How to select a Product Configurator ? High Level Overview

When you select a new Product Configuration Tool many things need to be taken into account. Below I show some key points that you might want to keep in mind when your company tries to introduce a new tool. In any case it is a good idea to involve a Consulting Company that has deep experience with this process and can help you circumvent some pitfalls.

Steps
1. Determine Business and IT Requirements
    Keep the following in mind

• How will the Product Configurator be used? (e.g. only for internal Sales Reps or on the internet or ... ?)
• What capabilities do you need? (e.g. guided selling, proposed configuration solutions, install based information during product configuration)
• Do you focus on the Sales Configurator (used in the Sales Process), Product Configurator (used in the Manufacturing and Delivery Process) or on the Support part of the Configurator (used to manage installed based information). 
• How will the Product Configuration Tool be integrated into the ERP environment?
• What Pricing requirements do you have? .. and how will they work with the new tool? (e.g. Is something like the SAP Variant Pricing needed?). How will the new tool integrate with your pricing data?
• How will Product Life Cycle changes impact the new tool? 
• What is the Change Management Process when changes occur?

2. Prioritize requirements from 1.

• Keep in mind where the Product Configuration work is expected to occur (on-site or offshore)
• How quick do you need to implement changes (e.g. within 2 hours or within a week) ?

3. Agree on evaluation criteria

• This is a KEY area that should be addressed before you look at any tools. That way you have more objective criteria
• Also ensure that both IT and Business stakeholders are involved in determining these criteria
• User Stories might help to flesh out which criteria are most important (Business stakeholders should provide these User Stories)

4. Determine potential Vendors

• There are many vendors out there. So keep the list manageable (not more than 5 potential vendors if possible)

5. Have vendors demo their solution to your team
    Notes:

• Ensure that Business and IT Stakeholders are at this meeting
• You should provide the vendor a a script that they should follow to ensure all evaluation criteria are considered.
• Remember that YOU should control this meeting NOT THE VENDOR!

6. Score each vendor (after demo)

• This should be done by Business and IT Stakeholders directly after the demo meeting to ensure that you don't forget anything. Instead of doing this in a group you might want to ask every participant to score it for themselves first and then come up with a group scoring.

Note: Depending on the maturity of your company this process can take from 4-6 weeks to whatever. Since this tool will be really important going forward (e.g. your sales team will interface with it on a regular basis, your customers will use it on the Internet regularly) you should take as much time as needed to make the right decision instead of rushing to a decision.