For almost two decades, Ventana Research has conducted market research in a spectrum of related areas including business planning, data preparation, machine learning, data and analytics in the cloud, natural language processing, and big data analytics and integration. We have also led the establishment of the management and governance of product information management (PIM) products use collaboration capabilities, social media techniques and location-related analytics. The findings of these research undertakings contribute to our comprehensive approach.

This report on the Product Information Management Value Index is the distillation of over a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. It is an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings will address buyers’ requirements for PIM software. The index is structured to replicate an RFI/RFP process by incorporating all criteria needed to evaluate, select, utilize and maintain technology, and maintain relationships with vendors.

In this Value Index, Ventana Research evaluates the software in seven key categories that are weighted to reflect buyers’ needs based on our expertise and research. Five are product-experience related: Usability, Manageability, Reliability, Capability and Adaptability. In addition, we consider two customer-experience categories: Vendor Validation, and Total Cost of Ownership and Return on Investment (TCO/ROI). To assess functionality, one of the components of capability, we applied the Ventana Research Value Index methodology and blueprint, which links the personas and processes for PIM to an organization’s requirements.