July 2024 Summaries

While customer data platforms (CDPs) were once hailed as the ultimate tool for managing customer data, Census isn't the only one questioning whether a composable approach might make data more accessible across all teams and tools. Traditional CDP challenges, such as data silos and inefficient processes, are being addressed by a new wave of martech innovations, including cloud data warehouses (CDWs) that are set to disrupt the traditional martech stack. Cloud data warehouses are enabling a new kind of martech stack where marketing applications and warehouse data coexist, leading to more efficient and effective data utilization across marketing technology ecosystems. Census has long advocated for an approach known as the Composable CDP, which allows businesses to move away from rigid, app-centric models to a more dynamic, flexible approach. A recent product roadmap announced by Census aims to bring data quality and data activation into one single platform, called the Universal Data Platform (UDP), which solves two major data challenges: getting high-quality data in a timely manner and sharing data reliably and securely across organizations. The UDP is a collaborative workspace where everyone can transform and govern trusted data, then activate it to any internal team, partner organization, or app, marking a significant step towards unifying and activating customer data.

Bad data causes bad customer experiences due to systems being out of sync, resulting in poor customer interactions such as repeated verification and inaccurate recommendations. The issue isn't a lack of data, but rather its ineffective use, with businesses overwhelmed by the amount of data they have. A collaboration gap between business teams and data teams limits velocity and leads to inaccurate or ineffective models. The solution is a single platform where both teams can create, contribute, and validate datasets, bringing advantages such as improved governance, increased confidence in data quality, and enhanced model activation. The Universal Data Platform (UDP) combines activation, transformation, and governance into a shared workspace for teams to collaborate, addressing the fundamental problem of data quality and providing a more comprehensive solution than traditional composable CDPs or data management tooling.

The text discusses the challenges of reverse ETL (extract, transform, load) in today's fast-paced business environment, where data teams are under pressure to deliver high-quality data at low latency. To address this issue, a company called Census has developed a platform that enables self-service tools for business users to build new audiences and models, while maintaining the quality and control of data teams. The platform aims to create a universal data platform where data is accessible to everyone and business operations depend on it. It also focuses on reducing latency, duplication, and silos, and provides a foundation of observability across all teammates participating in modeling or deployment work.

PacSun, a prominent streetwear retailer, has launched its operations on the Census Embedded platform within the SoundCommerce Data Platform, leveraging Census Embedded's Reverse ETL solution to enhance data integration and activation for better customer engagement. With this partnership, PacSun can now unify and model its mission-critical data more efficiently, transforming it into actionable insights that support marketing automation and campaign optimization. The deployment of Census Embedded in SoundCommerce reduces data engineering time and costs, while providing faster time-to-engagement with customers through enhanced signals and attributes in marketing activation. This integration also enables seamless data sharing between PacSun and its partners, such as Meta, using the platform's authentication and credential management process.

We're thrilled to announce that Census has acquired Fulcrum, an AI-first growth platform for business teams, as part of our mission to build a trusted data layer for collaboration between data and business teams. This acquisition brings together AI-driven insights, operations, and agents to create a foundation for efficient enterprise operation and impact on business growth. By breaking down data silos and empowering organizations to take action on trusted data, Fulcrum's expertise in AI-based data modeling and customer segmentation perfectly complements Census' existing platform, offering a unified and powerful solution to customers. The integration of Fulcrum's technology will improve collaboration areas such as no-code tooling, powerful modeling capabilities, trust and governance features, and AI-first Personalization. This acquisition is vital to achieving our vision of a trusted data virtualization layer, and we're excited about the opportunities this brings, looking forward to building on Fulcrum's expertise in AI-first growth solutions for data and business teams.