Leveraging a Modern Data Hub to Deliver Innovation

Challenge

The Novo Nordisk team understood the value of leveraging a customer data platform (CDP) to build a holistic view of their data but were held back by the limitations of their existing custom-built CDP. The existing platform was heavily dependent on tailor-made data processes. Data pulls for campaign use required a 24 to 48 hour wait time, and data-in/data-out from the platform was incredibly fragile, causing the enrichment of data sources to be so lengthy that it was a deterrent. Additionally, the platform lacked direct integrations into the marketing platform, provided no web behavioral insights or digital microsegment level data, and was primarily focused on issue management and monitoring. All-in-all, the platform was costly, ineffective, and inefficient.

Solution

Merkle and Novo Nordisk underwent a formal discovery and planning phase, which informed the three focal points of the project: Sources, destination, and use cases for data. Next, during the design phase of the project, the team vetted the technical details prior to implementation.

Project objectives:

• Enhance customer experience delivery and mature channel-specific capabilities by giving business users access to the right data quickly for marketing activation.
• Future-proof Novo Nordisk’s digital strategy with a CDP that could accelerate marketing innovation.
• Migrate from the existing, high-maintenance CDP to Adobe’s modernized CDP.
• Integrate with Novo Nordisk’s existing Adobe technology investments including Campaign, Analytics, and Target.

Novo Nordisk and Merkle worked together to implement their Omnichannel Customer Experience Hub, a CDP-centric solution that would facilitate the delivery of relevant experiences at scale. The Hub would collect customer data across all channels to build a holistic customer profile, enabling Novo Nordisk to engage with customers in a more personal and relevant way, while ensuring the team remained effective and efficient along the way.

Result

Today, the platform is in place and is powering several initial use cases. The Adobe tools, working in conjunction with the Experience Hub, deliver a more seamless flow of data from collection to analysis. This solution also alleviated previous frustrations with lengthy extractions, as data was compiled in a customer’s profile as soon as new interactions occurred. Going forward, the focus will be on ramping up new use cases to increase speed and scale. The solution is driving collaboration among cross-functional teams (Omnichannel Marketing, Campaign, Technology) with a focus on spotting and prioritizing emerging opportunities for customer engagement.