CDP Institute launches vendor certification program, tools to help CDP buyers

To help reduce confusion about what does and what doesn’t constitute a customer data platform (CDP) and help buyers better navigate the vendor selection process, the CDP Institute has launched a certification program.

Why you should care

The promise of a CDP is to provide a unified repository of customer data that can be made available to any other system. The problem, said David Raab, founder of the CDP Institute, is “many firms offering a CDP or CDP alternative fail to build the complete, shareable customer database that is the heart of the CDP concept.” Additionally, the extra features CPDs offer can make it confusing for potential buyers trying to compare vendors.

The new certification program has two components. The RealCDP certification entails five core capabilities to build a unified, shareable customer database. CDPFinder provides a database for finding CDP vendors.

The certification and vendor discovery tool for buyers are designed to address both of those challenges.

The five capabilities needed to qualify for RealCDP certification require the ability to:

• Ingest data from any source.
• Capture full detail of ingested data.
• Store ingested data indefinitely (subject to privacy constraints).
• Create unified profiles of identified individuals.
• Share data with any system that needs it.

More on the news

• The CDP Institute will certify compliance with the RealCDP checklist.
• Authorized vendors will be able to display the RealCDP badge.
• The CDPFinder program provides free templates for use case definition, vendor screening, and Request for Proposal documents.
• CDP Institute has identified nearly 100 CDP vendors worldwide with estimated combined revenue of $1 billion in 2019.