Friday, October 3, 2008

And the winner is ...

And the winner is ...

Arena!

If anyone has earned the title of "comeback kid" in this comparison, it would have to be Arena. Based on their "worst in class" website I wrote them off during the round of 22. Which is what really makes this process so remarkable.

When I decided to blog this, I did it in order to help other people who were undertaking the same challenge, and I honestly never considered that by making this public, my own process would be affected, but that's exactly what happened. The only reason Arena even knows they were considered by HDC is because I put the process out there for public comment. Jeremy Hoff of Shepherd of the Hills saw my post and told the Arena guys about me and suggested that they contact me because Arena was not portrayed favorably in my review. Those contacts lead to Arena making the final three, and at the end of the day, Arena is our choice in this whole process. That simply would not have happened had I not made this effort.

I am very pleased with our choice. After the long (6-9 hours each) demos with these companies, Judy and I sat down and compared the answers to the 26 question company survey, the references we received back on the companies, and how each vendor did with the 91 question demo. As we looked over those three elements the choice became very clear. Arena stood out above the competitors for HDC in the areas that were important to us. Each of the other two solutions was very solid, and I will post a full review of those shortly, but in the end Arena won the day for the following reasons:

(1) Arena is tops at tracking and identifying non-obvious relationships among our people. One of the difficulties in ministering to a large flock is trying to figure out who knows who. Too often we struggle to figure out how people are connected and often times we find out after a crisis that "person a" knew "person b" and if we had known that we could have ministered more effectively right out of the gate. Arena helps us identify those relationships based on the activities, groups, programs, and ministries that people are part of.

(2) Arena is more customizable than the alternative solutions. Every church has its own unique ways of doing certain things as the culture arises over a period of time. Arena provides HDC with the most flexible platform for us to make those small changes that we require culturally. A great example of this is that there are several check-in solutions for Arena, including one church that is developing a mac version of the check-in software. One size doesn't always fit all, and Arena is built and designed to work with those who beat to a different drum. Arena was the only company that provides a developer program that encourages an open source model of development of their software including access to alpha and beta code of the core software.

(3) Arena is hosted locally. Although I am confident in the hosting solutions offered by the other companies, I am more comfortable having my data located in my own datacenter and backed up offsite. I already have a server room, high quality racks, extensive battery backup, dedicated air conditioning, and a highly competent IT staff. These resources are paid for and an integral part of my operation now, although I will have to add some hours to my IT staff in order to setup, use and develop for Arena. Also, no matter how fast my internet connection is, it doesn't hold a candle to my gigabit network and a totally dedicated server.

(4) Arena is more "geographically aware" than the other products. If you want to know who lives within a mile of someone in your database, Arena will tell you. The others will not. There were other ways of getting at some of that information, but not to the level and sophistication of Arena. This is a heritage of the CCV origins of the product, as those guys focus a lot on neighborhood small groups and such.

(5) Arena met the requirements of our guided demo better than the competition. Of the 91 questions there were five that none of the solutions could accomplish. Beyond those five, there were only three that Arena did not meet. Those three break down into two business purposes, and one of those areas could already be addressed in Arena but the interface for it was not acceptable. During the demo the Arena team expressed that they would be willing to solve that problem for us as part of our implementation. Thus, there was only one business task that they did not accomplish, and we were told it was part of their development plan. We tried hard to focus on the databases "as they were" and only looked to "future development" at the end of the day. Arena wins either way. The other two solutions had 12 and 27 non-acceptables for us (after removing the five common tasks) in our guided demo.

(6) The references for Arena were overwhelmingly positive. Arena, like any company, has unhappy customers and former customers. I talked with two of those. But at the end of the day the churches that were using Arena effectively seemed more positive about their choice and their solution than the references of the competition, and their satisfaction is something that we hope to emulate :-) The churches that seem to be most positive about Arena are the churches that are part of the developer program and the churches that want to work with Arena in moving the product forward. That fits the attitude of HDC and my team, and we look forward to being part of the Arena developer group.

It's important to realize that we were evaluating three great solutions. Each of the products considered at this level has many satisfied customers, and is working very hard to serve the church as a whole. There was a point (well, three points actually) in this process where I thought we would be choosing each of the three companies. Each of the salesmen in this process is absolutely convinced that they have the right solution for HDC, and two of them are convinced I made the wrong choice :-) That's a good thing. These guys are passionate about what they do, and they are working hard to put their product in the hands of as many churches as possible.

I again want to reiterate my appreciation for Mark White of Arena, Steve Drechsler of Fellowship Technologies, and Dominic Silla of Connection Power. Each of these guys worked very hard, and took the time to answer all of our questions and be available to us in every way possible. The work they did allowed us to get a full understanding of their product and how it connected with the needs of HDC. Without their hard work our process would have been a lot more difficult. HDC owes a debt of gratitude to each of these guys.

At the end of the day, Arena was the right choice for HDC. It may be the right choice for your organization, it may not. You can only decide by putting the companies in front of you through your own process identifying what features are important to you and your organization, and then see who meets that criteria the best.

Joel

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Joel, welcome to the Arena community. I cannot wait to get to know you more through the Arena forums, developer round tables, and collaboration on new Arena developments. Welcome to the team!

- Austin Spooner, New Covenant Bible Church

Anonymous said...

Welcome to Arena. It's been a crazy road for us, but it's settling out as we figure out how to deal with or fix some of Arena's wacky quirks. We're happy to help you guys along the way.

Anonymous said...

Two questions:

1. Are you now going to start referring to software bugs as "Gorns?"

2. Does the manual come with instructions to make gun powder?

(Email me if you get this joke. =)

Anonymous said...

Welcome to Arena Joel. It's great to see that you're going to be part of the developer community. Feel free to contact us at CCV with any questions and/or comments as you ramp up your development with Arena.

Unknown said...

Joel, Welcome to the Arena community! I look forward to connecting with you and the team at HDC in the Developer community. Once the "paper work" gets processed, we will send you a welcome kit that includes the SDK. The Arena developers are here to assist you in any way as you get started. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Steve Pruitt
Technology Director
Shelby Systems

Unknown said...

Joel: welcome to Arena! Lunch? I'll go to your location this time. :-)

Anonymous said...

Joel, while I was out of the country, you joined the Arena community! I look forward to meeting you in the.Community or at the next Arena Community Developer Talkshoe.

- Nick Airdo, Central Christian Church of the East Valley

Anonymous said...

Hi Joel,

Great Blog about your Research, I am about to begin doing the same for our Church (attendance of about 5500 each Sunday).

Out of Interest what were the five questions that each of the finalists couldn't answer?

Thanks!

Clayton Smith

renewingmind said...

(1) Quick and easy way to get a vcard to an address book.

(2) Very complex query easily. For example, everyone between 20 and 40 who doesn't live in a certain city who gave at least $300 this year and attended our services at least one. I think this could be built in SQL for Arena, but it wouldn't be fun :-)

(3) A different re-statement of (2) involving subqueries of queries.

(4) Reminders of key events related to people. For example, a member is going in for surgery next Friday. I want the database to be able to record that, issue a reminder on Thursday to whoever I specify, and provide information on the hospital etc.

(5) Related to (4), keeping information on hospitals in the database for easy access, and tying that information to people's records when needed. So that if I see that a member is going to hospital x for surgery, I have easy access to phone number, address, etc.

Joel

Sharla said...

Joel, thank you for posting this. We are getting ready to do a similar comparison. I am sending out requests to our staff for their 'wish list' and needs. Would you consider sharing your list of 26? It might help jog us to see some of the things others are doing.
Sharla Kershen, Compass Christian Church

renewingmind said...

Sharla,

I realized that I left my post with the 26 questions out of the summary. You can read it here.Thanks for the heads up, I'll add it to the main post as well.

Joel

Sharla said...

Thank you Joel. I appreciate your willingness to share - and I look forward to future posts.

Sharla

Unknown said...

We are doing the same comparison in our church and that is how I found your blog. We are a Medium size church and it seems way too expensive for a church with Sunday attendance being around 250. Was that not an issue for your church?

renewingmind said...

Melinda,

HDC is a church of around 5500 per weekend and any suitable solution was going to be expensive. Arena was actually less expensive than the second place solution for us.

At your size you should look at bvcms or some of the new web based options. There should be many options that are very affordable and will meet your needs nicely.

Joel