The Rise of the CDP Automation Application

The Customer Data Platform (CDP)

Traditionally, a CDP functions as a headless tool designed to create a comprehensive dataset of customer information. These platforms focus on:

Integration of customer data from multiple sources
De-duplication of data and customer records
Persisting information to data warehouses

Early category leaders include Segment and Amplitude, with PostHog offering an open-source alternative.

Co-opting the CDP

Recent years have witnessed numerous tools marketing themselves as Customer Data Platforms, spanning diverse categories:

customer.io
Atlan
Pocus
Census
Hightouch
Klaviyo

These tools encompass marketing platforms, data catalogs, reverse ETL systems, and sales accelerators — yet all claim CDP positioning. This trend connects to automation capabilities.

Workflows are processes

Workflows represent step-by-step processes triggered by specific conditions. Think of making oatmeal: a trigger initiates sequential actions toward a desired outcome.

Historical business processes relied on human execution. Modern automation replaces manual work with computer-driven systems, delivering superior efficiency and consistency compared to human-performed tasks.

The distribution of automation and growth of SaaS

Automation evolved from embedded database functions through third-party schedulers (Control-M, ActiveBatch, JAMS) and RPA tools. Approximately a decade ago, code-first orchestrators (Airflow, Prefect) emerged, dramatically lowering barriers for embedding workflow automation into SaaS applications.

The CDP Automation Application

CDPs + Workflow Tools

CDPs serve automation — they always have. Automation requires data triggers, and unified customer information enables actionable workflows. Modern CDP Automation Applications merge three capabilities users demand:

Unified data visibility
Action execution capabilities
Integrated single platform

CDP Automation Application

What's next?

I predict market expansion rather than consolidation. Less technical users and audience-specific segments (GTM, marketing) will adopt tailored CDP automation solutions, potentially graduating to enterprise-grade tools as requirements expand. Competition drives innovation across the CDP landscape.