Arena for Startups
Updated November 10, 2020

Arena for Startups

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Arena

Arena is being used by approximately 50% of my organization plus one of our major account holders and both of our contract manufacturers. Arena is mainly used for new product engineering, but will be implemented in manufacturing in the future. The goal is to have full company adoption by the end of the next fiscal year.

Pros

  • Integration with SolidWorks
  • User-friendly interface
  • Saved Searches

Cons

  • BOM structuring that isn't arbitrarily alphabetic
  • Bulk functions through the regular interface, not through imports of .csv
  • Access configuration for external supplier users
  • Allowing admins to view as other user levels
  • Change management has been overall successful with this tool.
  • NPD and NPI communication has vastly improved between the company and manufacturer.
  • Arena has greatly supported our efforts for ISO 2015: 9001 certification.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
The usability and configuration were most important to our young company. We needed a product that could be used out of box with minimal use of resources to configure. We have a high adoption rate due to the accessibility of the product and are generally successful with communication to external users and internally between Arena and our CAD system.
Support was typically quick and helpful. Sometimes, they system 'features' were frustrating to my users, which is something I would mention to support for future changes to the source code. Aside from that, feedback was generally answered the same day and the problem was fixed if it was simple enough.
After getting familiar with Oracle Agile, Arena is a breath of fresh air. The UI is so much more elegant and the formatting of pages is much more pleasing. Viewing and creating Item relationships is so much more simple and it just makes sense in ways that Agile does not. The only thing I give to Agile is that I can modify Items in a change as long as it's not yet approved. This would be a nice feature for Arena so that you wouldn't have to continuously reevaluate a change that needed modification
Arena’s UI is much more refined and the source logic is superior to Agile. If Agile had a cloud-based face lift, the result would be Arena.
It is a low cost, easily implemented solution for small business. It is often cumbersome without single sign-on for users and with some very manual processes.

Using Arena

48 - Sales and Marketing
Engineering
Administration
Test Technicians
Operators
Project Management
Operations
Supply Chain
1 - Attention to detail.
In depth knowledge of the system and how to troubleshoot problems.
Known workarounds.
Ability to change permissions for Items, Users, and Viewers
Ability to communicate well with stakeholders and train them how to use the software.
Strategies to contact Arena support and advocate for global change for upcoming releases of the software.
  • Revision Control
  • ISO compliance
  • Documentation Discipline
  • Quality World
  • Project Management World
  • Integration with SolidWorks
  • Inventory Features
  • Better use of Item disposition
  • Communication to customers
Once the system was chosen, it's very difficult to switch. All of our information is now located in Arena and our ISO procedures reference the use of Arena. It was a tall task to migrate files into the system and would be for any system. I don't think there will be any move to discontinue use unless the company is no longer in business

Lessons for Success

Evaluating Arena and Competitors

The software was chosen and evaluated prior to my involvement. I think we should have had record of why we chose the software and what advantages/disadvantages we were tracking against. I don't believe a bad choice was made, but we do need to put an objective value to the decisions we make as a company if small groups will make such impactful decisions going forward.

Arena Support

ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Quick Initial Response
None
No - We just don't have the budget for premium support. We were not authorized to purchase an API that would have made our integration easier. It is nothing against the support, just a matter or what is and isn't in the budget of a small start up company. The basic package was enough to serve.
I'd accidentally deleted an important Item and the Arena team was able to send me a snapshot of the Item from a previously saved version. Although it took time for support to locate it and it wasn't exactly recovered, it was enough for me to recreate and I was elated that it wasn't lost forever.

Using Arena

ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Internal Communication
  • Constructing BOM
  • Creating Change Orders
  • CAD Integration
  • Modification of Items in Change Orders
  • Setting up Supplier Access

Upgrading Arena

Comments

  • Alaine Portnoy | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Alaine Portnoy
    (Vendor Representative) commented 5 years ago
    Thank you for your excellent review of Arena. We appreciate the time you took to provide such detail. We're glad you've had a positive experience using Arena and that you find it to be one of the easiest to use cloud-based PLM solutions out there!
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