Five delivery routes for one customer data journey, compared without picking a winner

What to take away

Side-by-side scoring across five criteria groups

Method: desk comparison for an England buyer case, dated 6 September 2026. No product access was granted, so unresolved cells stay unresolved.

Cost cells use each supplier's commercial unit, never a total. A total hides unit, period, term and limits. Quoted UK consultant day rates for managed work typically run from £600 to £1,200 as of 2026.

Identity evidence needs one unit across routes. Note how each route treats a person, account, device and household, and whether a join is asserted, inferred or unresolved. Mapping the journey for a privacy review without settling the lawful basis shows why that labelling matters.

Gates that cannot be offset by other scores

Privacy and PECR authority, identity accuracy and rights propagation each receive pass, hold or reject. The same treatment applies to security, accessibility and exit. A convenience gain elsewhere cannot convert a reject into a pass.

The ICO's individual rights guidance frames correction, objection and deletion, though it decides no single request. Where pixels or other access technologies supply identifiers, the ICO's storage and access technologies guidance frames a separate purpose-specific assessment.

Example: one correction and suppression fixture

The fixture is fictional and identical for every route. It holds 500 service records, one uncertain join, 40 corrections, 25 suppressions and one conflicting preference.

Illustrative cost example: the manual route takes about one analyst day on this fixture. Priced against the quoted UK consultant range of £600 to £1,200 per day, that is £600 to £1,200 before licences. This site's reversible implementation guide explains why activation stays switched off during the run.

Evidence that would tip each route

Each route turns on one specific condition. Anything vaguer is not evidence.

For hosted and managed routes, the NCSC supplier assurance questions give a standard request set covering incidents, audit, data return and deletion. A written reply still needs checking inside your own configuration.

Matching buyer situations to routes

A buyer who must show every step to a small team can start with the manual route. A buyer already inside a licensed estate can test the incumbent route first. A buyer with engineering capacity can weigh the buyer-built stack. A buyer needing regulated-scale activation can review enterprise options. A buyer without delivery capacity can consider a managed route.

Read the contract areas to check in this site's review before committing, because exit, data return and subcontractor terms decide how reversible the choice is. Set one evidence expiry per route: a changed edition, subprocessor, identity method or contract suspends comparability until the common fields are refreshed.

Common questions

What are the five delivery routes compared here?

Excel and Dynamics 365 manual, Twilio Segment, buyer-built Snowplow with dbt and Airflow, Adobe Real-Time CDP, and Accenture Song managed integration.

How should the criteria groups be weighted?

Weights are left blank, because the buyer's situation sets them. A regulated buyer will weight rights propagation and audit evidence above interface polish.

When can cost be compared across routes?

Only once currency, VAT basis, unit, period, term and limits align. Until then, record each route's commercial unit and mark the money unknown.

What happens when a gate fails?

That route is held or rejected for this journey, and no score elsewhere changes it. The buyer can close the gap and re-run the fixture, or test another route.