Liliendahl on Data Quality

A Request for Proposal (RFP) process for a Master Data Management (MDM) and/or Product Information Management (PIM) solution has a hard fact side as well as there are The Soft Sides of MDM and PIM RFPs.

The hard fact side is the detailed requirements a potential vendor has to answer to in what in most cases is the excel sheet the buying organization has prepared – often with the extensive help from a consultancy.

Here are what I have seen as the most frequently included topics for the hard facts in such RFPs:

• MDM and PIM: Does the solution have functionality for hierarchy management?
• MDM and PIM: Does the solution have workflow management included?
• MDM and PIM: Does the solution support versioning of master data / product information?
• MDM and PIM: Does the solution allow to tailor the data model in a flexible way?
• MDM and PIM: Does the solution handle master data / product information in multiple languages / character sets / script systems?
• MDM and PIM: Does the solution have capabilities for (high speed) batch import / export and real-time integration (APIs)?
• MDM and PIM: Does the solution have capabilities within data governance / data stewardship?
• MDM and PIM: Does the solution integrate with “a specific application”? – most commonly SAP, MS CRM/ERPs, SalesForce?
• MDM: Does the solution handle multiple domains, for example customer, vendor/supplier, employee, product and asset?
• MDM: Does the solution provide data matching / deduplication functionality and formation of golden records?
• MDM: Does the solution have integration with third-party data providers for example business directories (Dun & Bradstreet / National registries) and address verification services?
• MDM: Does the solution underpin compliance rules as for example data privacy and data protection regulations as in GDPR / other regimes?
• PIM: Does the solution support product classification and attribution standards as eClass, ETIM (or other industry specific / national standards)?
• PIM: Does the solution support publishing to popular marketplaces (form of outgoing Product Data Syndication)?
• PIM: Does the solution have a functionality to ease collection of product information from suppliers (incoming Product Data Syndication)?

Learn more about how I can help in the blog page about MDM / PIM Tool Selection Consultancy.