Understanding the CDP Vendor Marketplace

Customer data platforms come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but must provide distinct capabilities in order to fulfill buyers’ needs for scaled personalization. Watch as Ryan Greene and James Meyers review a framework for assessing different types of CDPs so that you, the marketing technologist, can make an informed recommendation for your organization.

Ryan Greene: 00:03
Welcome back to the ActionIQ Happy Hour, slash Office Hours. Today, we are talking about the CDP marketplace, and trying to get some understanding around all the CDB players and posers in this messy, confusing space. As always, I have James Myers with me here today. I am Ryan Greene. Maybe a quick intro on yourself, James, for those who don't already know you.

James Myers: 00:29
Sure, sure. Excited to be here again. And, I came to ActionIQ from a research company named Gartner, and covering customer data platforms, and before that, at Lowe's Home Improvement, doing a mixture of data engineering and data science. Here at ActionIQ, do a couple of different things, but, anything from product content, marketing content, analysts relations, and a few other small things in between, but excited to be here. How about you, Ryan?

Ryan Greene: 01:03 But, from your previous role, you should be an expert on this, right? You heard a lot about the CDPs, you kind of grew up with the CDP space. You're kind of the go-to guy from what I've heard. Glad to have you along as well. So, yeah, I'm Ryan Greene. I'm the head of product marketing here. I've been here for quite a bit, even before there was a CDP space. So, I preclude the actual CDP category, but I still feel like I have something to talk about that may be interesting. So, I will try to do that. So, we are actually from ActionIQ. Obviously, we are in the customer data category, platform category. But, we feel like there needs to be a bit of definition around that. And we're happy to do that today during our office hours. And it's always will be having some beverages as time go along. So cheers and enjoy.

James Myers: 01:55
By the way at home. I hope that you're participating with us here.
Ryan Greene: 02:00 So, the way that we normally do this, is first we want to spend a few minutes just talking about the topic, why it's important, what are some key considerations, and figure out, based on what, what is, what are we actually talking about and what we not talking about. And then we're going to talk about what's real versus what's hype. And in this scenario we're gonna be talking about how should you be thinking about, or how should the viewers be thinking about the customer data platform and start to make sense out of it all. And then we're going to end with what are some of the market trends and where do we see this going? Um, and I, we also have a lot to say about that as well. So it should be a good amount of time to speak.

James Myers: 02:36
One or two things.

Ryan Greene: 02:38
Starting this off, what, what are we talking about today? And, baseline, we're talking about who are the CDP players and who are the poseurs. But, why don't you give a little bit more context of what that actually means. And why it's important.

James Myers: 02:53
Well, the marketplace has grown vast, right? Nearly a hundred vendors at this point. And it seems like a new one either evolving into this space or starting from the ground up each day. But what we can tell you is that, for sure, there are some tried and true players that are having great success. And then you might also say that there are some imposters, right? And by the end of today's session, what we're trying to do is help you walk away with knowledge so that if the time comes and when it comes, you know where to look within that vendor landscape for the specific subset of vendors that you should be considering. And so, that's kind of the high level of the landscape. But, at the same time, the reason why we're here in these seats today covering this specific topic goes one step further. And that's this. The analysts in the industry, you know, my previous company and beyond, have not had a lot of publications that have kind of categorize the marketplace, classified vendors, and talk to you about the pros and cons of different types. So it's confusing, right?

Ryan Greene: 04:04
Why do you think that is? Why, why is it the analyst community not made a call on what this actually is and who's in it yet? Because, I do feel like, we're almost two years in and there's still a lot of confusion and there's different sources of various credibility providing guidance on this. But, the two main ones that everyone looks to is kind of like, we're in a wait and see mode. What do you think that is?

James Myers: 04:28
Yeah, I agree with you. The first kind of component is that certainly a lot of respect for the analysts in the community. Having been one before, the level of responsibility that you have is not just going to be focused on one technology category. So, you're spread quite thin almost. Almost to the point where you, you are expected to be a master of everything, but you really don't have the bandwidth to focus deeply on every single category of technology. And so, for that reason, you have to prioritize. And what that means from a prioritization exercise, is that you may or may not have thought that the CDP landscape was going to become something. You might've thought that it was going to dissolve quickly, because there was too much confusion or there wasn't a big enough problem to begin with. But ultimately it came down to prioritization.

James Myers: 05:12
And, what we're finding as time has gone on is that marketers have really put their foot on the gas and say we need a customer data platform. Or more simply, they're saying we need a single view of our customers. So, as the, as the market is moving along here, we've seen hints and indications that those types of classifications, the quadrants or the waves, they may be coming later this year. But, we don't obviously have any inside view. It's just an expectation that marketers are applying that pressure.

Ryan Greene: 05:45
Yeah. And having been here at ActionIQ, now for three and a half years, like I said before customer data platform was a thing. And before that, working in a large financial services company, trying to do marketing to many consumers, the problem has always been real. I think, it's just, for whatever reason, the solution wasn't defined, or there was confusion around what an actual solution was, and which is...it feels to me being here now and. like, the analysts are always kind of a lagging indicator or a lagging kind of authority on what is real and what's not. And like you said, there's probably many reasons why that is. But, until that happens, there needs to be someone out there or at least someone providing some input. And some guidance around that.

James Myers: 06:28
Yep. 100%. And I definitely had kind of a responsive versus a proactive approach. And so, as we think about today's conversation, we're, we're here to help, right? At the end of the day, we know that you are up against the wall. Um, your, your decisions are important to your organization and we want to make sure that you're given the insight and given the knowledge to make the right one. So, um, how about this, how about we talk about, um, how to evaluate or how to, um, kind of, um, use criteria to bucket the different types of vendors in this space? Actually, Ryan, this was, this was you that came up with this, uh, this three criteria, uh, framework, right? They, the unify, analyze and activate and um, I want to give you an opportunity to walk through those three. For us, it's quite good at it.

James Myers: 07:23
Yeah. I don't know if I can take credit for, you know, saying that's what a CDP is because that's kind of where this whole category has decided to say that those are the three things, the three kind of criteria that you have to have. But um, everyone has a very different definition of what that actually means. When you say what is unifying your data, what is giving your marketers the access to do their own analytics? And then what does that mean to activate data? And as you, as we will talk about, there's a large spectrum of who kind of focuses on maybe the unified data unification piece, but weaker in the, uh, analytics and orchestration. And then there's other people on the other side as well. And so I think what are the argument that we're making? Is it, there's not a, there's not the one solution that is better than all the others. There are solutions that are better at solving specific problems. And if that's your problem, that's the solution you should go with. But you should know first what does a PR, the main problem that you're trying to solve. And then be able to have a short, shorter list of vendors that are very good at solving that problem and not accidentally bring in vendors who say very generally we do data unification, blah, blah, blah. And you should just put us in your list cause maybe we solve it

James Myers: 08:34
that problem as well. That's brilliant. Completely agree. And later on we'll get into some of those problems to help you understand that a, that step one of the process. Yeah. Yeah.

James Myers: 08:43
And so, um, you know, the process or that frat for us as a, a customer data platform, um, we try to S we, we do solve the unification, activation and analytics in a very certain way. Um, and for very particular types of clients and categories. So I think, you know, we also not trying to be a one size fits all and there's many, there's many scenarios where we'll talk to a client or we'll talk to someone who has a particular pain point or a particular, uh, scenario that they're trying to solve for. And we try to be as transparent as we can and say, that's not actually

James Myers: 09:17
what we can do. Yeah. And we recommend others. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the, uh, the honesty and the kind of trustworthiness that we're trying to build here. Right. So, um, so Ryan's correct, definitely all about the problem you're trying to solve. And then knowing what types of vendors are actually great at solving that problem. So the, the, the three criteria lead into actually a pretty substantial classification of the vendors in the marketplace, right. And then you could take all 100, if you will, and place them across these five buckets, right. And, and the purpose here actually, um, is not to make it complex. The purpose is to make it simple. And so I'll give you, uh, the, you know, the, the short answer to how to remember these different buckets or these, these different classifications. And the answer actually is their pedigree, right? So their pedigree is the easiest way to identify which bucket or which classification of endure falls into what do you mean by pedigree pedigree, right? So think about, um, where the vendor had prior products in the marketplace. Um, and let's, let's jump into the first one. That's a great segue actually. So the first category that I'd like to push out is called an event distribution platform. And, and the reality is that the event distribution platform came from folks with categories and tag management, right? So they're distributing event data to destination tools. Right, right. And would you agree that, um, that these technologies are largely focused on digital sources of data?

James Myers: 10:58
Yeah. So I think that they had the classification of vendors you're talking about are these vendors who were solving a problem of it was very hard to deploy and maintain tags across many different digital sites so that when you make changes on your sites or your, your tags, that change happens across all your properties and all those events are still maintained and tracked. And then it will be pushed different places for different things. Now for, to their credit, you could say that's dating unification, right? Cause they're unifying data across many different digital properties. There is some analytics because that data can be used in different places to do analytics type work and there is activation because they are activating that data into two different places. But it's a very specific idea of unification or unification analytics and uh, activation. And like you said, it is pretty much primarily built for the digital world. So if you're trying to bring in data that is not coming through their tags from the offline world or for a different data source that doesn't have the tags, it starts to get more difficult. And that's where the, uh, the promise

James Myers: 12:06
starts to get a little bit hazy. Yep. Yep. Nailed it. Right. So, um, so that's the first category. Um, the event distribution platform and, and, and oftentimes we throw the word digital in front of it just to reemphasize that it is, uh, did you get all tools or digital channels that this data is being, uh, captured from and then distributed away from.

James Myers: 12:30
And I think for us just to contrast that, like when we see when we say unification, we're talking about online, offline tags, non non tagged data, transactional, you know, customer service data. These, there's many different types of data out there. And, um, depending again on what the problem trying to solve, we try to sell. We are, we're trying to sell the entire ecosystem of data. Uh, not just the attack, but if you're a digital only company and most of your, most of your activity is happening on site or on the app, that may be a problem that they're very well equipped to handle.

James Myers: 13:06
Yeah. Yeah. And now just for a little bit of extra context there, um, the vendors that we most commonly see in this space are going to be your in particles, your segments, your [inaudible] and to their credit, right? They are placing these tags, if you will, on more than just websites and apps. You know, they're gathering them sometimes from other digital applications like a a call center app or a CRM app. Um, but the point is that there needs to be a, um, a digital source of this data. Um, and so from there, right, let's transition into the next category, the next category being identity management platforms. Very important. You said single customer view. And so I imagine this is a, you nailed that, right? Right in the right there, right? Yeah. So are there any management platforms? Think of your vendors like, um, uh, Imparity, uh, particularly pre Custora and parody, um, your, uh, red point globals, your, um, your Quiroz even.

James Myers: 14:14
Um, but the point here is that identity management is the linchpin to the rest of the equation, right? You can't have great analytics if you don't have a single view of your customer, you can't have great journeys or activations or campaigns or personalization without a single view of your customers. So it makes sense. This is definitely a need in the marketplace. Um, as we, as we have thought about that category, the identity management one, um, there are, there are components of the marketing and enterprise landscape that need that more than others. And I think we've traditionally seen this type category

James Myers: 14:52
would be sold into one department within the enterprise. Yeah. I think this goes back to kind of like what's your philosophy as a customer data platform? Are you using, are you primarily solving and being used by it type, um, users? Or are you trying to get further into up the business stack into the actual non technical users who are the ones who are kind of waiting and the ones who could make value, right. But at the end of the day that the data is not valuable until it reaches the business users hands and they're able to deploy it into the actual customer experiences. So again, like you said, there is a place and there is um, a need for that type of technology in certain places that have a very it driven approach and have an it driven way of trying to solve that problem. But then you have to think about it like what is that where your problem is?

James Myers: 15:45
And then once you're on top of it, everything else is in place to take advantage of that. Or do you then have to start the next project of, okay, it figured this, maybe we get this figured out and it side, but I still don't have an interface for my, my business users to do analytics on it. I still don't have a good tool to orchestrate those insights into experiences across all my channels. And you're just kind of, you know, band-aiding as you go on or are you trying to solve a more complex or more comprehensive problem? But this w with a single solution, I love the way you explained that. So, um, so you're completely right, the user, the end goal in mind. And how seamless does that activation and analytics need to occur? Um, because we know that data, the single customer view does not become valuable until it's put into the market.

James Myers: 16:34
Right. And so, um, great. That's perfect. A third category here, let's, uh, let's jump into the digital personalization engine. Boy, they're relatively new into the CDP category. I feel like that, um, I would say we're kind of like part of the G and the original, you know, people were included in the CDPs, but as the category grew, more and more people kind of tossed their hats in. Um, and I feel like this is, these guys are a little bit new. Yeah. So why do you think they came in? Well, I think, like you said, the category has kind of blown up, right? Like there was at the beginning, it wasn't just the analyst kind of waiting to see if this was a real thing was also vendors. And if you're in a space that is becoming commoditized or is getting a bit crowded or is getting crowded out by maybe the Googles and the, you know, Facebook spend and Salesforce and Adobe, uh, you're going to be looking for different avenues and additional revenue opportunities to differentiate yourself. And so again, if you can make the claim that you can ingest data, you can do some kind of analytics on top of it and you can deploy that. In this case through personalization on the website, you're, you fall into the CVP, right? And then you have a legitimate claim that you have to improve, obviously, uh, that, that you can

James Myers: 17:55
you play in that area. Yeah, I completely agree. And so think about, um, you know, quick story if you will. Um, at my prior days as a practitioner using Adobe target, right? Um, pretty good solution. But at the end of the day, I had a stakeholders come back to me. Sometimes they were internal and sometimes they were external customers. And I'd say, I say my experience was irrelevant. Um, the content you recommended on the site or the content that, um, that was pushed out in the mobile app was inaccurate. And I'd have to go back into the data to figure out why and every single time the answer was because the personalization engine, in this case, Adobe target did not have enough data. When you say no, no. Do you mean like history? Brett were like, what does that mean? A lot of the times it was the depth, right? So these tools oftentimes store like the last five products that you browsed or the last 10 products that you might've bought online. But the reality is that the recommendation I should receive, or the content that actually recommended should incorporate more than just my last, you know, 30 minutes of browsing on your website. It should incorporate my preferences over time and beyond in channels and channels beyond just the web.

James Myers: 19:11
Yeah, great point. Matt. I think that's one of the biggest problems with these digital or channel specific solutions is that they may be the best option in that point in time and making a recommendation on what they know about you. But we all know that's one of the problems that we're trying to solve is that you are not just that last 30 days of browse behavior, right. You are what you did in the store, what you did in the call center, what you did three years ago. Um, what your data science team is saying is important based on all of that information and trying to again coordinate and orchestrate the best experiences or experience across different channels.

James Myers: 19:48
Does that make sense for you? Yeah. Yeah. There's some type of a laughing internally here because I'm thinking about a, there's some animal or insect that only lasts for like 24 hours or like, I think it's the locus. Yeah. Like really short lifespan.

James Myers: 20:03
Every five years they come out and they like, they have a great 24 hours and then they're gone.

James Myers: 20:08
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So growing up here in New Jersey, I was thinking about that and the reality is that humans are not locus. Yeah. Thankfully. Thankfully. Yeah. We need to be able to recommend, based on your entire history, some components of your history, you're going to be more relevant than others of course. But, um, humans are more complex. That's the end of the day.

James Myers: 20:27
That's why it's so hard to solve this problem. Right? And this is why we're here. This is about, we're still having these conversations is that if it were just a, tell me what you did in the last five steps or the last five clicks, it wouldn't be such a hard problem. Yeah.

James Myers: 20:42
Yeah. The scale of data. Um, so the fourth category, four out of five, the fourth category are probably the most, um, expected category. And this is your marketing cloud, customer native platforms, right? So think of your, your Adobes, your Oracles, and then soon to be a Salesforce coming out eventually here in maybe 20, 20, 21, maybe.

James Myers: 21:06
No, know we're in 2020 right now. Yeah. Got it. Feels like it's ambitious for you to call in 2020 on that one.

James Myers: 21:15
Yeah. So this category, right? It's the same thing is the personalization engine. Why did they come to exist? Because they're in charge of delivering campaigns and personalizing this in the final mile, and that they're the first ones to get the feedback saying that the person didn't click on any of the content. Right. And so at that point, they're under pressure to make the content more relevant. And how do they make that happen? They get more data or analytics. So, um, perhaps, uh, perhaps the marketing cloud one is the most expected to eventually get into this space. Um, what do you think that they're up against or what do you think that there will be a most challenged with?

James Myers: 21:55
I mean, I think the, the biggest problem for them is that they, for years have said that this wasn't needed and that this wasn't actually a problem. Right? Like for years, the promise has been by the cloud, have all your channels, give us all your data and it's, you're done. Right? So wrapped up in a nice bow, but you know, for us that I've used them in the past or we've seen it actually transpired. It's like that doesn't actually happen because as you kind of unpack the different nuances of this, it's actually many different products that those products don't actually integrate across each other, which is, you know, kind of very shocking when you hear, you know, cloud or you know, there's one product with many different needs. They actually don't talk to each other. That's crazy. Then you go a level deeper and say, Oh you actually have to do a lot of work before you get any data in there that's not created within the cloud.

James Myers: 22:52
And you're talking again about massive efforts on the it teams and again, pushing that work and that data complexity down into your it organization, which is the problem trying to fix in the first place. And so I think, you know, for the, their, their biggest problem, well I think there's two buttons. One is this is something that happened. They said they have solved, now they're coming back and saying, actually it's not solved. So we're going to solve it now. But two, they built their entire delivery of their products in their platforms around these specific channel applications and now they have to figure out, okay, how do we replatform all of these channels under this new data layer? Do we open it up? Right? Because like all their money is based on you using everything that they have. Do they open it up for the potential future of everyone trying to plug and play whatever they want. That changes their business model. That changes their organizational delivery, that changes how their, their teams and their sales teams talk about the product. And it is very complex, right? I'm talking about large organizations trying to completely change the way that they deliver their solutions and that they go to market. Yeah, completely agree.

James Myers: 24:08
Um, so that brings us to the, um, the final category, right? And the final category is one that, um, is, is a smaller category and this is your purpose built CDPs. Right? So think about the ones that identified this personalization at scale problem years ago and said, I need to be able to capture all you're doing now. I need to be able to compute and process all this data and I also need to need to be able to distribute it and activate it across all channels. And that's kind of the, the Holy grail that perhaps Margaret has been looking for. Um, but solving this problem, I think you would agree is much more difficult than it may seem. And so do you agree that many vendors that come into this space and saying, well, we are, that we are the purpose, go and not realize the complexity of data management that actually is,

James Myers: 25:00
yeah, I think there, I mean if you look at the, when did the company start, right? Like that's a, that's a good way to know like where they built to solve this particular problem. Or were they, were they doing something else before that? Um, but even for the companies that are, have been built in the last four years, right? Call it four years, whatever that time period may be that we're built to solve this problem and actually do the unification, the analytics and the activation that we talked about and are may or may not be doing that last mile execution. And you know, may or may not be doing things below that as well. There are again, different strategies about how they or approaches about how they go solve that problem and some of them are more stronger in the user interface and in the maybe tagging in API world of getting that into the various channels and less strong in the data management piece.

James Myers: 25:48
Right. And so even if you shrink the CDP space down to the purpose built, which is five to 10 maybe at the highest a number of vendors in that space, they all, then you start to think about, okay, what is it from a enterprise level solution all the way down to you know, all in one kind of mini cloud that is built to solve this particular problem. And that's also, you know, if you, that's something that you need to consider when you're thinking about what is your problem, what is your scenario? Who, who are the clients that look like you and have similar problems, um, that needs to be taken into your evaluation. Yup. Completely agree.

James Myers: 26:25
So, all right, let's, um, let's jump a little forward and, um, and there's always right, you and the audience, if you have questions about, um, vendors in particular spaces or pros and cons, uh, feel free to reach out to us. We enjoy the interaction. All right, this next section going to be perhaps just as fun, maybe even more fun. We've got a number of market trends that are happening and we want to cover off on those. Um, and kind of a quick hit fashion because I think they'll be relevant to you as a decision maker. Predictions. Yeah. So the most fun, right? I mean, predictions are great, right? Uh, who doesn't like doing that? Um, particularly when there's, there's little accountability, but, um, but actually we've put a lot of thought into these. It's not like these are just coming off of, um, you know, how we woke up this morning. Um, so, so maybe Ryan, as you look through our, um, initial lists here, predictions which ones kind of stand out to you as being super. So

James Myers: 27:25
I think there's, you know, obviously we said there's over a hundred people who are claiming to be CVPs then the category of classifications we call cover, maybe covering half of those vendors. The other half you have are like even more of the misfits, right? Like these are people who are doing maybe pure ad tech type stuff, agents like maybe even services and agencies who have had been kind of like trying to figure something out and trying to find a new kind of second wind, um, and pivoted towards the CDP. And so we think that those players have come to the CDP space hoping for as as a savior. But a lot of these players will either be, um, acquired by some other, uh, services or agency organization or you're starting to see some of these, these actually go out of business. And so we do think that there is a, uh, there is a terminal life to a lot of these companies who are kind of using the CDP as a last ditch effort. So you're talking about consolidation? Yeah, I'm talking about two types of consolidation. One is one term, like the really like the really ones that shouldn't even be anywhere close to this space, they're probably gonna run a business because they actually don't, they're not solving a real problem. Those that are solving a problem but may not be able to kind of stand alone could be acquired by some of the other players, um, or agencies

James Myers: 28:45
in the market. Yeah, we've seen that just recently about two weeks ago. Right. Agile one and acquired by, um, Aquia. So, um, there's some evidence for you there. Um, how about, um, what we think that some of the marketing clouds might too. This is a fun one. Yeah,

James Myers: 29:04
that's actually, that's one of the more interesting ones, right? It's, they've said they're going to build this, some of them are further ahead than others. Um, I think there's no doubt about it. Like a lot of, if at least their marketing solutions are kind of dependent on getting this right. Um, the problem is for many of them, they haven't really built something in house for a long time. They usually go out and acquire this. Um, I think the obvious example of this is I think meals, the MuleSoft acquisition by Salesforce in 18 to two months to two years ago was supposed to be that integration sized CDP layer that is now kind repivoting to not be that, but part of a bigger solution called customer three 60. Um, which is still kind of an idea at this point. Um, I think of the three that you mentioned, probably one to two of them will actually build something that works.

James Myers: 30:00
Um, but again, I think the, the bigger or not the problem, but the, the, the decision that you have to make is that they're going to keep it within their walled garden. Right now it's still not going to be solving the, the kind of traditional CDB problem, which is data agnostic, channel agnostic. They're going to build a CDP that, that works for their cloud. Yup. Yup. And for ones that don't, I do think they're going to go acquire somebody, like one of the purpose built CDPs are going to probably in 12 to 18 months figure it out that this is, it makes more sense just to buy.

James Myers: 30:32
Right. If you think about the categories that we just talked about, those five, which of those five categories has the highest probability of being bought right by market clouds? I think, I think there's two, definitely the purpose built a CDP it particularly if you're a, um, marketing cloud that is still in the very early stages of developing a, your own CP. You might get to the point where of frustration and you say, all right guys, we tried, but, uh, we're too far behind the ball here. We gotta we gotta go buy one. Yeah. But my, my prediction may be on the other side of this is that, um, you know, you saw Salesforce by MuleSoft and there's a, there's two or three other major marketing clouds that, uh, that don't have a, a, you know, a broad array of, of API is for ingesting data and distributing that data out. Um, so as organizations look towards that best of breed stack, they know that, um, that having a solution that just ingest to your marketing cloud and plays within that marketing cloud, that's unfortunately not going to cut it. So I predict that one of the, um, event, uh, distribution platforms, um, your, your segments and particles [inaudible] are going to be looked for, uh, for marketing product purchase. You agree with that?

James Myers: 31:44
Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think they are, I mean they are more of a feature than they are a product or a platform in my mind. And so it makes sense that for a more platform based solution like a cloud who are missing that feature is, is to bring that in and, and start to figure out how they integrate that into their

James Myers: 32:04
broader offering. Yep. So, um, let's do this. Um,

James Myers: 32:13
so where do we think the customer data platform category will like end up? Right? Like if we're saying acquisitions and uh, maybe people going out of business. I think we have kind of like where we think this all kind of shakes out. Um, what's your thoughts?

James Myers: 32:28
Yeah, I'll go quick. Right. I think that, um, that the settling of the dust if you will, will eventually be, um, less than a handful of, um, vendors that are doing it, uh, with, with a lot of, uh, no evidence, um, high client satisfaction and beyond. And so there will be others that may still exist, but they're going to be picking up, uh, let's call it the scraps. And maybe within that world that I'd like to think that there will be major vendors that attack within a marketing cloud. And there may be others that are more independent, but they focused on either the, um, the oper the enterprise or maybe the mid market. Yeah. I think that you might have a similar, uh, expectation, but, um, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think

James Myers: 33:18
similar to how there's different existing marketing automation in clouds for the enterprise and for mid market, it's probably me, the same thing for customer data platforms. I think the major difference is, um,

James Myers: 33:30
[inaudible]

James Myers: 33:30
data management analytics has such a bigger emphasis on organizations going forward that there now is room in this, in the, in the marketplace. For a product that is very good at just that. It's not the it product, it's not the delivery product, but there is a solution that can be stand alone and have really strong integrations and partnerships that can be that kind of best in class for that. And then for companies who are looking for, you know, the best in class stack or a to build kind of their own integrations, that's going to be their solution. And for companies they're looking [inaudible]

James Myers: 34:05
you know,

James Myers: 34:05
or one size fits all and all in one solution you're going to have your marketing clouds.

James Myers: 34:09
Yeah. Now, um, this'll be my, maybe my final comment here is that I read a report recently and I had a statistic and it, I think it was from Gardner. So, um, it talked about, um, two factors of a best-in-breed stacks versus integrated suites, right? So if we predict that the customer data platform market buys may eventually resolve into, you know, a small number of, uh, of marketing cloud, CPS and then a small number of independency views, the statistic was this, it was 53% of organizations, um, think that their technology stack is gaining, um, substantial value and it's functioning as desired. Um, for those that have a best of breed stacks. So like they're were very, very happy. 53%. Do you know what percent of those who have integrated suites were equally happy and equally impressed with the, the effectiveness? And you're smiling because you know where it's going. Um, it was like 31%. Right? So there's a huge correlation. And knowing this type of statistic from past research knows that I had to write that was like the gold metric. Like when you find that in the dataset, you go, Oh boy, I could write multiple, multiple research papers on this one. Yeah. So best-in-breed really is, it's actually where things are going to that was this the second statistic? Is that the, the momentum towards people or towards organizations

James Myers: 35:38
that want best to breed cause growing very fast. Yeah. I think that's just a reflection that people are realizing that data and analytics is the differentiator when it comes to customer experience. And so they're not willing to make trade offs on simplicity for, for less than ideal products. Yup. Completely agree to play there. Okay. Well not a great session. I enjoyed it. Um, thank you all for joining us as well and stay tuned for future sessions and we look forward to speaking with you in, uh, 2020. Take care. All right. Bye. All.