Unified data, real-time personalization, and the ability to activate from that data smoothly through both built-in and custom integrations can be very powerful. It’s possible to leverage insights to activate directly from the Adobe Experience Cloud solutions to downstream destinations, bringing insights back into source data for profile enrichment.

But depending on how you view data and technology, it may feel like you need to boil the ocean without having all the information you need upfront to get value from your investment.

How do you realize that value in line with your unique business goals and measures of success, while balancing the level of effort needed to do an effective implementation? How can you go beyond topline metrics to show both the increased performance of your business and the value of your investment in the technology? How do you imagine the “art of the possible” by leveraging the foundation you’ve built for yourself?

Setting the right methodology, aligning your metrics and processes, and working with a trusted partner can streamline and accelerate this process to give tangible results and a way to showcase the value of the time and energy you’ve put into establishing a foundation with Experience Platform and Real-Time CDP. Want to know more? Let’s dive deeper…

One Port of Call for Smoother Sailing

A key benefit of working with Experience Platform and Real-Time CDP is the ability to capture, unify, and activate from centralized sources of data. This access isn’t boundless, but with the right planning and measurement framework, you can significantly improve Time to Insight (T2I) and Time to Action (T2A), enabling your organization to make smarter, more profitable decisions. At the highest level, the data sources are identified, unified at a profile level, and mapped to a contextualized schema that aligns with your business goals. Anyone can look at transactions, visits, and purchases in disparate sources or through manual reporting, but doing so in a single/integrated system at the customer level and then personalizing/orchestrating that experience to gain actionable insights, can help companies and teams reach goals faster to drive better return through improved customer experiences. It’s a win/win for consumers and companies alike.

Running a Tight Ship

If you’ve read or listened to any of my commentary on this in the past, you know that I think operational efficiency is almost as important as driving monetary ROI. Your investment isn’t just in software - it’s also an investment in the success of your people and processes. Why not measure that and incorporate it into your narrative to show the holistic value of where you’re allocating your budget?

Following a tried-and-true yet flexible process is essential. The exercise of creating artifacts like a Business Requirement Document (BRD) and Entity Relationship Design (ERD) is worthwhile, since they document and help cross-functional stakeholders visualize the data before implementation. This understanding, paired with functional use cases, can help accelerate the utilization of the data and platforms, effectively setting the stage for the T2A metric. There are several ways to calculate T2A and working with a partner like Blue Acorn iCi experienced in setting these baselines (often through a Center of Excellence (CoE)) can ensure that this is customized to your business’s needs.

Chart the Course Before Setting Sail

Going beyond the data mapping and requirements gathering, after ensuring the data and platform is fit for purpose, the use of Adobe Customer Journey Analytics can further enable organizations and teams to use the data from both offline and online sources in a drag-and-drop UI. As an extra perk, Adobe Analytics users will recognize many of the same features they’re already well versed in. These capabilities, along with many others, can really accelerate T2I for organizations, especially those with an already established Adobe Analytics practice. Companies can still benefit from specialized skills in their Advanced Analytics and Data Science teams, but those skills aren’t required to derive insights from data that previously needed specialized skills to be accessed and used effectively.

When the Course Is Clear, Every Crew Member Can Navigate

Democratization is possible, and enablement is easier once the right foundation and integrations are established. Back to process though, as always – make sure you allocate time for QA and UAT and also remember that everything you did to set your foundation should enforce confidence in the results you see. Do your best to crawl, walk, and run to scale your success in a way that allows you to take calculated risks with trustworthy rewards.

Second Star to the Right and Straight On ‘til Morning

I won’t say that implementing Adobe Experience Platform and Real-Time CDP is cheap and easy, but the things that result in the best return rarely are. With the right planning, a knowledgeable partner, and a willingness to adjust your course as you uncover new insights you couldn’t easily uncover before, you can find and follow your north star to profitable growth and repeatable success.

Want to learn more about how Adobe Experience Platform and Adobe Real-Time CDP can benefit your organization? Contact Blue Acorn iCi.