Enterprise organizations have never had so much customer data, yet for many, outcomes remain flat. That's because data alone doesn't increase conversions - it takes a strong foundation and predictive insights to expand your reach and drive higher value sales.
Improving business outcomes isn't about investing more in customer data; it's about making those investments count. Enterprises are spending heavily on siloed data that's difficult to manage and too complex to inform decision-making. Instead of fuelling growth, customer data is sucking valuable resources into a black hole.
Before an enterprise can begin transforming its data, it needs to know where it stands today. Amperity's Return on Customer Data (ROCD) Maturity Model helps companies find their place on the maturity curve and map out their road to success. For enterprise organizations, there's a lot to gain - moving up one level can unlock tens of millions of dollars in incremental revenue and operating margin.
This article will offer an introduction to the ROCD Maturity Model; for a complete guide, download our recent whitepaper.
Understanding Return on Customer Data (ROCD)
Every enterprise measures the return on its investments, but when it comes to customer data, most rely on guesswork and gut instinct. Businesses need a new metric to help them understand whether their data is accelerating outcomes or holding them back.
ROCD measures how efficiently your company turns customer data into business value, whether that's revenue growth, cost efficiency, or faster decision making. The model then identifies where you are on the maturity curve - Marginal, Stable, Best in Class, or Transformational - and what you need to do to reach the next stage.
Our full whitepaper walks you through one composite company's journey from Marginal to Transformational. As you follow their progress along the maturity curve, you'll see how small changes lead to major gains in efficiency, trust, and growth. The composite company started by building a central data warehouse for ecommerce transactions, loyalty enrollments, and POS data - a strong data foundation that would set them up for long-term success.
The Four Stages of ROCD
Transforming customer data from a liability into an asset doesn't happen overnight. Instead, you need to take it one step at a time and build on the progress you've already made. The ROCD model defines four stages of maturity that capture how enterprise organizations operate with customer data.
Marginal: Customer data is abundant but unhelpful. Duplicated records, delayed reporting, and hand-assembled campaigns slow teams down instead of accelerating progress. The enterprise is wasting time and money on data that doesn't yield results.
Stable: Data flows into the right systems, core identifiers align, and reports are consistent. While the data foundation is stable, it provides limited value. Activation follows calendars instead of signals, and offline purchases are slow to sync, resulting in redundant retargeting. Analytics are mostly retrospective, with little predictive power.
Best in Class: Customer data is finally working for the business. Customer profiles draw on signals from ecommerce, loyalty, POS, and third-party partners, and activations are automated across channels. Forward-facing analytics help teams predict what customers will buy next and who is likely to churn. Teams trust the data and use it daily.
Transformational: Data moves from a supporting role to center stage. Companies can adapt to customers in real time with online and offline interactions flowing into a single view. Data is woven into every decision, with teams from marketing to finance operating from the same trusted customer view. Customer data is a true competitive advantage.
Using the ROCD model, you can identify where your organization stands today and what you can achieve by aiming higher. With small changes at every stage, you can move along the curve consistently and generate a return on customer data that grows over time.
Why Enterprises Should Aim High
With a solid customer data foundation, every improvement you make becomes a force multiplier. Results compound as you reach more customers, increase the number of purchases per customer, and secure higher value orders. When data is easier to manage, you also have more time to spend on strategy and innovation - the driving forces behind business growth.
Fixing identity allows you to expand your reach while suppressing your target list, increasing paid-media ROI and cutting out customer noise. Better onboarding closes the gap between data and decisions - yesterday's purchases and product searches are already informing today's retargeting. Clean data means smarter activation and more, higher-value conversions for the same budget.
If your organization is drowning in customer data, it's time to take action. Read the whitepaper to find out more about the economic impact of ROCD and how it can give you a competitive edge.