product dev has it. you need it.

"Product dev has it. I need it.”

This year, I spoke with a CCO, a CRO, a CMO, and a VP of Renewals at major enterprise companies. They all said different versions of the same thing: "I’m not getting the product data I need to round out what I know about customers so that I can retain and grow them."

It has been 25+ years since the inception of SaaS. Yet, the vision of using product data to drive customer success and expansion is still eluding most companies. Why? Best I can tell, it’s two things…

The Silo Trap: Product, Marketing, and CS are solving local problems rather than maximizing collective impact.

The Point Solution Problem: Teams use tools like Pendo as isolated islands rather than integrating that data into the enterprise architecture (CRM, Data Warehouse, Support).

It doesn’t matter why it's happening. What matters is the cost. When product data stays trapped in product tools, you face three massive missed opportunities:

1. The Retention Blind Spot

Without live product data, you cannot drive proactive engagement. You are flying blind on usage characteristics that signal churn risk. You can't align communications across channels (email vs. in-app). And you’re reacting to cancellations rather than intervening based on behavior.

2. The Growth Ceiling

Expansion shouldn't be a guessing game. Lack of data means an inability to prioritize upsell efforts or drive multi-channel trial conversions. You can't see which customers have maximized their current entitlement and are ripe for expansion, nor can you effectively drive adoption of new products because you don't know who is using the old ones.

3. The AI Dead End

This is the new, critical risk. You cannot utilize AI to drive automation if your AI models can't see what the customer is doing. Limited product data means limited ability to automate inbound support requests and an inability to deploy the next generation of predictive services. AI needs fuel, and product usage data is high-octane.

The Cultural Shift

Everyone is looking for efficiency and growth. But fixing this requires a cultural shift as much as a technological one.

We've had the technology for decades. The pipes exist. The APIs exist.

The blocker is the mindset that says product usage data belongs to the product team.

To win, you must treat product data as enterprise data. It belongs in the hands of the people responsible for revenue and retention, not just the people building features.

Are you hoarding product data, or are you leveraging it for growth?

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