Composable CDP: Decoupled or Disjointed - Composability in Customer Data
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) enable a unified, consolidated solution to manage customer data across marketing, sales, and service channels. Whilst this monolithic approach simplifies how vendors are managed, there are arguments that it encourages rigidity, with businesses finding themselves locked into platforms that limit their ability to fully leverage their data whilst being difficult to customise.
To remain competitive in today’s fast-paced markets, brands require speed, agility and control of their data infrastructure. The perceived limitations of traditional CDPs in enabling these pillars of differentiation have led to the rise of composable CDPs – modular architectures that bring together best-in-class tools tailored to business needs and use cases.
The mantra here is ‘decoupled, not disjointed’: flexible, yet cohesive.
In this article we are not arguing as to which approach is better, but rather that the success of both approaches are dependent on the same strategic enabler - use case identification and value realisation.
What Is a Composable CDP?
Composable CDPs assemble customer data solutions from specialised components. Each piece — whether it’s data collection, storage, identity resolution, or activation — is chosen for its strengths and designed to integrate via APIs.
An example of this might be using Segment to capture and ingest digital event data, Snowflake to handle scalable storage and processing and Hightouch to activate insights in marketing or sales systems. Identity resolution, or a unified customer profile, might be delivered through a custom-built solution or a dedicated service.
Supporters argue that this modular approach allows businesses to innovate continuously, replace outdated components without disruption, and build a customer data architecture that evolves with their strategy.
Core Components of a Composable CDP
At its core, a composable CDP is built from several key layers:
- Cloud Data Warehouse: Platforms like Snowflake or BigQuery act as the central data repository, enabling efficient storage and complex processing.
- Data Collection: Tools such as Segment or RudderStack capture events and interactions across customer touchpoints, ensuring clean and reliable data ingestion.
- Identity Resolution: Systems unify fragmented customer identifiers into cohesive profiles, critical for accurate segmentation and personalization.
- Data Activation (Reverse ETL): Platforms like Census or Hightouch move enriched data back into operational tools — marketing automation, CRM, advertising — enabling timely and relevant customer engagement.
- Governance and Consent Management: Frameworks and tools ensure compliance with privacy regulations, enforce data quality, and orchestrate workflows.
- Analytics and BI: Reporting and visualization tools, including Looker or Tableau, enable data-driven decision-making.
Each component can be selected, scaled, and optimized independently, aligning technology with business goals.
The benefit of composability
The argument for composability focuses on its modular nature and the distinct advantages this creates for businesses that adopt it. The added strategic flexibility realised through the ability to quickly integrate new tools, replace underperforming ones without costly overhauls whilst aligning spend with actual needs through scaling individual components, is an attractive proposition in the current climate where marketing budgets are being squeezed.
Decoupled or disjointed?
However, successfully decoupling your marketing architecture through a composable CDP requires a high level of technical know-how, dedicated engineering resources, and strong governance frameworks. Without deep expertise in integrating diverse systems and ensuring real time data flows, the potential benefits of flexibility and scalability can quickly turn into operational challenges.
A lack of engineering focus can result in fragmented data silos, inconsistent customer profiles, and delayed insights. Furthermore, insufficient governance increases the risk of data inaccuracies, security vulnerabilities, and compliance issues, undermining trust in your marketing data. Fail in any one of these critical pillars, and your marketing architecture becomes disjointed, costly to maintain, and poorly utilised – jeopardising your ability to deliver personalised, real-time customer experiences and diminishing the return on investment of your marketing technology stack.
Key differences
Comparing composable CDPs to traditional CDPs in relation to cost and speed of deployment can be misleading, as its very much dependent on the cleanliness of existing data within the data warehouse and component make up and requirements of your architecture. In this section, we focus on the less ambiguous differences.
| FACTOR | COMPOSABLE CDP | TRADITIONAL CDP |
|---|---|---|
|
Flexibility |
High ( choose best-in-class components) |
Limited ( bound to vendor eco-system) |
|
Technical Expertise |
High ( dependency on data engineers and solution architects) |
Low to moderate ( marketers can often operate independently) |
|
Customisation |
Highly customisable |
Limited to vendor capabilities |
|
Data Accessibility |
Zero copy data – access to all data in warehouse |
Data Copying – dependent on license agreement. |
|
Marketer Usability |
Low ( high dependence on data team for audience creation and activation) |
High ( self service for segmentation and audience creation) |
Value Realisation Through Use Cases
For all the pros and cons of a composable CDP versus an traditional CDP, the core capabilities they offer are fundamentally similar—both aim to unify customer data, enable real-time segmentation, and support personalised experiences at scale.
However, the real values lie not in the technology itself but in how effectively an organisation defines and prioritises its use cases. Without a clear understanding of business goals and use case framework, even the most advanced CDP solution will struggle to deliver meaningful value. Successful extraction of value from your marketing technology stack depends on aligning platform capabilities with well-defined use cases, prioritising initiatives that drive the highest value, and maintaining the agility to adapt as market and customer dynamics evolve.
Ultimately, whether you choose a composable or enterprise CDP, a strategic focus on use case clarity and prioritisation is essential to maximise ROI and unlock the full potential of your marketing ecosystem.
Want to learn more about the use case
Check out our Zero Party Data module in Dexata Academy for a more detailed explanation of the use case configuration.
About The Author
Alexander Glanville-Wallis
