Building a Business Case for a CDP: Prove the Value of Your Next Best Investment

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, 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 ActionIQ’s practice to ensure that the CDP you choose doesn’t just meet expectations but supports your strategic business goals.

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.

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.

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 manpower—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.

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, ActionIQ 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 in the CDP space and a track record of helping clients across various industries succeed and realize substantial value.

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.

Stakeholder Engagement

We partner with you to strategically engage key team members, ensuring everyone understands the benefits to help secure buy-in and promotes 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
• +182% campaign conversion rate for DoorDash
• -$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.

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 CDP can bring to your organization.

We also invite you to reach out to start the conversation with the ActionIQ team. Let’s work together to ensure your CDP initiative hits the ground running and delivers long-term value.