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Arena... 6 months on.
October 03, 2018

Arena... 6 months on.

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

Overall Satisfaction with Arena

It's primarily used by the Hardware Engineering and Production teams for part specifications, BOMs approved suppliers etc. Also have linked major suppliers with access to view up-to-date information. The request functions are also used by Product Management to request changes.
  • Links between requests, changes, and parts are easy to view and audit.
  • Files are easy to attach for engineers and easy to find for everyone.
  • Notifications for changes and required actions are sent to the right people.
  • BOMs... Too many standard BOMs that don't show you the whole picture. Sourcing, Costing, and Purchasing BOMs should NOT be 3 separate things.
  • BOMs... customization to show exactly what you want (or exactly what a particular vendor requires) is simply not possible because the fields allowed for customizing your BOM are woeful
  • Costs, especially with new designs, are too confusing for most users. We find it hard to view a rolled-up cost estimate for a new BOM because a sub-assembly somewhere got accidentally set to 'quoted + rolled-up' - which is useless and completely screws up costing.
  • Options for exporting data. Assumption seems to be made that you will just set up your supplier with access to your Arena workplace and everything will work well. When you have a multitude of suppliers/vendors across the world speaking many languages and possessing different levels of technology, this is definitely not always easy. Some simple data I have been giving to vendors for 20 years are not easily available from Arena.
  • Dealing with vendors and a manufacturing team across the globe is definitely easier with Arena than our previous database plus Excel sheets.
  • Mistakes have been halved now that approvals are forced on teams, so now all the required people are reviewing items before they are approved for release.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
Features is number 1, with usability classified as a feature. We wanted an easy-to-use system for all our engineering data to be stored and controlled, that could expand with a fast-growing business.
Implementation went relatively smoothly. No tasks were particularly difficult, but sufficient resources (man-hours) are required in order to complete.
Support from the implementation team was good, no complaints.
Ideal Scenario - single main supplier who is already familiar with Arena and will collaborate closely with you.
Workable Scenario - multiple vendors/suppliers who communicate well enough to be able access data they need.
Difficult Scenario - multiple vendors/suppliers across the world who don't/won't use Arena and need specific data output/formats from you that are not available natively from Arena. (This is us.)