ADVISORY SERVICES

Independent strategy and architecture for complex customer experience programs.

CME engagements resolve high-value decisions, reduce implementation uncertainty, and provide a clear path from business ambition to technical, activation, and measurement execution.

Recommended Starting Point

Adobe Value & Readiness Diagnostic

Identify unresolved business, identity, data, activation, measurement, governance, and delivery decisions before committing to additional implementation.

Timeline

3–5 weeks

Typical investment

$15,000–$30,000

View Diagnostic Details

CME advisory is informed by more than 22 years of enterprise experience across customer data, marketing technology, performance marketing, media, analytics, architecture, governance, activation, and measurement.

Explore David's Experience

Adobe Value & Readiness Diagnostic

Identify the unresolved business, identity, data, activation, measurement, and governance decisions before committing to further implementation.

Recommended starting point

Best for

Organizations considering Adobe Experience Platform, expanding an existing Adobe investment, or questioning whether the current implementation plan will produce the intended value.

Typical investment: $15,000–$30,000
Timeline: 3–5 weeks
Format: Structured discovery interviews, artifact review, and executive working sessions
Audience: Executive sponsors, marketing and data leaders, and implementation stakeholders

Principal deliverables

Executive findings brief
Readiness heatmap
Critical decision register
Prioritized 90-day recommendations

View complete deliverable set

Executive findings brief
Readiness heatmap
Use-case assessment
Identity and data-risk analysis
Architecture observations
Audience and activation observations
Measurement-readiness assessment
Critical decision register
Prioritized 90-day recommendations

Discuss This Engagement

Decision-to-Delivery Blueprint

Bridge business ambition and technical execution with a governed architecture, phased roadmap, and build-ready backlog.

Best for

Organizations that have strategic goals but need a complete bridge between business requirements and technical design.

Typical investment: $60,000–$125,000
Timeline: 8–12 weeks
Format: Multi-stream discovery, decision workshops, and architecture design sessions
Audience: Program leadership, solution architects, and delivery teams

Principal deliverables

Future-state solution architecture
Prioritized use-case portfolio
Governance and responsibility model
Phased roadmap
Build-ready implementation backlog

View complete deliverable set

Business-outcome definition
Prioritized use-case portfolio
Customer-journey and interaction analysis
Current-state assessment
Future-state solution architecture
Identity and profile requirements
Data-source and destination mapping
Audience, decisioning, and activation requirements
Measurement and attribution framework
Governance and responsibility model
Dependencies and risk register
Phased roadmap
Implementation backlog

Discuss This Engagement

Real-Time Decisioning Architecture

Design the identity, eligibility, orchestration, and measurement architecture required to make real-time decisions in production.

Best for

Organizations implementing next-best-action, real-time personalization, journey orchestration, or agent-assisted decisioning.

Typical investment: $50,000–$100,000
Timeline: 6–10 weeks
Format: Decision-moment discovery, identity-resolution design, and channel-orchestration workshops
Audience: Marketing, contact-center, personalization, and engineering leaders

Principal deliverables

Decisioning architecture
Eligibility and suppression framework
Identity and profile-resolution requirements
Channel orchestration model
Phased rollout plan

View complete deliverable set

Decision moments and triggering conditions
Identity and profile-resolution requirements
Eligibility and suppression rules
Offer and action prioritization
Contextual signal requirements
Channel orchestration
No-match and ambiguous-match handling
Fallback experiences
Test-and-control design
Decision-performance measurement
Closed-loop learning requirements
Phased rollout architecture

Discuss This Engagement

Audience Governance & Media Orchestration

Create an accountable path from audience request through governed activation to measurable business outcome across paid and owned channels.

Best for

Organizations that need consistent audience definitions, governed activation, agency and internal-team alignment, and a measurable connection from audience through media to outcome.

Typical investment: $60,000–$125,000
Timeline: 8–12 weeks
Format: Cross-functional workshops spanning marketing, media, data, privacy, and analytics
Audience: Marketing, media, analytics, data governance, agency, and technology leaders

Principal deliverables

Audience governance charter
Audience taxonomy and naming standard
Destination-readiness and activation matrix
Campaign, placement, creative, and audience metadata standard
Closed-loop audience-performance framework

View complete deliverable set

Audience governance charter
Audience intake and prioritization workflow
Audience taxonomy and naming standard
Business definition and audience-specification template
Ownership and approval matrix
Identity and eligibility requirements
Inclusion, exclusion, consent, and suppression standards
Audience overlap and conflict-management rules
Audience version, refresh, expiration, and retirement policies
Destination-readiness and activation matrix
Campaign, placement, creative, and audience metadata standard
Agency and internal-team responsibility model
Match-rate and activation-quality monitoring requirements
Cost, impression, click, exposure, and conversion ingestion requirements
Closed-loop audience-performance framework
Cross-channel attribution requirements
Governance adoption roadmap

Discuss This Engagement

CJA & Attribution Enablement

Connect analysis across web, app, CRM, communications, media, transactions, and offline activity through a governed measurement model.

Best for

Organizations seeking connected analysis across web, app, CRM, communications, media, transactions, call centers, retail, and offline customer activity.

Typical investment: $45,000–$95,000
Timeline: 6–10 weeks
Format: Reporting-need discovery, event-taxonomy design, and CJA data-view modeling
Audience: Analytics, marketing, media, data, and measurement teams

Principal deliverables

Business requirements and reporting priorities
Event taxonomy
Dataset, connection, and data-view design
Attribution and journey-analysis plan
Reporting adoption roadmap

View complete deliverable set

Business questions and reporting requirements
Event taxonomy
Campaign, audience, placement, and creative metadata standards
Metric and dimension framework
Identity and stitching requirements
Dataset and connection design
Data-view requirements
Media delivery and cost-data requirements
Attribution and journey-analysis requirements
Experiment and control-group visibility
Online and offline conversion requirements
Data-quality validation
Governance and release requirements
Reporting adoption roadmap

Discuss This Engagement

Transformation Rescue Assessment

Independently diagnose why a program is stalled, over budget, or not producing value — and identify the fastest credible recovery path.

Best for

Programs that are delayed, over budget, fragmented, technically active but not producing business value, or dependent on repeated manual workarounds.

Typical investment: $25,000–$50,000
Timeline: 3–6 weeks
Format: Rapid diagnostic interviews, artifact review, and independent architecture assessment
Audience: Executive sponsors, program leadership, and steering committees

Principal deliverables

Root-cause findings
Architecture and requirement gaps
Immediate stabilization actions
Recovery roadmap
Executive decision brief

View complete deliverable set

Root-cause findings
Architecture and requirement gaps
Vendor and agency-assumption review
Organizational decision gaps
Program-risk assessment
Immediate stabilization actions
Recovery roadmap
Executive decision brief

Discuss This Engagement

Fractional Principal Architect

Independent principal-level architecture, decision facilitation, and vendor oversight embedded across a transformation program.

Best for

Executives who need independent senior expertise but do not require another full-time employee or a large consulting team.

Typical investment: $15,000–$25,000 per month
Timeline: Monthly retainer, typically 3–12 months
Format: Ongoing senior advisory across strategy, architecture, delivery, governance, and vendor management
Audience: CMOs, CDOs, CIOs, and program executives

Principal deliverables

Working sessions and executive advisory
Architecture and deliverable review
Decision memos and decision facilitation
Vendor and implementation-partner oversight
Roadmap governance

View complete deliverable set

Executive advisory
Architecture review
Business-to-technical translation
Audience and measurement governance
Implementation-partner oversight
Vendor and agency accountability
Decision facilitation
Roadmap governance
Risk escalation
Deliverable review
Cross-functional alignment

Discuss This Engagement

Custom Enterprise Programs

Multi-workstream, multi-channel, or multi-business-unit programs are scoped following executive discovery. Investment reflects organizational complexity, platforms, channels, stakeholders, dependencies, and business value at risk. Complex programs typically begin at $125,000.

Discuss an Enterprise Program

Investment ranges represent typical engagement scope. Final fees are based on organizational complexity, business units, platforms, channels, data sources, stakeholders, implementation maturity, and the decisions requiring resolution.

WHAT YOUR TEAM RECEIVES

Structured outcomes across every engagement.

Executive Decision Clarity

Clear findings, prioritized decisions, unresolved risks, and leadership recommendations.

Governed Architecture and Requirements

Documented business, identity, data, audience, decisioning, activation, measurement, and governance requirements.

Prioritized Transformation Roadmap

A phased sequence of dependencies, owners, decisions, workstreams, and capability releases.

Build-Ready Delivery Package

Architecture, data flows, acceptance criteria, decision logic, measurement requirements, and a structured implementation backlog.

FEATURED FRAMEWORKS

Structured components of CME advisory engagements.

Frameworks are tailored components of CME advisory engagements. CME's underlying methods, reusable structures, and tools remain proprietary unless otherwise agreed in writing.

Adobe Value & Readiness Scorecard

Determine whether an organization has resolved the foundational business, data, identity, activation, measurement, governance, and delivery decisions required to realize value from Adobe Experience Cloud.

Capability	Readiness	Decision
Identity & profile	Partial	Required
Audience governance	Not established	Required
Measurement	Ready	—

Representative contents

Use-case prioritization · Executive sponsorship · Identity readiness · Data availability and quality · Consent and governance · Audience activation

Related services

Adobe Value & Readiness Diagnostic · Transformation Rescue Assessment · Decision-to-Delivery Blueprint

Business Use-Case Prioritization Matrix

Convert broad transformation ambition into a sequenced portfolio of use cases based on business value, customer value, data readiness, complexity, measurement feasibility, and dependency.

Use case	Value	Readiness
Cross-channel qualification	High	Ready
Assisted-channel offer	High	Dependency
Loyalty reactivation	Foundational	Partial

Representative contents

Business outcome · Customer need · Target audience · Trigger or decision moment · Required data · Activation channel

Related services

Decision-to-Delivery Blueprint · Real-Time Decisioning Architecture · CJA & Attribution Enablement

Audience Governance Charter

Establish who may request, define, approve, build, activate, modify, measure, reuse, refresh, and retire enterprise audiences.

01Request
02Define
03Approve
04Activate
05Refresh

Continuous governance · measurement · retirement

Representative contents

Business purpose · Requestor and owner · Approver · Inclusion criteria · Exclusion and suppression · Consent eligibility

Related services

Audience Governance & Media Orchestration · CJA & Attribution Enablement · Fractional Principal Architect

View Additional Frameworks

Identity Decision Register

Make identity decisions visible, governed, and traceable across anonymous, known, account, household, device, CRM, media, and channel-specific contexts.

Related: Adobe Value & Readiness Diagnostic · Real-Time Decisioning Architecture · Decision-to-Delivery Blueprint

Eligibility, Suppression & Fallback Matrix

Define how the organization makes a valid decision when customer identity, profile data, eligibility, consent, inventory, offer availability, or channel context is incomplete or conflicting.

Related: Real-Time Decisioning Architecture · Decision-to-Delivery Blueprint · Transformation Rescue Assessment

Media Metadata & Attribution Matrix

Connect audience strategy, campaign execution, media delivery, creative, cost, customer behavior, conversion, and attribution through governed metadata.

Related: Audience Governance & Media Orchestration · CJA & Attribution Enablement · Decision-to-Delivery Blueprint

Phased Transformation Roadmap

Separate immediate foundational decisions from later transformation capabilities while preserving the long-term architecture.

Related: Decision-to-Delivery Blueprint · Transformation Rescue Assessment · Fractional Principal Architect

Build-Ready Implementation Backlog

Translate approved business and architecture decisions into a structured backlog that capable engineering and implementation teams can refine into technical designs and delivery work.

Related: Decision-to-Delivery Blueprint · Real-Time Decisioning Architecture · CJA & Attribution Enablement

Client-specific recommendations and completed engagement deliverables are prepared for the client's use. CME's underlying methodologies, reusable structures, frameworks, and tools remain proprietary unless otherwise agreed in writing.

HOW ENGAGEMENTS ARE STRUCTURED

Three primary engagement structures.

Focused Diagnostic or Assessment

Model: Fixed-fee
Duration: 3–6 weeks
Investment: Typically $15,000–$50,000

Transformation or Architecture Engagement

Model: Fixed-fee
Duration: 6–12 weeks
Investment: Typically $45,000–$125,000

Ongoing Principal Advisory

Model: Monthly retainer
Duration: Typically 3–12 months
Investment: $15,000–$25,000 per month

Custom multi-workstream enterprise programs are scoped following executive discovery and typically begin at $125,000.

CAPABILITY INVENTORY

Technical scope across the customer experience ecosystem.

Adobe Experience Cloud

Adobe Experience Platform
Adobe Real-Time CDP
Adobe Journey Optimizer
Customer Journey Analytics
Adobe Web SDK

View complete capability list (5 more)

Adobe Mobile/App SDK
Adobe Content Analytics
Adobe Analytics
Adobe Target
Adobe Audience Manager

Customer Data & Identity

XDM schemas and data models
Identity Service and identity graphs
ECID and identityMap
CRM, account, household, device, and media identities
Profile merge policies

View complete capability list (5 more)

Anonymous-to-known transitions
Consent and data governance
Batch and streaming ingestion
Datasets, dataflows, sources, and destinations
Audience qualification and activation

Audience Governance, Media & Measurement

Audience intake and prioritization
Audience taxonomy and naming standards
Business definitions and inclusion criteria
Exclusion, suppression, and consent rules
Ownership and approval workflows

View complete capability list (8 more)

Audience overlap and conflict controls
Refresh cadence and expiration policies
Paid and owned destination readiness
Match-rate and activation-quality monitoring
Media platform orchestration
Campaign and placement metadata
Cost and delivery-data ingestion
Conversion feedback and closed-loop learning

Connected Platforms & Transformation Capabilities

Salesforce
Tealium
LiveRamp
Web and mobile applications
Call-center and agent-desktop systems

View complete capability list (17 more)

Email, SMS, push, and digital activation platforms
Paid-media and advertising destinations
Agency and media reporting sources
Retail and offline outcome sources
Use-case prioritization
Business requirements
Solution architecture
Current-state and future-state data flows
Journey orchestration
Real-time personalization
Next-best-action decisioning
Audience governance
Media audience orchestration
Cross-channel attribution and measurement
Operating models
Release governance
Vendor, agency, and implementation oversight

Platform names are used descriptively to indicate technical scope. No third-party marks or logos are used, and no partnership is implied unless explicitly stated.

FIND THE RIGHT STARTING POINT

Resolve the decisions preventing your transformation from moving forward.

The first conversation focuses on the business outcome, current investment, unresolved decisions, and the most useful next step.

Discuss Your Transformation