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Choosing the right customer data platform (CDP) is important for any organization to go from customer data to growth goldmine and futureproof its business. But making the right choice isn’t so straightforward without a strategic plan.
As you evaluate different solutions, you have to assess their features and functionalities, how well they support your specific use cases, and make sure they satisfy the requirements of both your marketing and IT teams.
It’s one thing to understand what these platforms do—the technical stuff—but another to grasp the real value they bring to your business. Too often, decision-makers get stuck on the specifications—the “what”—without understanding how to communicate the tangible benefits—the “so what”—before these platforms are even up and running.
That’s where a solid business case comes in. It bridges the gap between a CDP’s technical potential and the strategic benefits it brings, to help you get the green light from executives and move your project forward.
In this blog post, we will dive into why building a business case is so important when you’re picking the best CDP for your needs. We’ll cover the perks, give you some key tips, and share ideas from Uniphore’s practice to ensure that the CDP you choose doesn’t just meet expectations but supports your strategic business goals—with AI-powered intelligence and scalability to match.
How to Kickstart Your Business Case for a CDP
Think of it this way: 93% of B2B buyers won’t sign off on significant tech purchases without a solid business case, as per Gartner’s findings. A good business case does more than list tech specs—it highlights the broader impact on your organization and fuels crucial decision-making across many aspects.
Aligning Your Goals with the Right CDP
A well-crafted business case helps you look at everything—top to bottom—and assess whether a CDP can tackle your current challenges and grow with you towards your big-picture goals. It’s not only about what the CDP can do now but also its potential to adapt with your organization’s evolving needs.
For example, for organizations that want to maximize their data warehouse and meet the needs of diverse teams while future-proofing the customer experience (CX) stack, a CDP that can connect directly atop your data warehouse without forcing data copy in the application might be your ideal solution. We refer to these solutions as Composable CDPs.
This outcome-driven lens ensures that the CDP you select isn’t just a temporary fix but a strategic enabler—propelling your business operations from your current state to your desired future state. With AI-powered insights and flexible architecture, it becomes a long-term driver of growth and transformation.
“We have made a lot of investment in our recommendation engine for the last two years so we don’t want to necessarily move all of that into the CDP. Being able to integrate with our internal services and doing so at scale is absolutely key for us so the composable architecture of Uniphore making that possible is one of the main reasons why we went with Uniphore in the first place.”
— Sravan Gupta
Senior Engineering Manager, Martech, Atlassian
Getting Everyone on Board
Creating a business case helps get all your key people—IT, data teams, marketing, and executive leaders—on the same page. By highlighting tangible benefits and clear ROI, it helps unify different department views into a single, strong vision that everyone can get behind.
“We are crushing our numbers with this tool and the company is throwing more people and processes at us across the business.“
— Jeremy Katz
AVP, Customer Journey Performance, Analytics, The Hartford
Maximizing Every Dollar
Choosing new tech is also about smart resource allocation.
A strong business case will outline what you will need to spend—from money to humanpower—and balance it against what you will gain. This ensures every resource spent is an investment in your organization’s success, paving the way for a smooth CDP implementation.
“In the past, with passing [data] back and forth, measuring size and execution and manually moving data left and right, it took three weeks to a month for campaigns to go live. That’s where you miss revenue opportunities. With Uniphore, because the data is ever present and it’s so easy to use, the teams are able to be much more spontaneous and creative in how they’re going to market with segments. Now, it’s fun to do.”
— Jonathan Bradley
Senior IT Manager, MarTech & Customer Insights, BrightSpeed
Here’s How We Help You Build a Business Case for a CDP
Recognizing how daunting building a business case can be, especially without a clear starting point, Uniphore is here to guide you.
As the only Composable CDP recognized by Gartner in its inaugural Magic Quadrant for CDPs, we bring deep technological expertise—backed by AI-native capabilities—and a track record of helping clients across various industries succeed and realize substantial value.
How to Build a Business Case for a Composable CDP
Need to build CDP buy-in across your team? We’ve got you covered.
“Uniphore’s Business Value Assessment and overall approach in focusing on the best use cases to quickly put points on the board was instrumental to our business case development. In collaboration with Uniphore, we were able to leverage this approach to align on a set of initial use cases to cover our initial platform investment as we scale to additional use cases.”
— Ryan Hatfield
Senior Vice President, Media Strategy & Digital Marketing, Northwest Bank
From Analysis to Adoption—We’ve Got You Covered
Tailored Assessments
We start by understanding your unique setup—data capabilities, tech stack, business processes—to spot your unique challenges and opportunities. We’ll explore:
- People: Who owns the marketing strategy, and how are roles and responsibilities defined among the team?
- Process: How quickly do you incorporate campaign performance insights to improve targeting, optimize offers, and enhance personalization?
- Technology: How reliant are your business teams on IT to execute marketing campaigns, and to what extent is your campaign execution process automated?
Custom Strategies
No one-size-fits-all solutions here—everything is tailored to fit your exact needs and goals, with automation and intelligence that scale.
Stakeholder Engagement
We partner with you to strategically engage key team members, ensuring everyone understands the benefits to help secure buy-in and promote a unified vision.
Impact on Key Metrics
We help you (and your stakeholders) see clear, measurable benefits—from increasing revenue and enhancing customer satisfaction to reducing costs and improving efficiency. We make sure these benefits are quantified and well-understood, grounded in your data and benchmarked. For some clients, these improvements have included:
- +50% return on ad spend for Atlassian
- -$250K in direct cost savings for HP
- +35% in customer retention improvement for Autodesk
Implementation Roadmap
We collaborate with you to create an implementation roadmap tailored to your unique needs, ensuring that the CDP is integrated with the rest of your CX stack and workflows. Together, we’ll define:
- Complete Customer Intelligence: Leveraging and operationalizing your comprehensive first-party data.
- Audience Segmentation and Campaign Execution: Efficiently identifying target audiences and orchestrating campaign and testing.
- Evaluation Metrics: Setting key metrics to measure and improve campaign effectiveness.
A Strong DACI Framework
Ensure clear roles and collaborative decision-making between our teams and yours.
Ongoing Partnership
Following implementation, we partner with your team to help you adapt and evolve, ensuring the CDP meets your needs today and in the future—with continuous innovation and AI-powered enhancements.
Take the Next Step
Ready to build a business case that sets your CDP project up for success?
Check out our in-depth guide that walks you through each step. It’s packed with insights and tailored to help you articulate the value a Composable, AI-powered CDP can bring to your organization.
How to Build a Business Case for a Composable CDP
Need to build CDP buy-in across your team? We’ve got you covered.
We also invite you to reach out to start the conversation with the Uniphore team. Let’s work together to ensure your CDP initiative hits the ground running and delivers long-term value.