Arena gets the job done with a nice, new UI
Updated November 13, 2020

Arena gets the job done with a nice, new UI

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Arena PLM and QMS

Arena is being used at our engineering and manufacturing company as our document control system. We use it to process changes to engineering drawings, manufacturing instructions, etc. It is used across the engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain departments. It provides a central source of truth and space for agreement for everyone in our international offices and our contract manufacturers.

Pros

  • Document control is a strength of Arena. Everyone can always find the most recent revision of a document with ease.
  • Arena is easy to customize to your application.

Cons

  • The user interface is not the most intuitive. There are a lot of different tabs and information in various places that take some time to learn how to navigate.
  • The approvals to reopening changes to re-approving are not streamlined, and some changes get lost if there is a rejection.
  • Arena has improved quality since all of our changes are now closely investigated before implementation.
  • Implementation of new products has been easier with agreed-upon dispositions of existing inventory.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
I did not purchase the product for my company, but I think that the ability to transition from our old system into Arena was essential. The product being usable was significant since everyone would have to get trained in it. Of course, the cost of purchasing seats for the employees was also a factor.
  • Arena is leagues and leagues better than MasterControl. When I used MasterControl, it was out of date, slow, and challenging to navigate. Most navigation was not intuitive. Arena has a much better user interface.
  • My experience with Arena is roughly on par with Agile, with Agile being preferable. Links between documents were undeniable, and that made my use much easier since I was trying to change many related documents.
Arena is well suited for engineering organizations that need strong document control. It seems like it would work well with integrating with Supply Chain. However, implementing Arena for our international contract manufacturer has been a challenge. There are a lot of small fonts, and some information is hidden or hard to find since each change or request has many tabs and subtabs. This is not ideal for working with a team that doesn't have English as their first language. Some of the process flows can become convoluted because of this.

Using Arena PLM and QMS

Comments

  • Kraig Clark | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Kraig Clark
    (Vendor Representative) commented 5 years ago
    Thank you for reviewing Arena! We appreciate your thoughtful comments and are glad to hear that you are using Arena successfully within your organization. Our teams are working hard to enhance the speed and usability of Arena, building upon the user interface improvements delivered earlier in the year. I think you very much appreciate the streamlined workflows as they are released throughout the year. Also, I wanted to let you know that our Customer Success team is available to consult with you on any challenges your business is facing with Arena (feature details, best practices, how other companies solve ___). To connect with a member of our Coaching team, please reach out to support@arenasolutions.com with your request, and they will assign it to the appropriate person.

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