Mark Smith's Analyst Perspectives

We are happy to share some insights about Contentserv CS 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 Contentserv and 15 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product (Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability) and two related to the vendor (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.

Contentserv, a European-founded company focused on PIM, was categorized as a Vendor with Merit and ranked 13th in the Value Index. Contentserv performed consistently across all categories and its best in Capability.

The cloud-based Contentserv product establishes mastered product experiences with digital assets that are used for merchandising across manufacturing, retail and other industries. Its depth in Capability is from its focused platform efforts, support for master data management and depth in a range of content and information areas needed for a complete product record.

Our assessment finds room for improvement across the categories that make up the product experience, including Adaptability, Manageability and Usability, which are also not apparent in its own marketing and product information. Contentserv would have performed better with more depth in how it approaches the customer experience and in the TCO/ROI details it provides to potential and deployed customers.

This assessment was based on Contentserv CS’s product information management applications available at end of April of 2021 — CS20.8, released in March of 2021. Since the Value Index was published, version CS21.0 was released in May and CS21.1 in June. These two releases bring significant advancements in what we define as Usability, Manageability, Adaptability and Capability. First is the Cara module — Contentserv Artificial Recommendation Agent — which brings notifications from across its cloud service. Contentserv also advanced its digital experience for the OpenSearch function. Improvement to its Contentserv Cloud, login and tenants will ease the access and use of PIM deployments. Improvements to CS Explorer, including tagging and access to associate content and attributes of them, will simplify efforts for those responsible for managing product information and experiences.

The role of PIM for every organization is to ensure the most accurate and engaging product information that supports customer, enterprise and product lifecycle requirements. Providing effective product information is the foundation to providing an engaging digital experience that meets 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