Bonterra Case Management vs. LawGro

Well suited to tracking aid needed and provided to people; to developing a plan for helping - a roadmap. We use it to also identify which volunteers can help on various projects, to try to leverage volunteer experiences and linking to specific client needs.

I think this is a great tool and offers many features like case management, lead management, and reputation management. So we don't rely on multiple software. If LawGro can also integrate some online payment solution like LawPay, it will help us a lot.

• Apricot by Social Solutions does a great job of making database administration simple and effective. It is easy for someone in the non-profit sector without much prior experience in similar programs to work on the back end of Apricot by Social Solutions building forms and doing reporting.
• Apricot by Social Solutions is a generally user-friendly program that our staff of many different ages and abilities are able to utilize effectively.
• The buildability of the program is a major plus for our organization, allowing us to cater Apricot by Social Solutions with exactly what we need for our programming and services.

Incentivized

• Client Intake forms - It is the best. I was able to create the intakes seamlessly in just minutes.
• Document Assembly - It took us a while to take live our internal templates but now we see a lot of advantages and are able to roll out documents quickly in just a few clicks

• Almost every year I get a new customer care support person, and it can be hard to reorient each new person to my unique business case and use of Apricot by Social Solutions
• In the past, I have had issues with communication from different departments in Apricot by Social Solutions about what I was getting as part of my contract. In my experience, when I had my initial meeting to kick off upgrading our Apricot by Social Solutions instance, the majority of the information the project consultant had was incorrect. I had to send an email to someone else to rectify the situation.
• If Apricot by Social Solutions was compatible with phones that would be really helpful.
• I wish the font size and formatting were more customizable when building out forms in Apricot by Social Solutions (e.g., more similar to how customizable Surveymonkey is with different surveys).

Incentivized

• Searching case notes for specific keywords is not supported. Will be great to see this feature soon.
• Version control on document assembly is a great feature on LawGro but it does not tags documents with version numbers.
• Approval workflow for invoicing is missing. It will be great to review and approve invoices and time entries before sending to the client.

I went to the Summit a few weeks ago to learn about the future expansion and vision of Social Solutions. I already been with Apricot for 5 years and researched other products I still come back to Apricot and where it can grow with us.

Incentivized

Without any formal IT education, I was able to utilize their articles and videos to teach myself how to configure and customize the software to our organization (although I do recommend their Apricot Admin training to polish your skills). The majority of users are able to adapt immediately with minimal training.Staff that have challenges with technology in general do adapt to using the system once you can create buy in and engagement (although it does take time and training)

Incentivized

It is usually available when I need to use it

Incentivized

The system does tend to run slowly when pulling more complex reports

Incentivized

This is a difficult question to answer because when I hear the word "support" I think of this in multiple levels. The customer service on the front end, with my account manager is pretty good. There was a time for about a year and a half where I didn't even want to get to know this persons name because they wouldn't be there there long enough for me to get to know them. For the past 8-9 months we've had the same account manager, and this is helpful as a way to grow our trust in Apricot social solutions as well as the account manager understanding the needs of our organization. The technical support is also fine. The issues we most have problems with is how the technical support is calculated and the lack of roll-over of technical support time. If our account has 1 hour of technical support per month, but we don't need any technical support for 4 months, it would be great to have the ability to use those 4 hours (as time allows per the IT calendar) when we need them, even if it falls within one month. We've also had instances of working with IT persons who didn't seem to care at all about our issues, and seemed eager to put our call behind them and get onto the next without much thought as to why we were calling them in the first place. We've also had instances where the IT person didn't seem to really be listening to what it is we needed, and was heck bent on what they THOUGHT we needed rather than listening to what we actually did need. While we also have had experiences of working with IT persons who were absolutely great at working through issues. They were patient and understanding and would explain why a solution (c)would or (c)would not work. We even worked through those options in real time if they were unsure whether a data solution would work or not. That was great because we felt heard.

Incentivized

Online training only

Incentivized

There are good training guides.

Incentivized

There need to be specialists who know how to best work with an organization developing a new program, not just transferring existing forms to a digital format.

Incentivized

The ability to customize Apricot and the simple interface is incredibly appealing. Salesforce CMS may be more well known, and cheaper for nonprofits, but it's also seen as the "Cadillac" version and is overwhelming for many small to mid sized organizations. The build out can be expensive as well, although there is a more general knowledge about the product and integration options.

Incentivized

LawGro has deeper analytics and insights on multiple activities like invoices, payments, team member availability etc. They have an in-built client intake forms and document assembly feature which was critical to our practice.

This software doesn't work well for our organization

Incentivized

• Our data reporting capability. We're able to do the most robust reporting we've ever done.
• Was able to handle our rapid expansion (doubling program in 1 fiscal year).
• We did have a loss of data near the beginning of our use of the system and never got a clear answer why it happened. Data was never recovered.
• The cost to add additional users is really high, and there aren't many options to bundle or review user licenses to ensure we're getting the best deal.

Incentivized

• Helped us to manage our reputation and client happiness much more professionally and analytically.