How To Develop A Data Strategy

Before loading data to the D&B CDP, it’s important to think about your data strategy to ensure
the right data is ingested.

Read through this guide to learn more about developing a data strategy. Then fill out the last two pages of this guide with your organization’s information.

Create A System Catalog

Create a system catalog that identifies all the systems and objects within your organization that
contain data about customers and prospects that you would like to ingest into the CDP.

The CDP supports objects like Accounts, Contacts, Product Purchases, Product Bundles,
Marketing Activities and more. 

An example of a system catalog for an organization that has Salesforce, Marketo and Oracle is
below:

Define System Priority

It is not uncommon for multiple systems to have the same field. Defining a system priority
allows you to have the data from your most trusted source visible in the CDP.

An example of system priority for an organization that has Salesforce, Marketo and Oracle is
below:

Catalog System IDs

Cataloging the relationship between systems helps the CDP match data across systems to
create the customer master.

Catalog two types of system IDs:

• Unique ID (or primary key): A field that helps uniquely identify a record within an object.
• Match ID (or foreign key): Additional IDs that can help connect the data from one record to
another.

An example of a system ID catalog for an organization that has Salesforce, Marketo and Oracle
is below

Catalog Match Attributes

Match attributes are standard fields from objects that can help uniquely identify records even
in the absence of a unique ID. Match attributes are also used for matching accounts to the D&B
Data Cloud.

The following match attributes are accepted for accounts and contacts:

An example of a match attribute catalog for an organization that has Salesforce, Marketo and
Oracle is below: