Arena Solutions
March 05, 2020
Arena Solutions
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Arena
My organization uses Arena primarily for product life cycle management. All of our parts and bill of materials for our product are managed in Arena. Engineering, operations, and QA are the primary consumers of these functions. In addition, all of our formal documentation is captured in Arena. The entire organization uses Arena for training. Primarily Arena helps manage our complex product by being able to effectively structure items via the bill of materials, specify suppliers, attach files, track history, and manage change. In addition, we use Arena to manage quality processes like NCRs, CAPAs, reworks, and temporary deviations.
- Change management
- Item history
- Scribe (collaborative work space)
- Search functionality
- Transfer templates from training/beta work space to production work space
- Smart change order approval routings
- Rapid iteration in R&D
- Company-wide training
- Configuration management
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Prior Experience with the Product
- Vendor Reputation
- Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
- Third-party Reviews
For a small company, price is likely the biggest factor when determining which products and platforms to adopt and buy. Along with the price, the product features are also extremely important when determining which products and platforms to adopt and buy. Small companies need the ability to move quickly through rapid change and iteration and also have some level of control over that change.
I was not part of the team that helped deploy Arena. From other people's experience, the deployment of Arena was fairly smooth. We have introduced functionality in a stepwise manner. By doing this, it allows the organization to adopt the new functionality in smaller pieces, which makes it easier for the users.
Many companies in the medical device industry use products like Agile. While Agile has functionality that Arena does not have, I believe Arena's price-point was more suitable for a small company that is growing. One example of this functionality is that Agile allows multiple users to make changes to a working revision of an item, and can maintain both users' changes.