Arena Analytics Interprets PLM Information Into Actionable Insights for Axon

About the Company

Axon is a technology leader in global public safety. The company’s goal is to cut gun-related deaths between police and the public by 50% before 2033. Axon is building the public safety operating system of the future by integrating a suite of hardware devices and cloud software solutions that lead in modern policing. Axon’s suite includes TASER energy devices, body cameras, in-car cameras, cloud-hosted digital evidence management solutions, productivity software, and real-time operations capabilities. Axon’s growing global customer base includes first responders across international, federal, state, and local law enforcement, fire, corrections, and emergency medical services, as well as the justice sector, enterprises, and consumers.

BUSINESS CHALLENGES

Bringing Meaning to Business Intelligence

It takes resources and collaboration to build a public safety operating system for the future. A key component of that confluence is business intelligence (BI). In a competitive business landscape like public safety, having timely analytics, insightful metrics, and a collaborative environment is vital. Managers need an all-encompassing perspective on the effectiveness of their operations. Access to real-time BI transforms data and information into actionable insights, enabling management to make decisions based on facts rather than speculation.

Due to frustrations with managing information in spreadsheets, the lack of analysts to gather metrics, and the inaccessibility of business intelligence, Axon realized the necessity for real-time data aggregation and analysis to improve operations.

Wyatt Dincel, Configuration Control Analyst II at Axon, acknowledged the difficulties and time needed to gather metrics for an analytics report. He determined the analytics capability in Axon’s existing Arena Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution would resolve his issues and help his team gain insightful BI to make decisive decisions. Wyatt said, “Before using Arena Analytics, our metrics were manual. Exporting data to comma-separated values (CSVs) files, cleaning them, using Excel or another sheet software to compile those metrics took at least an hour or two. Access to real-time BI quickly transforms data into actionable insights, enabling management to make decisions based on live metrics.”

THE SOLUTION

Axon took full advantage of Arena’s analytics capability. The team acknowledged that Arena Analytics out-of-the-box dashboards are easy to configure without heavy IT support. The team can make changes quickly to new solutions or processes without waiting for IT support or the assistance of an analytics specialist.

Another key advantage Arena Analytics offers is tracking turnaround approval and cycle times for various change order workflows. Understanding cycle times helps identify old change orders, process issues, and staffing needs. “Arena Analytics offers a user-friendly reporting experience compared to other PLM systems that are more complex and require technical expertise,” stated Wyatt.

RESULTS

Axon has achieved tangible benefits since using Arena Analytics. The configuration management team has eliminated the time spent on manual data extraction and scrubbing. The team can now address process inefficiencies across the company due to better data insights.

What has been extremely helpful for the team has been tracking the different types of change orders. Wyatt noted, “Arena Analytics has really helped identify the different types of bottlenecks in new processes that need to be improved. The ability to customize insights and filter them by various attributes—such as products, time frames, months, weeks, or quarters—ensures that the data remains relevant and useful for management teams at any given time.”

With Arena Analytics in place, Axon has business intelligence insights to make informed decisions and is positioned to continue scaling their public safety operating system of the future while helping to reduce gun-related deaths.