Six months after releasing its customer data platform into beta, Adobe Systems Inc. today announced the general availability of the offering and two other tools aimed at helping enterprise marketers gain a better understanding of their target buyers.

The term customer data platform, or CDP, covers a relatively new category of solutions that enable companies to centralize their marketing analytics efforts. A CDP can pull buyer records from different sources such as point-of-sale systems and a firm’s website, then stitch them together into a single users profile. Marketers gain the ability to access customers’ online purchase history, store visits, app activity and other useful data in one place.

Adobe is jumping into a crowded market. Oracle Corp. last year introduced a competing CDP offering called CX Unity, while Salesforce.com Inc. has an entry into the category as well in the form of the Customer 360 platform.

CDPs can take a lot of hassle out of analytics projects by bringing together all the needed data in one place, but marketers still need other tools to extract knowledge from that data. That’s the need Adobe is trying to address with Customer Journey Analytics.

The service, which launched into general availability today alongside the CDP, provides a graphical interface that workers can use to find patterns in customer activity and has built-in machine learning models to help with more complex tasks.

Adobe capped off today’s announcement with a couple other product news. The company is launching a tool that syncs tasks between its Experience Platform and Adobe Campaign marketing suites, plus a set of data governance features for the Experience Platform. Companies using the suite can now put in place restrictions on how their marketing teams access customer records to make sure their analytics projects adhere to relevant privacy laws.

Photo: Adobe