Likelihood to Recommend Arena PLM is well suited for part number, BOM and file management. Processing changes (ECNs, ACOs, DCO's, etc.) in Arena is very easy to do and provides great visibility on the status of submitted requests. The ability to communicate with Suppliers and grant them access to files in Arena is extremely helpful. Arena does not appear to be the best suited system for managing software
Read full review Having used some of the competitor's tools over the year I would say that SauceLabs provides a lot of value for money if you plan to run long sets of tests with high frequencies. Paying for a single slot means you can run tests whenever you want without creeping costs but it does make running tests in parallel require an extra slot. Currently, our test suite takes over three hours to run and at the moment it is cost prohibitive to purchase an extra slot. However, having access to live testing and integration with Appium is great.
Read full review Pros It provides easy, 'login-anywhere' internet cloud-based access to fundamental PLM functions. It provides secure access control for employees & vendors (but you pay per person for access licenses). Data is effectively 'always backed up' in the internet-cloud. There is an option to attach thumbnail graphics representative of each item and create a Bill of Materials view that also displays the graphics to help provide item recognition for BOM readers. Read full review Provides a comprehensive selection of browser and platform versions for test automation and CI/CD pipeline support Provides a rich selection of browser/platform availability for customer issue reproduction Provides a comprehensive set of virtual mobile device configurations for automation and availability Sauce Labs' SaaS and self service tools work and perform well Read full review Cons In my opinion, the Help Pages clearly do not realize that a picture is worth a 1,000 words; need illustrations and screenshots! I think the 'Save' button when editing Quality Processes needs to "float" on the active page, not lurking at the bottom. In my experience, the Arena PLM and QMS Training programs need to be revamped to include "real-world" examples and working through examples, not simply reading through a training manual. David Martin Sr. Dir., Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs
Read full review I've had four changes in account managers over the past couple of years. They ranged from super experienced/advocate to some that seems relatively junior/a bit removed. I understand this happens but clarity on what I can expect with these partnerships would be valuable. What I've gotten in the end has varied dramatically. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We have so much time and effort invested into Arena. The history of approvals, revisions, etc. are necessary for many of our customers. We also have entire device histories recorded. Having to re-create that on another platform would be a feat requiring years of effort. But mostly, Arena just works. It's transformed our business into a much more streamlined system, resulting in a massive cost and time savings.
Read full review As we currently know, there's nothing on the market with a big feature set like saucelabs at their current price point. Along with the business not having to learn a whole new tool to use again and the ability to refresh our private devices and the continuously growing number of public devices available and features.
Read full review Usability Arena has improved their UI over the years that I've used it to make it more user friendly. Additionally, there is a lot of redundancy within Arena (multiple ways to achieve the same end), which makes it easier to learn.
Read full review It is an incredibly easy service to use for what its primary intention is. The only reason a point is deducted is because more feature enrichment can be done around the Sauce Connect Proxy utility and the
Jenkins Sauce OnDemand plugin. User Account administration also needs more work, such as the addition of user groups, rather than a simple hierarchy of users.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Seems like when I need to access our workspace for an emergency situation, this is when maintenance is scheduled, just the luck of the draw, I guess, and I just wait until the maintenance is complete, and then can proceed
Read full review Yes, Sauce labs is always there, and it is easy to troubleshoot when you are having any connectivity issue, they always keep you informed when they plan to perform any type of maintenance window on their side in advance, so you can plan and will not affect your current work. I do not recall any outage.
Read full review Performance We use a few other software or systems (Silicon expert) and it is seamless to us, pages load quickly and efficiently.
Read full review The time where they acquired TestObject and were trying to integrate their services would probably be the most annoying time. Annoying as features were in two separate places (websites) for example. But since the introduction of their unified platform, we haven't run into any issues as of yet and we've used them for at least 5-6 years now.
Read full review Support Rating Upon initial observation, Arena Solution appears to possess a rather intricate nature, yet this complexity was effectively navigated during the initial configuration phase with the invaluable assistance of an expert well-versed in Arena, a factor that greatly contributed to our comprehensive mastery and autonomous handling of Arena Solutions thereafter.
Read full review The people here are just so friendly and personable. For instance, Tristan Lombard answered every single email with a very cheery tone and not only did he diagnose my issue, he also made sure to ask how my day was going. Keep it up
Read full review Online Training The On line training was easy to understand and was very efficient for most of our users. We used the training tools to make sure we use all of the features to their fullest and correctly! After a few weeks mos of our users were very proficient with ARENA PLM and were able to work on their own and use mos of the sections and PLM capablilities.
Read full review Implementation Rating Pretty straightforward, from OOB
Read full review I am not sure if it's my company that makes getting Sauce Labs integrated into the team difficult or is it Sauce Labs. The process for getting Sauce Labs for a project is quite a tedious process and the information for using Sauce Labs initially is quite lacking. There is little support for getting started
Read full review Alternatives Considered Arena is much better than
QAD in terms of BOMs and ECOs and Revision Control. We use Arena concurrently with SAP and they integrate very well together, which is nice. The integration team was really helpful in making sure that the SAP to Arena functionality runs smoothly, and when there are any issues, they are very responsive to help make changes to fix the problem that might be there.
Read full review We have also tested out Browser Stack, which at the time was more geared towards manual testing. Although it appeared to support more mobile devices/browsers, we also wanted something that can plugin in easily with our existing Selenium test scripts. Sauce Labs was definitely more geared towards our goals at the moment which were to automation functional/regression testing and build it into our release pipeline.
Read full review Scalability Arena is easy to customize and therefore easy to scale. Different user groups with access restrictions can be easily created and new training plans can be created to support different user bases. Suppliers can also easily be added or items can be shared with them
Read full review With private devices, you have full reign over usage of them, so no complaints there. Public devices are available if no one else is using it, which is understandable. Browser VMs are based on number of open sessions and Saucelabs give you a certain number depending on what you need. If you need more, then you pay for more. It is as simple as that. You need more devices, then you can pay for more private ones too. A workaround for public devices is to pick the first available one and not be too picky, that's if you are able to of course.
Read full review Return on Investment Decreased the company's time to market for release of its second generation flagship product. Decreased the turn around on non-conformance reports (NCRs), supplier corrective action reports (SCARs), and corrective and preventative actions (CAPAs). Better organized the company's process maps, DHF, and other regulatory related information so that major audits are completed faster and with fewer findings. Read full review Eh... Negligible? Being on AWS West makes it quite a few hops for us, so the process times out every now and again. That is frustrating. I can't really speak to the dollars, as I am not privy to the information. Read full review ScreenShots Arena PLM and QMS Screenshots