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Data and Platform Integration
A global leader in specialist knowledge and information services faced a formidable challenge: integrating a newly acquired business’s extensive first-party B2B customer data into its sophisticated customer data platform (CDP). Leveraging the expertise of Acxiom, a trusted customer intelligence partner, the organisation embarked on a rapid and precise data migration journey. This case study explores how the collaboration with Acxiom ensured a seamless transition, enhancing digital capabilities and driving significant business benefits in record time.
The organisation’s stated purpose is to champion the specialist, connecting people with knowledge to help them learn more, know more and do more. Its business is complex and far reaching, with more than 12,000 colleagues working in 30 countries and serving customers in 150 countries.
Challenge
Swiftly migrate a newly acquired B2B business’s customer data to the IIRIS platform.
Approach
Acxiom delivered system discovery, a detailed integration plan, and data synchronisation testing, ensuring flawless execution.
Results
Completed in 12 weeks, unifying complex data, enhancing marketing, improving customer experience (CX), and enabling new services.
Those customers represent dozens of specialist markets and subject categories, including biotech and pharma; health and nutrition; medicine and healthcare; finance; foodservice; education; professional beauty; labels and packaging; and psychology. The organisation delivers products and services based on knowledge, ideas and connections. This includes transaction-led and content-led live and on-demand events, specialist research, advanced learning, open research, specialist media, and digital lead generation services.
Increasing the pace of digitisation
The organisation’s strategy is to create accelerated growth by building scale in specialist markets and increasing the pace of digitisation throughout its business. Between 2021 and 2024, it is delivering this strategy through its growth acceleration plan (“GAP 2”). One of the six core pillars of GAP 2 that aims to accelerate the expansion of its digital services is “digital and data.”
Data is at the heart of what the organisation is doing in B2B markets, and it is critical to its future growth opportunities. In 2021, it decided to invest in IIRIS, its first-party B2B customer data platform, due to the significant opportunities it presented. The goal was to better capture, enrich, analyse, and utilise the data generated when customers interact with its brands and products.
In 2023, notable accomplishments related to this strategic pillar included expanding its consented B2B first-party data records to 20 million and introducing various new digital services, such as a buyer intent platform.
The challenge
IIRIS remains a key focus and driver, with plans to roll it out to all B2B brands that join the company through acquisitions and mergers. In 2023, the organisation added scale in several specialist markets, including the acquisition of a leading foodservice industry business. In parallel with the broader business integration, it faced the challenge of quickly migrating the acquired company’s first-party B2B customer data from legacy platforms to the established IIRIS technology stack, which utilises the Treasure Data CDP.
Partnership approach
Accurate and rapid integration of the acquired company’s first-party data onto the platform was critical. Acxiom had been working alongside the team since the early days of IIRIS, onboarding a significant number of business segments onto the platform and helping to activate audiences across multiple media platforms.
Acxiom’s approach began with an initial discovery of the acquired company’s source systems, including Marketo, its marketing automation platform, and all associated data. Acxiom performed a rigorous record count validation exercise as part of enhanced systems testing to ensure that migrated data had transferred correctly. The project was successfully delivered in 12 weeks.
Immediately following system launch, the joint team ensured that users within the newly integrated food and beverage division became familiar with the new platform and processes, guaranteeing a seamless transition and maintaining business continuity on the IIRIS platform.
Benefits
Leveraging the same data platform across the entire food and beverage division so soon after acquisition proved highly beneficial. The investment in IIRIS enabled the organisation to market its products more effectively, expand its audience, improve customer experience, and develop new digital services based on access to permissioned first-party B2B data.
Delivering integration excellence
The successful integration of acquired B2B customer data into the IIRIS platform exemplifies the strategic importance of effective data management and integration. Partnering with Acxiom played a crucial role in this achievement, demonstrating the power of collaboration in driving growth and improving customer experience.
For businesses looking to enhance their digital capabilities and achieve seamless data integration, Acxiom offers the expertise and strategic approach needed for success.
