Why Your Customer Data Platform (CDP) Should Be the Data Warehouse

The article discusses the limitations of off-the-shelf Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) and suggests using data warehouses as an alternative solution. CDPs are databases that create a unified customer profile by pulling data from multiple sources, cleaning it, and making it available to other marketing systems. However, they have several shortcomings such as not being the single source of truth, not meshing well with data teams, lack of flexibility, owning your data, and not benefiting from the data ecosystem. The author argues that a data warehouse can be more effective as a CDP due to its ability to handle complex data models, provide unrestricted access to data, and benefit from the growing ecosystem around data warehouses. However, there are cases where an off-the-shelf CDP might make sense such as for vertical companies or those with no-code capabilities. The author also mentions tools like Hightouch that can help turn a data warehouse into a customer data platform.