in more depth I'd like to welcome
Florian DelVal director technical
product marketing manager at action IQ
Florian welcome to the show yeah thanks
for providing me today glad to be here
yeah looking forward to talking about
this topic with you but why don't we
start by you telling us a little bit
about your role at action IQ yeah sure I
can't tell you about I guess me on my
own so I
I've spent most of my career in the
customer experience space with three
very different roles in each company I
joined and I have to admit that when I
started I don't really even know what
customer experience meant but I was a
software engineer in the text messaging
space uh and I I knew I didn't want to
stay too long behind monitors coding uh
so I finally switched to a customer
facing role on spent a few years
architecting deploying cross-channel
marketing platforms for organizations
uh on it's it's just recently that
actually free transition from the I.T
side to the business side by becoming a
product marketer at action at you my
role involves very different activities
and it's it's always exciting but I
would say I have very pretty much two
main focuses uh it's education uh on
seeking new opportunities
because you certainly know we operate in
a very complex space the CDP space and
even if you think about marketing
Technologies it's even broader with so
many vendors yeah
on this second part seeking
opportunities because there are always
love finding new places where our
product can make a difference on solved
organization space
yeah great great well um so we're gonna
start here by talking about composable
cdps and I'm gonna include a link to an
article you recently wrote It's actually
how I
um how we met I read your article and
reached out and and wanted to talk some
more so uh you wrote an article for the
action IQ blog I'll put that in the show
notes for some more background but um
first for those less familiar with the
term
um how would you describe what
composable means yeah it's a great
question to get things started first for
the audience that might be familiar with
cdps but just in case CDP stands for
customer data platform on their
different definitions but if I want to
be no track here I guess I could use a
big definition from CDP Institute which
defines cdps as package software that
creates a persistent unified customer
database which is accessible to a
resistance
I'll know that you know about cdps we
can certainly talk about that notion of
compostable on on Here Gardner is
defending that idea of composable
Technologies as
digital asset
asset can deliver independent Care on
complete business value it's it's quite
mouthful so maybe I'll try to translate
that a little bit
um yeah
um uh I like to use food energy I don't
know if grade your foodie a little bit a
little bit um not as much as others but
but
okay sounds good uh what do you think
about fixed menus like testing menus
um you know so I'm a vegetarian so it's
um it's sometimes a bit challenging but
yeah
yeah for sure so you see instead of
paying for a fixed menu where you get
exactly what the restaurant wants to
serve you the idea of composable means
that you you can pick and choose your
meal yourself for that menu so you're
not forced into at this even you
um and so Garner estimates that you know
within the next three years 60 of
organizations will invest in composable
Enterprise technology so it's it's not a
small shift it's actually a pretty big
key function
um and the other thing I would add is
pre-packaged cdps were created at a time
where the majority of data warehouse is
we're still on premise and they're meant
to support analytics workloads not
customer experience workloads but that
that part is is not true anymore so if
compostable cdps you can complement your
existing Investments without being
forced in duplication within your stack
yeah yeah and that um the the number
that you uh definitely have seen similar
things about the growth of of composable
and just the the investments in it and
you know this certainly presents an
interesting alternative to those you
know all in one
whether it's an all-in-one Cloud
platform or just you know some of these
very large systems that try to do
um a little bit of everything to you
know sometimes to varying successes and
even to some of the other I think
there's about there's over 160 cdps or
at least platforms calling themselves
cdps out there on the market uh what are
some of the challenges that
non-technical marketers face that a
composable CDP might help them solve
yeah so on on your first comment on the
um Alternatives yeah it's definitely
alternative to like all-in-one marketing
Cloud such as Adobe Salesforce on the
traditional pre-packaged cdps on the
market uh vegetable doors they're
usually requiring you to buy everything
instead of what you need so imagine for
example you have uh you have to pay for
a free course meal when you already had
an appetizer earlier or maybe you have a
different place in mind for desserts
on another challenge is being forced
into copying data from your source of
Truth uh into this business applications
we can chat about this uh later but I
really see a future where there will be
less copies on a lot more control access
on that data yeah yeah and going back to
your your question on on non-technical
marketers I find it fascinating because
I see composability as an opportunity to
give a choice for it but I don't think
you should take I mean take a step back
from helping business I've seen some
vendors who you know are suggesting to
unbonder the CDP but what it means is
providing a SQL interface but on not
following business users to to leverage
that like we know that business users
are not SQL experts right right yeah so
so I guess my point here is you want to
give optionality but you don't know to
do that at the cost of the experience on
operations or business users yeah yeah
makes sense and so how about
um in addition to the the non-technical
what about the those technicals so those
those engineering and I.T professionals
how does composable CDP help them and
the work that they're often asked to do
to support a marketing team or CX team
yeah so taking a step back when we look
at the situation it spends Millions to
centralize data in modern cloud data
Lakes so snowflake data breaks bigquery
just to name a few
on the last thing that it wants is to be
forced to duplicate that data into every
business application and that's that's
pretty much the way it works today
um
you you don't want that that investment
that centralization to be to be thrown
away by immediately bringing back the
silos by duplicating data into some
single delivery Channel tools like an
email provider an SMS provider Etc like
a way again trying to translate this is
imagine you're creating a perfect meal
like with a balance of flavors but
somehow when you have visitors at your
restaurants uh they have a small plate
so they can only put some of that meal
you prepared some of us ingredients in
their plate they certainly won't benefit
from what you created initially from
that mix of flavors
uh and then what it means is they won't
be satisfied with their meals so so yeah
um
and you know if I if I keep agree on
that food analysis for another minute
yeah
I'm I'm only not bad today yeah yeah hey
go with it
try to restaurants
um and I is providing the ingredients so
it's we'll say it's the equivalent of
your customer data
and you have appliances which represents
your your business educations here for
marketing to prepare meals on serve them
to customers
if you need a new gas wrench you
shouldn't be forced to also buy a fridge
on biom microwave like you should have
the choice to just take what you need
yeah and yeah on the same way like uh it
needs to have control over these
ingredients if if it's duplicated
everywhere they might forget about fresh
produces which would be in a corner of a
space they would perish or eventually be
used to prepare a meal by by the
marketing team by accident yeah yeah
on on everyone not for you it's it's
really you want to be able to add items
on them on your menu to be able to
expand Revenue opportunities
so really at the end of the day if I try
to summarize like I see composable cdps
as a four-fold benefit it's it's Choice
control agility and Innovation yeah yeah
I love it and yeah I think the the
metaphor helps uh helps definitely helps
helps paint that picture to use a
different metaphor so
nice so for those
um that haven't quite moved in this
direction yet I mean as you as you
mentioned earlier there's a lot of
companies that are moving in this
direction but for those are that are
learning more that are trying to make a
move in this direction what are what are
some of the things that are required in
order to make a move to a more
composable customer data stack yeah
that's that's another great question
um I'm gonna move away from the food
energy for a minute but I'm going to
talk about my home actually
uh I mortgage rents are crazy but I
still went ahead with my home purchase
projects uh also if you want to improve
your home uh unless you have unlimited
time on budgets which which by the way
is not my case
um
a few of us have uh have that luxury
right but yeah exactly so
it was like like me uh we have we have
to split that project into pieces and so
the flooring could be one example of a
case of the project the kitchen could be
another one the bathroom
Etc you get the idea yeah
and so the same goes with starting to
compose your data stack you need first
to identify water with components which
goes into that starch
um also
an example could be to have an identity
component and maybe for some people it
would be even a couple of identity
components one for anonymous profiles
one for non-profiles you will need
another component for John segmentation
one forchestration
and so on so you can Define this this
components and the next step uh I would
recommend is look at which paints you
have in your stack on start look at the
constant operations and start with
whatever would be the lowest effort with
the highest impact yeah yeah and on our
side if if you if you want to be even
more concrete I would say what we're
seeing people start with in general is
this notion of audience segmentation
uh and the reason for that is because
it's really the first step into getting
the data into the end of the business to
turn it into action you know everything
before that when you collect the data uh
and so on it's it's a cost center until
you can put that data into action to
generate Revenue Yeah Yeah well yeah and
so you know kind of you touched on a few
things related to this but to kind of go
a little bit further here and to talk a
little more generally about Innovation
within organizations
um you know Innovation certainly takes
speed it it takes many other things how
can a composable approach help
organizations to innovate more quickly
and effectively yeah so I would say you
know until recently uh making a virtual
proof decision was all about making a
decision that would be definitive uh if
you think about pyramids they're built
to stay you know right like it was
really meant to be studied but no we're
in a very different world they were more
in the legal world yeah yeah right where
you build from blogs on the expectation
is that you should be able to switch
things and so challenges happening uh
and it will continue to happen whether
you like it or not so what you need is
to find technology which allows you
um to apply that Innovation to answer to
change
um on that I can give you an example I'm
sure you've heard about third party
cookies going away at this point yeah
uh yeah I think everybody is familiar
with that uh we've been talking about it
for quite some time but uh guarantees
that your use cases which are used uh
using that that third party cookie
they're not going away
um and so a lot of vendors came up with
uh alternative IDs which they called
cookie less ID and so if I was asking
you right which like which Cookie list
ID would you adopt or how would you go
with choosing one yeah I mean I I don't
know enough about that to make it to
make a decision to be honest yeah yeah I
mean it probably there's there's
certainly there's privacy considerations
there's ease of use of data there's
there's all kinds of ways to to decide I
guess yeah yeah
um you know it's it's really not simple
it's not a simple question on the
realities Browns will choose that they
need the ID which allows them to
advertise where they need on the other
side to be sure we want to adopt the
solution that Brands we choose so it's a
little bit of chicken on the egg thing
but you can't be in that choice
paralysis you really need to pick one on
start testing your list
also the challenge here is to make sure
that you can do that but without being
locked in you want to be able to change
your decision in the future if you need
to
um also again here the takeaway is
adopting a comfortable style for me it's
it's giving your organization the
ability to accelerate organization
Innovation sorry but without having to
worry about making a decision that you
can't judge yeah yeah that's great well
um let's uh switch gears here a little
bit and let's let's talk a little bit
about action IQ
um where where you work
um so you know as we talked about
earlier there's a lot of players that
are not only in the marketing Technology
field I mean you know that's way over 10
000 players in that martech infographic
that's that's so famous in our in our
circles
um but there's also a lot of of
platforms again that either call
themselves cdps or or act as you know as
as full cdps uh what would you say makes
action IQ stand out from the others yeah
for sure so I think first of all um I
would indicate that action IQ was really
beautiful surprise customers
um that should be a first step to narrow
I have the options on the markets uh
yeah
and then I would say that the same way
we're talking during this show about
providing technology for challenge uh
actually like you evolved over time to
answer organization needs so rather than
looking for statue we're Uprising
challenge yourself
so we're not going to to too many
details here we talked about composable
cdps and I think it's a perfect example
actually was built on developed at the
time as we said where data warehouses
couldn't handle the load uh required by
business teams for successes and so
actually developed a purpose-built
infrastructure for this for customer
data
but know that we're
able to see the evolution of the space
we are offering new deployment options
for it where you can choose where data
lives where data is queried on doing
that we're still providing a business
for any UI for marketers
and so we're really truly believe in a
world where it on business are
successful without concession on one
side you will have it which can increase
the value on the existing Investments
drug architectural decisions keep
control on their data on the other side
the business can get the tools they need
to be successful with their CX
objectives they can reduce the customer
acquisition cost increase lifetime value
on more
so in in other words I would say we
believe that it has the ingredients
great ingredients and we provide
appliances for business teams to make
recipes which will convert people
reading your menu in restaurants into
customers on best first-time customers
into loyal customers coming back over
and over again that's great yeah
um and so you know besides composable
and you mentioned a few things just now
even but you know besides composable
where do you see the CDP Market headed
uh what should we be expecting in the
months ahead yeah I think Arsenio a few
things we could talk about on summer are
predictions to be confirmed in the
future but the sure the first one I have
in mind uh
I I love tracking in the past couple of
years is about the unfolding of
advertising words with tech regulation
changes we we chatted about third party
cookies
um on overall identifiers are also going
away uh you know but as we said like the
best use cases are not going away uh
organizations are still looking to
prospect to acquire new customers
so I think there is an opportunity here
for for Solutions like ours to help
Brands across the entire life cycle from
the very first touch points or the way
to base more typical CVP use case is
loyalty and retention
um and so we we can certainly help
reduce this customer acquisition cost
um and I I have a few more predictions
I'm happy to chat about it uh separately
not going too deep here but all of them
definitely are on this this shift to
first party data strategies uh I really
think this is what drives a lot of the
changes on the market today yeah yeah
agreed I think um and as as you said I
mean well there's some
some of the the companies have already
made the decision that depreciate
cookies and all that others are still
you know as of as of recording this I
think what is it 2024 Google has said um
you know that's that's shifted a bit but
you know it's it's on the horizon it's
you know it's something that it's it's
not if it's it's when it's gonna happen
and so definitely I think it's if it's
not on a company's Horizon right now it
should be
um definitely yeah for sure for sure
well um one last question before we wrap
up here
um what's uh one p you've given a lot of
great advice already and covered a lot
here but you know what's what's one
piece of advice that you would have for
marketers that you know they might be
struggling to use their customer data as
effectively as possible and you know
what's a piece of advice for them as
they navigate the months ahead yeah I
I'm gonna try to keep that one short but
I I might give two pieces of advice
actually uh yeah sure you can do too so
so the first one I don't think you'd be
surprised uh it shouldn't be something
you have haven't heard before but it's
so critical
it's it's whether you're on the business
side or the I.T side you need to work
closely with your counterparts it's not
about it versus business it's only
together that will make the greatest
difference
yeah on the second one it's maybe less
company shared but it's if something I
strongly believe in uh it's making space
uh to free up time for your teams to
adjust to the challenges you're putting
in place I I've seen two of them
organizations where we're asking teams
to adapt but they don't give any room to
be able to do so
and so if if you want to be successful
you need to give space for your team to
embrace the challenge on these new
initiatives
yeah yeah I love that that's um I think
that is so it's timely with a lot of
things I'm I work on with you know with
the companies that I work on but I think
just in general you know I think the
it's often thought of as the the
technology part is the the most
complicated piece but sometimes it's the
people and the processes involved in
implementing that technology that are
actually either just as complex or
potentially more and I think that that
that idea of giving them space I think
that's that's great 100 well uh Florian
thanks so much for joining the show um
for those listening what's the best way
for them to keep up with what you and
action IQ are doing yeah so I'm I'm not
very present on social networks I have
to be honest but I I post occasionally
on LinkedIn so you can find me there you
I'm always available if you want to
reach out there
um otherwise you'll see my contributions
usually on
um actually I choose websites so you can
keep a track uh keep an eye on there uh
or via LinkedIn on Twitter
yeah that sounds good yeah and we're
gonna we're gonna link to one of the
blogs you wrote on uncomposable uh in
the show notes as well so definitely
highly recommend people check that out
so uh again I'd like to thank Florian
DelVal director of technical product
marketing manager at action IQ for
joining the show thanks for listening to
the agile brown with Greg kellstrom talk
with you next week
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