Everything everywhere at once

In the wake of data privacy changes by mobile platforms last year, the enterprise tech world is suddenly taking a big interest in customer data platforms (CDPs). With Twilio’s acquisition of Segment, Treasure Data’s $234 million fundraising late last year, and Salesforce’s push into CDPs, the new buzzword is potentially a new market in vogue.

” My way of thinking [CDPs] i.e. it tries to create a 360 degree view of each of your clients to help you more accurately identify what would resonate most with that client,” said Derek Zanutto, General Partner of CapitalG.

• The term started popping up in mainstream conversations in 2017. In short, CDPs are centralized places to store all the first-party data that a company collects from its customers.
• “It’s basically a data platform that unifies data, processes it, and then activates profiles across many channels,” said Kazuki Ohta, CEO of Treasure Data. The key is not just to collect and store this data, but to make it available for use.
• The need for CDP arose when companies realized they had this data but didn’t know what to do with it.
• “Data transformation, the ability to personalize that customer information, I think, is a key value of the customer data platform,” said Jodi Alperstein, segment vice president of Twilio.

This is also why we most often talk about CDPs in a marketing context, because it is the most natural extension of the use of customer data. After Apple and Google restricted the use of third-party cookies in apps and on the web, marketers had to find new sources of customer insights.

• “It takes pieces of different marketing technologies [and putting] together so that because the consumer record exists in all these different systems, whether it’s a cookie, a CRM record, an email, whatever it is, we can actually create a profile of that person and then use it more effectively in different marketing,” said Cory Munchbach, COO at BlueConic.
• Yet the applicability of CDPs extends far beyond simple marketing, into sales, service, and any other area of ​​a business that could benefit from a more comprehensive customer view.
• “I absolutely think going above and beyond is critical,” said Bobby Jania, senior vice president of marketing at Salesforce. “We unite marketing with commerce, service, sales, IT.”

CDP providers include companies such as Segment, Amperity, mParticle and Treasure Data, as well as smaller companies like Lytics and BlueConic. Outside of targeted CDP players, cloud marketing providers like Salesforce and Adobe cannot afford to ignore this trend. And ERP players like Microsoft and Oracle want to extend customer data to purchasing, product and supply chain software.

The challenge is that the vision has not always materialized.

• Early attempts at CDPs led to a few false starts and disillusioned customers, and the appetite for CDPs nearly died out.
• “If you go back to two or three years ago, there’s a lot of buzz around CDPs, and the way it’s going has kind of disappointed a lot of people in the industry, at least on the investment side. “, said Zanutto. .
• But what kept CDPs from having their breakout moment three years ago? A combination of over-promising and under-delivering, and poor market timing, according to industry professionals and investors.
• “Have I seen a large-scale deployment of a CDP where it works as advertised? No,” Valoir principal Rebecca Wettemann said.

CDPs may have scratched the first time, But it is not finished. Since 2017, the world of enterprise technology has changed dramatically.

• The pandemic has accelerated the need for digital transformation; regulatory changes and mobile platforms have forced a shift to first-party data; and more options presented themselves to companies looking to outsource complex data operations.
• Consumer protection laws such as GDPR or CCPA, along with the decline of third-party cookies, have also made a first-party data strategy not only competitive but necessary for survival.
• “If you think consumer behavior is going digital and consumer privacy is getting stricter, then CDPs will be needed in most brands and businesses,” said Ohta of Treasure Data.

All of these forces combined brought the CDPs to the surface and stimulated more competition than ever.

• “It’s just a matter of when, not if,” Zanutto said. In the enterprise technology market, timing is everything, he explained, and getting to market too late or too soon can actually be detrimental.
• “I think there are a lot of good reasons why now it’s different, it’s going in that direction. But is it going to be a year of greatness, or five years of greatness? It’s a really difficult question to know.

— Aisha counts (E-mail | Twitter)

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‘Morally reprehensible’ AI in classrooms

Intel and Classroom have partnered to integrate AI-powered technology developed by Intel with Class, which runs on top of Zoom. Intel says its system can detect if students are bored, distracted or confused by evaluating their facial expressions and how they interact with educational content.

“We can give the teacher additional information to help them communicate better,” said Michael Chasen, co-founder and CEO of Classroom Technologies, who said teachers had struggled to interact with students in classrooms. virtual classroom environments throughout the pandemic.

But critics argue that it’s not possible to accurately determine whether someone is feeling bored, confused, happy or sad based on their facial expressions or other external cues.

“Students have different ways of presenting what’s going on inside them,” said Todd Richmond, longtime educator and director of the Tech and Narrative Lab and professor at Pardee RAND Graduate School. “That distracted student at this time may be the appropriate and necessary state for him at this point in his life,” he said, if it comes to personal issues, for example.

Although some teachers have found the system useful, Angela Dancey, a senior lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said she wouldn’t want to use the Intel system.

“I think most teachers, especially at the university level, would find this technology morally objectionable, like the Panopticon.”

-Kate Kaye (E-mail | Twitter)

Financial corner

Salsify was valued at $2 billion after raising $200 million to create inventory management products for retailers.

Observe.ai raised $125 million from Zoom and other investors for its natural language processing tools.

Obsidian Security raised $90 million to help companies identify and remediate SaaS security risks.

silverfort raised $65 million to connect identity management across IT systems and environments.

— Aisha counts (E-mail | Twitter)

A MESSAGE FROM LENOVO

Lenovo’s extensive portfolio of end-to-end solutions gives businesses the breadth and depth of services that allow CIOs to take advantage of new information technologies to achieve their strategic objectives. Organizations also have the flexibility to evolve and invest in new technology solutions as their needs arise.

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