PIM requirements checklist and RFP template

Without written requirements, a PIM selection turns into a comparison of demos, and every vendor demos its strongest feature. You end up choosing on presentation instead of fit. A requirements list forces each vendor to answer the same questions, and it gives your own team one agreed definition of what the system must do.

Requirements also protect the rollout. When the contract names the connectors, import formats and quality rules you need, there is no debate later about what was in scope. If you are still deciding whether you need a PIM at all, read what PIM is first, and use our PIM best practices to shape how you will run it.

Good requirements start from facts about your catalog, not from feature lists. Spend a week collecting the numbers below with the people who touch product data today: e-commerce, purchasing, marketing, IT and whoever answers supplier emails.

Below are 34 requirements in four groups. The priority is a starting point: move items up or down to match your business, then delete what does not apply. Copy the table into your RFP as is, or get the printable version by email.

A requirements list where everything is a must has no priorities at all. Keep must haves to the items without which the project fails: usually catalog scale, the data model, the connectors to your main channels, an ERP path and quality rules. Should haves are what makes the team faster. Nice to haves break a tie between two vendors.

A useful test: for each must have, ask whether you would walk away from an otherwise perfect vendor that lacks it. If the answer is no, it is a should have.

An RFP (request for proposal) turns your requirements into a document vendors can answer in a comparable way. Keep it short: vendors answer a ten-page RFP more carefully than a fifty-page one. Use this structure:

A scripted demo on your own products shows more in an hour than a week of slides. Send every shortlisted vendor the same sample, for example 50 products from two product types plus one messy supplier file, and ask them to show these scenarios live:

Score each vendor from 1 to 5 per criterion, multiply by the weight and add up. Agree the weights before the first demo, so nobody adjusts them to favor a vendor afterwards. The weights below are an example to adapt, not a standard:

Most failed PIM selections fail for the same handful of reasons. Watch for these during your process:

We would rather you score us honestly than oversell. WISEPIM covers the functional group of the checklist: product families, variants, Quality Guard rules that can block a product per channel, workflow and lifecycle stages, linked digital assets, AI enrichment and translation into 70+ languages, bulk edits and a product audit log.

On integration, WISEPIM imports CSV, Excel, XML and JSON with saved mappings and a SKU or EAN match key, exports through templates and Feed Hub, has a REST API with webhooks, and connects natively to webshops such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento 2, Lightspeed and CCV Shop; see all PIM connections. There is no native connector for ERPs such as SAP, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central or Odoo. Those run through file exchange or the API, as our SAP PIM and Business Central PIM guides explain.

Pricing is published on the pricing page, AI usage costs a few cents per product depending on the plan, and the free plan holds up to 100 products, so you can run the demo script yourself before you talk to anyone.