- Domain
- Customer Data Platforms (CDP)
- When I worked on it
- 2016—2020
- Companies
- Walmart, Intuit
- Technology and Vendors
- Custom CDPs: Data Lakes, Data Warehouses, Batch & Real-Time, Spark, Kafka, Kafka Streams, Akka, RocksDB, MLeap, Airflow, NiFi
CDP: Segment, mParticle, and RFPs w/ Tealium, Lytics
Data: Experian, LiveRamp, PlaceIQ
Analytics: Amplitude, Adobe
Marketing channels and attribution: see MarTech portfolio
4 years
Expertise
- In general: data platforms, identity resolution, user profiles, marketing channel activation (see MarTech portfolio), analytics, measurement, orchestration, AI/ML platforms, data quality, consent, data sharing, privacy (see privacy portfolio)
- In-House Batch and Real-Time CDPs: Built batch and real-time customer data platforms at Walmart powering marketing, personalization, analytics, privacy, and fraud prevention.
- Vendor CDPs: Led vendor CDP comparison at Intuit (Segment, mParticle, Tealium, Lytics). Owned evolution of mobile marketing vendor tech stack at Walmart (mParticle).
- Identity Resolution: Deterministic and probabilistic identity graph approaches at Walmart.
- Customer ML platforms: Built AI/ML capabilities and APIs at both Walmart and Intuit to enable internal customers to easily run ML models against customer data assets.
- Data consent and controls: At Meta, drove adoption of consent UX standards.
- Data quality: Added quality checks and alerts to pipelines at Walmart to identify and prevent issues. Unified tracking schemas at Intuit for better analytics and ML outcomes.
- Fraud: Saved $xM preventing fraud at Walmart through improved customer data.
- Vendor Contracts & Relationships: Drove multiple 7-figure vendor agreements to better pricing and terms at Walmart and Intuit. Experienced technically-minded RFI/RFP writer.
Walmart Customer Data Platform
From 2018-2020 as a Director at Walmart in Marketing Technology, I led 7 PMs and 60+ cross-functional partners to build and drive cross-company value from a Customer Data Platform (CDP). We exceeded goals in adding $xxxM in incremental annual revenue and saving $yM through customer identity, profiling, and ML solutions applied across marketing, advertising, personalization, fraud, and privacy.
I owned two stacks: (1) a custom-built "Walmart CDP" augmented with 3rd-party data, and (2) a vendor stack to support mobile app marketing (with eventual unification plans).
- The Walmart CDP effort included a complex identity graph created with deterministic and probabilistic approaches, batch and real-time processing/ML, and data from Experian, LiveRamp, and PlaceIQ. Our team has given several talks on our approach.
- The mobile MarTech stack included mParticle, AppsFlyer, Amplitude, Braze, and Radar. I helped manage many of these relationships and restructured our Amplitude and mParticle contracts to enable cross-enterprise use under a single agreement with better pricing.
Feedback:
- “Brought first-time clarity and alignment to complex and strategically essential area of customer data. Incisive in analysis and judgment across his purview and beyond. Advocates for both external and internal customer lenses. Re-tooled planning process to get on top of 100+ project backlog and better manage relationships. Hired ‘raise the bar’ PMs. Regularly contributes insight to improve product management craft.” –Manager, VP of MarTech Product, Walmart
Reference Deck
Contact me to request access to a redacted version of the 60+ slide master deck I created to drive Walmart's Customer Data Platform initiative. It includes vision, strategy, CDP capability deep dives, sample roadmaps, an overview of orgs & teams involved, and strategy considerations particular to Walmart.
Selected Deck Screenshots
Tech Presentations
The Walmart CDP engineering team has given several talks about technical aspects of our platform:
- Spark + AI Summit 2020: Building Identity Graphs over Heterogenous Data
- 2020 Paper: Building Graphs at Large Scale: Union Find Shuffle
- Kafka Summit 2020: Availability-first Kafka Strams at Walmart Scale
- Kafka Summit 2019: Kafka Streams at Scale (video)
- Strata 2019: Building a multitenant data processing and model inferencing platform with Kakfa Streams
QuickBooks Marketing Technology
From 2017-2018, as a Group PM at Intuit in MarTech, I led 7 PMs to drive upper funnel marketing platform and engagement activities for Intuit QuickBooks. My team contributed $xxxM/yr in revenue through platforms and user interfaces: behavioral tracking, user identity and interest profiles, landing pages, sign-up, in-product personalization, notifications, ad serving, and content management (CMS). I was relationship owner for Segment and Amplitude, and helped drive contract negotiations with Segment, Amplitude, and Adobe Analytics.
CDP Build/Buy Analysis
Among our key initiatives, in 2018 I led a build/buy analysis of Customer Data Platforms for CMO and CIO approval. The RFP included Segment, mParticle, Tealium, and Lytics. My analysis and relationshipping resulted in alignment across Intuit business units, $xM vendor funding, and allocation of multiple engineering teams for a hybrid build+buy solution.
Feedback:
- “Dave, you went far above and beyond with the Customer Data Platform project. It was of the highest technical and organizational challenges. You worked through architecture, appeased many partners, negotiated contracts and handed a highly complex solution to the leadership team on a silver platter. Thanks for the long nights; thanks for the acumen and tenacity to see things through. You have set a new bar for all teams when it comes to partner selection and partner management. Simply awesome.” –Manager, Director of MarTech Product Management, QuickBooks
- “Dave, want to take a minute to recognize the massive contributions you've made to evaluation of a broad portion of the MarTech portfolio for Intuit. Your boundaryless approach was a major enabler for us on the TurboTax side and I am personally grateful for your rigorous approach and strong partnership, even for things that were not in the scope of what you originally set out to do. –Director of MarTech Product Management, TurboTax
- “You've run the most impressive RFI process I have yet to witness.” –Segment Co-Founder (Vendor)
- “You are, by far, the most well-informed person on the CDP space that we have come across at a brand.” –Tealium Strategic Accounts Manager (Vendor)
Talks
I was invited to speak at data and analytics events held by Segment (CDP vendor) and Amplitude (Analytics vendor).
- Video: Build or buy… maybe both? CDP Build/Buy Takeaways (slides) – Segment Synapse 2018
- Video: Panel: How Companies use Amplitude for Systematic Growth – Amplitude Amplify 2018
- Video: Panel: Better Products, Better Lives Panel Discussion – Amplitude Roadmap Summit 2018
- Video: Panel: Product Analytics for Better Decisions – Amplitude Summit 2017