Mark Smith's Analyst Perspectives

We are happy to share some insights about Informatica's Product 360 drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

We published the Ventana Research Value Index: Product Information Management, the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts. 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.

In all of our Value Indexes, we utilize a structured research methodology that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal and vendor selection process for PIM software. We evaluated Informatica and 15 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product and experience (Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability) and two related to the customer experience (Vendor Validation and Total Cost of Ownership and Return on Investment). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our expertise and research.

Informatica, a long-standing supplier of data-focused technology, has provided a dedicated approach to PIM for almost a decade. Its work building on top of its master data management and data platform has enabled it to further specialize in the requirements for PIM. It was categorized as an Exemplary Vendor and ranked first overall in the Value Index. Informatica was a Value Index Leader and first in five of seven categories, including Validation, Adaptability, Capability, Manageability and Reliability. Informatica performed its best in Capability.

The vendor’s strength comes from its well-established and proven data platform and use of mobile device management, with experience operating at a scale of thousands of customers in the enterprise and in cloud-computing environments. Minor improvements could be made in Usability — where it ranked fourth — in the experiences for a wider range of business personas. In TCO/ROI, small improvements to the presented methods and success to realize benefits and value from an investment could incrementally advance its efforts.

This assessment was based on Informatica’s product information management offering available at end of April of 2021, which was Informatica’s Product 360 Version 10.1, released at end of March 2021. Since the release of the Value Index, Informatica released Version 10.1 HotFix 1 in April 2021, which has a small range of incremental improvements to simple object access protocol, the audit trail, security, global data synchronization network interaction and import deletion operations.

The role of PIM for every organization is to ensure the most accurate and engaging product information that can support the customer, enterprise and product lifecycle requirements. Providing effective product information is the foundation to providing an engaging digital experience that can meet the needs of marketing, commerce and the digital shelf. Organizations should make PIM and product experiences a priority for continuous process improvement, and perform an assessment of existing process and technological approaches, adopt best practices and ensure the effectiveness of product information being utilized for revenue, operations and supply chain processes.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of product information management software in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Value Index by clicking here and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Read the report here.

Regards,

Mark Smith