Fuze CMO: A single source of truth for customer data ‘collapses under its own weight’

Virtually every marketer or marketing software vendor I interview says they want to establish “a single source of truth” about customers by getting rid of silos and setting up a single company-wide repository.

Everyone, that is, except Brian Kardon, CMO of business communication provider Fuze.

The former CMO of Eloqua and Lattice Engines, Kardon is not exactly a novice in dealing with customer data. (He will be participating in a keynote discussion on the evolution and future of martech at our MarTech Conference in October.)

“Each marketer has one system of record,” he told me, “and that ends up being marketing automation” like Salesforce’s ExactTarget, while salespeople have their own customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

A marketing automation platform, he said, contains “all our campaigns, all your activities, who opened [emails].”

“That’s your main system of record,” he said. You might also have, say, a specialized tool to track webinar activity, and that data ports into the marketing automation platform.

But, I asked, what about a central repository of customer data, like a Customer Data Platform. Some “single source of truth” about the customer, something that almost everyone I interview professes to want.

Nope, he said. “It’s not our taste. I need to have some walls up.”

[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]

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About The Author

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.

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