Article updated on: 27 November 2024
With so many solutions dealing with customer data management, it’s easy to lose track of who’s who and what’s what. And it can get even more complicated when the same provider offers multiple solutions that seem similar.
So it’s not surprising that many SAP customers have a tough time differentiating SAP CDP and CDC.
To help you avoid this problem, in this article we’ll cover:
What is the Difference Between SAP CDP and CDC?
The main difference between SAP CDP and CDC is their purpose – CDC manages your customer’s identity and consent, while CDP unifies customer data into an actionable 360-degree customer profile.
To help you understand the difference, we’ll illustrate how these SAP Customer Data Solutions work in practice:
Let’s say your company launched a webshop, allowing your customers to register and receive special deals in exchange for some of their personal information.
The customer fills out a registration form, gives their consent, and selects the different ways the company can reach out to them (email, SMS, etc.). The SAP Customer Data Cloud manages all of these steps.
Then, the SAP Customer Data Platform combines this information with first-party data such as past purchases, website and social media activity, and data collected by your CRM and DMP platforms. You can then use this information to either:
- manually design and launch personalized marketing campaigns
- connect them with a marketing engagement system (such as SAP Emarsys) to automate these efforts
If the customer decides to revoke their consent, it’s back to SAP CDC again. The system makes the change and ensures that the new preferences are recorded and followed throughout the company.
Now that you know how these two platforms work together, let’s take a closer look at what makes each one unique.
SAP Customer Data Platform (CDP)
What if all your customer data – from past purchases to social media interactions – could be unified into an easy-to-understand customer profile available to relevant teams?
That’s the power of a customer data platform (or CDP, for short). This solution acts as a central point for all your customer data – helping to break down data silos and make data-driven decisions.
A customer data platform has many use cases – from creating unified customer profiles and serving as a foundation for future personalization efforts to enabling advanced retail media efforts.
SAP Customer Data Platform is a market leader in data unification and consolidation. This customer data solution by SAP is very easily integrated with various data sources (like your CRM, website, mobile app, etc.), providing your teams with real-time customer data across all touchpoints.
This easy integration also applies to downstream engagement systems such as SAP Emarsys, which uses this data to trigger Emarsys Tactics. These automated marketing campaigns are personalized and highly relevant for each customer, resulting in long-term loyalty.
For example, let’s say a customer bought a new phone. The system might offer a time-limited promotion on phone cases or glass protectors for that phone. It might also suggest an extended warranty if the customer profile indicates it would be valuable.
This push towards personalization increases your company’s revenue and provides a great customer experience for the buyer as you offer them something relevant at just the right time.
SAP Customer Data Cloud (CDC)
SAP CDC stands for SAP Customer Data Cloud – an SAP customer data solution that helps you manage your customers’ identities and consent.
The security of customer data is now a critical topic as more and more companies face serious data breaches. Companies that fail to secure their customer data risk losing their trust, but there are also significant penalties from regulators. For instance, the Cambridge Analytica data breach resulted in Facebook being fined 5 billion USD.
SAP Customer Data Cloud (formerly known as Gigya) tackles this challenge by providing a robust identity management solution that is compliant with major data-security regulations such as GDPR in the EU or CDPA and CCPA in the US.
The SAP Customer Data Cloud is actually a combination of three separate solutions:
- SAP Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) for B2C
- SAP Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) for B2B
- SAP Enterprise Consent and Preference Management
By combining these three solutions into a single comprehensive customer data management system, SAP CDC provides you with a single point to:
- collect customer data (through sign-up forms, newsletter subscriptions, etc.)
- manage their personal information
- setup opt-ins/outs for different communication channels
- record customer consent
With SAP Customer Data Cloud, your customers can easily manage their personal information or communication preferences by logging into your customer portal.
Do You Need Both SAP CDP and CDC?
SAP CDC and CDP deal with different challenges, so you can use them separately or paired with a solution from another provider. SAP products are known to integrate well with others, which is one of their main advantages compared to the competition.
As always, there is a big ‘however’ here:
A considerable advantage of using SAP Customer Data Cloud and SAP Customer Data Platform together is the SAP-provided real-time connector.
This connector allows you to design and optimize your marketing campaigns and communication in real time based on changes in your customer preferences and personal information – a compelling feature when paired with those engagement systems we’ve mentioned.
Final Thoughts on SAP Customer Data Cloud and SAP Customer Data Platform
In an age where data fuels business success, SAP CDP and CDC emerge as pivotal solutions.
These tools empower you to generate insights, foster personalized experiences, and ensure regulatory compliance by addressing the challenges of data unification and identity management.
The journey to effective customer data management begins by recognizing the unique strengths of these solutions and using them to drive growth and customer loyalty.
Frequently Asked Questions About SAP CDP and CDC
- What benefits do businesses gain from using both SAP Customer Data Cloud (CDC) and SAP Customer Data Platform (CDP) together?
SAP CDP and CDC can integrate seamlessly, creating real-time synchronization of customer data. This integration ensures no data silos, allowing for a unified customer profile that can be accessed and updated instantly. These SAP Data Management Solutions also offer robust security measures and compliance with data protection regulations like GDPR, CDPA, and CCPA. The deep integration between CDP and CDC eliminates compatibility issues and reduces the risk of data breaches by maintaining consistent security protocols across the entire data management process.
- Can SAP Customer Data Cloud and SAP Customer Data Platform be integrated with solutions from different providers?
Yes, one of the critical advantages of SAP products like CDP and CDC is their ability to integrate with solutions from other providers. This flexibility allows you to either use these SAP Customer Data Solutions independently or pair them with third-party products.
- Are there scalability advantages to using SAP CDC and CDP for growing businesses?
The combined use of SAP CDC and CDP offers significant advantages in terms of scalability. As a business expands, these solutions can easily adapt to accommodate a growing volume of customer data and increasingly complex identification needs. Their integration facilitates easy scaling without compromising performance or data security, making them ideal for businesses aiming for sustainable growth.
