3 questions from the package
From the RFI round. The first shows part of the guide each question carries; the workbook adds follow-ups, how to verify the answer, a priority and a weight.
1. Which identifier types can your product use as match keys, including custom identifiers such as [loyalty program ID] or [internal customer ID]?
Why it matters. If the product cannot match on the keys the buyer's sources carry, offline and loyalty records stay as separate profiles. Every audience built on them is then incomplete.
Good answer
- Lists email, phone, device IDs, cookie IDs, loyalty IDs and offline customer IDs as supported keys
- An administrator can add custom identifier types in configuration without vendor services
- States whether hashed identifiers can be used as match keys
Red flags
- Only email and cookie IDs are supported natively
- Custom identifiers require a professional services engagement or a product release
- Answers "any identifier" without naming types or describing configuration
2. Can administrators add custom entities, such as [custom entity type], that are linked to profiles?
Why it matters. Without related entities, the buyer must flatten records such as subscriptions, vehicles or policies into profile attributes. That loses detail needed for audiences and computed traits.
3. In which system is the system-of-record copy of the unified customer profile stored when your product runs against our [cloud data warehouse]?
Why it matters. If the vendor's store holds the canonical profile while the buyer's warehouse holds another, the buyer runs two profile copies. Those copies can drift, and each needs its own governance and access controls.
Capability areas
Identity Resolution & Matching (14)
Deterministic and probabilistic matching across email, phone, device, cookie, loyalty and offline keys, plus match-rule transparency, tuning, confidence scoring, merge and unmerge handling, and accuracy on messy records. Out: survivorship of attribute values, which belongs to the unified profile area.
Unified Profile & Golden Record (11)
How the unified profile is assembled and exposed: survivorship rules, attribute lineage, computed traits, profile schema extensibility, and household or B2B account stitching. Out: the matching logic that decides which records belong together.
Data Architecture & Warehouse Integration (12)
Where the canonical profile lives (vendor store, buyer warehouse, or zero-copy), compute pushdown to the buyer's cloud data warehouse, data duplication, and whether PII leaves the buyer's boundary. Out: hosting regions and tenancy, which belong to the deployment module.
Event Collection & Ingestion (10)
First-party collection SDKs for web, mobile and server, anonymous-to-known identification at collection, batch and warehouse ingestion, and offline sources such as POS, call center and loyalty files. Out: schema enforcement and tracking-plan governance.
Data Quality & Tracking-Plan Governance (9)
Tracking-plan definition, schema validation and data contracts that block or quarantine bad data before it reaches profiles, PII tagging at the field level, and data-quality monitoring of profile inputs. Out: pipeline uptime and sync-failure alerting.
Audience Segmentation & Builder (11)
Marketer-facing audience building on events, traits and relationships, SQL or code-based definitions, audience size estimates, overlap analysis, versioning of audience definitions, and reuse across destinations. Out: AI-generated audiences and predictive scores.
Activation & Destination Sync (12)
Destination connectors for ad platforms, ESP/MAP, support and analytics tools, reverse-ETL sync behavior, identifier mapping per destination, incremental versus full syncs, rate-limit handling, and sync reliability. Out: in-session real-time decisioning.
Real-Time Profiles & In-Session Activation (10)
Streaming profile and audience updates, in-session segmentation, low-latency profile lookup for personalization, and event-triggered activation. Out: batch scheduling of standard destination syncs.
Consent Enforcement & Privacy Operations (12)
Consent and purpose capture, CMP integration, consent enforcement at the point of activation for each destination, data-subject access and deletion propagation to connected destinations, and field-level access controls on PII inside the product. Out: the DPA, sub-processors and contractual privacy terms, which belong to the data protection module.
Predictive & AI-Assisted Audiences (10)
Built-in propensity, churn and lifetime-value models, natural-language audience building, next-best-action, where models run (warehouse or vendor), and explainability of model-driven segments. Out: generic AI governance, bias and safety controls, which belong to the AI modules.
Measurement & Audience Performance (8)
Holdout and control groups, attribution of outcomes to audiences and activations, audience performance reporting, and write-back of results to the profile or warehouse. Out: general BI and dashboard tooling.
Operations, Observability & Usage Metering (9)
Monitoring and alerting for ingestion, identity jobs and destination syncs, audit history of audience and rule changes, lineage from source to destination, and in-product visibility of the billable usage unit (MTUs, profiles or credits) and warehouse compute consumed. Out: support SLAs and pricing terms.
Questions about this package
How many Customer Data Platform (CDP) RFP questions are there?
128 solution questions in 12 capability areas: 25 for the RFI, 67 for the RFP and 36 deep-dive questions for the finalists. The workbook adds 80 due-diligence questions on security, integration, implementation and exit.
What comes with each question?
Why it matters, good-answer signals, red flags, follow-up questions, how to verify the answer (a demo step, a test or a document), and a suggested priority and weight for scoring.
Can I edit the questions?
Yes. The workbook is an ordinary Excel file. Change, add or remove questions, and change the weights; the scorecard recalculates.
Which license do I need?
The Enterprise License covers any number of evaluations inside one organization. The Consultancy License covers use with any number of clients. Neither allows reselling or republishing the questions.
