Introduction

Canonical Data Model

The Canonical Data Model (CDM) is the standardized way your organization describes customers, accounts, products, campaigns, and their interactions across all systems.

  • It is a conceptual and logical blueprint, not just a physical schema.
  • It ensures that Customer 360, Campaign 360, and future "360s" are built on the same language and structure, regardless of how messy the source systems are.

CDM sits at the heart of your Customer Data Platform and MaxAI ecosystem. Everything downstream (segmentation, activation, analytics, AI) assumes CDM is the standard truth. For more information, refer to Unica MaxAI Canonical Redbook Guide.

Supported Subject Areas Today

CDM currently delivers:

  • Customer 360 – unified, behavior-rich customer profile.
  • Campaign 360 – complete campaign lifecycle and performance view.

Key Characteristics of the CDM

  • Subject-area centric and evolvable: CDM is organized around business concepts (Party, Account, Product, Campaign, Segment, Transaction) and can grow to cover more without breaking existing implementations.
  • Reusable and extensible: Once CDM is in place, new subject areas can reuse:
    • The same modeling patterns
    • The same metadata-driven ETL
    • The same governance and quality rules
  • Metadata-driven: The real "brain" of CDM is the Metadata Model. It defines:
    • Entities, attributes, and relationships
    • Source → target mappings
    • Data quality rules
    • Lineage rules
    • ETL generation logic

Three-Pillar Value Framework

The CDM is positioned around three pillars:

  1. Canonical Model ("What We Support")

    Pre-built industry structures such as:

    • Party Profile
    • Account Profile
    • Product Profile
    • Location & Branch
    • Digital & Device
    • Transaction & Marketing Data
  2. Your Data Assets ("What We Need From You")

    This includes:

    • Customer master records
    • Identity documents / KYC
    • Contact information
    • Demographic & preference data
    • Interaction history, accounts, and transactions
  3. Business Outcomes ("What You Achieve")

    CDM enables:

    • Unified Customer View
    • Relationship intelligence
    • Real-time insights
    • Personalization across channels
    • Cross-channel orchestration and optimization

Key Benefits of the CDM Approach

  • Consistency across subject areas: Same patterns, naming conventions, and modeling style for every 360.
  • Faster implementation: Reuse canonical patterns and metadata-driven automation instead of hand-building subject areas from scratch.
  • Improved data quality: Data quality rules live in metadata and are applied uniformly across LDZ → RDV → 360.
  • End-to-end lineage: Every transformation is captured, from source to Landing Zone to Data Vault to 360 views.
  • Scalable integration: New subject areas and downstream systems (CDP, MaxAI, reporting) can be added without redesigning the core.