Case study
Activating data for a flagship customer experience project for the RAC
Summary
The RAC offers support to over 12.7 million personal and business members across the UK, whatever their driving needs. Best known for breakdown assistance, they also provide motor insurance and a range of other services, including buying a new or used car, vehicle inspections and checks, legal services and traffic and travel information.
Company size
1,001 – 5,000
Industry
Transportation and Logistics
Challenge
RAC outgrew its legacy on-premise SQL campaign system, which was managed by a third-party agency. Data refreshes were slow, taking anywhere from 48 hours to 10 days when failures occurred, which severely impacted campaign agility. Marketing teams could not directly access their own data, refresh it in real time or run efficient, automated campaigns.
Fragmented systems prevented a unified customer view, limited personalisation and created operational bottlenecks. To overcome these challenges, RAC needed a modern, flexible partner ecosystem that could help build scalable data infrastructure, consolidate customer identity, power real-time engagement and improve customer experience at critical service moments.
Solution
As the lead transformation partner, CACI worked with RAC leadership to define a unified marketing and data transformation vision through a data & CRM strategy. Through the power of more, this vision came to fruition via a partner ecosystem that worked together to deliver outcomes unattainable with a singular solution:
- CACI as the lead transformation partner
- Snowflake as the Customer Data Environment (SCV platform)
- Microsoft Azure for data hosting and processing
- AWS for ResolvID hosting
- Adobe Experience Cloud for automated campaigns and marketing journeys.
CACI integrated identity resolution via ResolvID, real-time behavioural signals via Adobe Triggers for instant activation and implemented Adobe Experience Cloud while transforming governance and enablement through secure, compliant, GDPR aligned data models across B2C and B2B. An Email Studio was also deployed to promote in-house creative autonomy, complete with Email Studio templates.
To accelerate activation, CACI also built 42 campaign-ready data tables and two business line structures, migrating all campaigns from the legacy tool to Adobe Campaign and automating where possible. RAC teams were trained on governance, optimisation and scaling the new ecosystem.
A full Customer Data Environment (SCV platform) was built by CACI on Snowflake, giving RAC real ownership and direct data access. This environment hosted the unified customer database and used a pay-by-consumption architecture for cost efficiency, with scalable data processing to power real-time data storage and access, queries and automation workflows.
Through Microsoft Azure, RAC enhanced their data hosting and processing capabilities through Azure Functions for automated refresh and event triggers, along with DBT models for data transformation and dependencies. This managed pipeline orchestration for near-real-time updates.
AWS hosted ResolvID, CACI’s identity resolution engine, offering real-time identity stitching upon ingestion of event files and identity resolution across multiple data sources. This ensured a single customer profile across channels and datasets.
Adobe Experience Cloud delivered Adobe Campaign (CEP), Adobe Target and Adobe Analytics, all of which enabled automated campaigns and marketing journeys, augmented on-site personalisation and performance modelling and insight.
Throughout the transformation, RAC provided business requirements and aligned marketing operations to the new ecosystem, adopting new workflows, governance practices and personalised journeys that empowered their team.
Results
With the support of the wider data and technology partner ecosystem, the RAC was able to gain real-time data access that would enable quicker responses to customers’ needs as well as create more efficient campaigns. Identity resolution and data consolidation delivered a single, accurate customer profile, while improved data access and democratisation empowered teams. This cumulatively led to real-time, personalised engagement that strengthened the overall experience at each touchpoint.
