Vincent - fitbit - Arena Review
Updated November 20, 2019

Vincent - fitbit - Arena Review

Vincent Fernando Juares | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Arena

Arena is currently deployed across the entire organization for the purpose managing Fitbit's product data.
The product data it allows us to vault and change control are the following:
  • Part Numbers/Items
  • Item Attributes
  • Suppliers / Supplier Items
  • Item BOM
  • Item Revs
  • Item Lifecycles
  • Change Orders / Deviations
  • Change Requests

Pros

  • It provides a solid PLM tool that is ready and easy to use, without much upfront cost and deployment effort.
  • It provides ready to use licenses for outsourced Suppliers to navigate product data Fitbit has granted access to.
  • Allows Administrators to quickly deploy new Item & Change types as well as implement new attributes, across the organization.
  • Allows users to not only see the files associated with the item, but also any files attached to the supplier item being referenced

Cons

  • More change control should be implemented to Supplier Items, like lifecycles and change controlled attributes at the supplier item level
  • Better traceability and audit trails on any and all objects in Arena that can be easily seen through a history tab
  • Better control on user defaulted settings, managed by the administrator.
  • I was not around during the ROI analysis, however, I can say for certain that Fitbit has benefited greatly from having deployed Arena during its time of tremendous growth.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
  • Third-party Reviews
Again, Arena looks to have been deployed back in 2011, while I've only been here since October of 2017. The answers above are purely speculative.
We were exploring upgrading to Oracle Agile PLM, but our plan was quickly shut down due to budget constraints.
Arena is perfect for deploying to a new start-up company or to a recently acquired company. It has room for improvement if deploying to a larger more mature organization that has more complex business processes and various data system integration requirements.

Using Arena

1500 - Marketing, Engineering, Sales, Operations, Supply Chain, Manufacturing Engineering, Trade Control Compliance, Quality Control, Procurement
3 - - Cross-collaboration and communication skills to effectively enforce Arena standards and rules.
- Leadership ability to implement configuration and business processes
- Minimal technical skills in making configuration updates.
  • BOM Changes
  • Revision Changes
  • Communicate Changes to Global Suppliers
  • Single Source of Truth for other data objects (not part numbers)
  • Sourcing Changes Workflows
  • Hiding certain attachments from Suppliers
  • Quality Tool
  • Training tracking tool
  • Ticket tracking tool
Needs integration capabilities, but its core features are solid.

Lessons for Success

Evaluating Arena and Competitors

Not much change needed. Our evaluation and selection process is pretty standardized and meticulous.

Comments

  • Scott Reedy | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Scott Reedy
    (Vendor Representative) commented 7 years ago
    Thanks Vincent for sharing your insights about Arena. It's great to see the product record information that Arena helps control and share with your suppliers!

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