Case management software that consolidates data, caseloads, and service delivery programs, helping users to save time and serve more people. Bonterra ETO is purpose-built for organizations looking to improve their program and case management. ETO is built in accordance with industry security standards and includes tools that helps users to focus on advancing their missions, as well as: Reduce time spent entering data into separate systems to increase overall data…
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Penelope
Score 6.7 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Bonterra’s Penelope is a configurable and secure case management system designed to help social good organizations save time for their staff, improve data quality and reporting, and better serve and connect with their participants.
$400
per year per user
Pricing
Bonterra ETO
Penelope
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Basic
$400
per year per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Bonterra ETO
Penelope
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
Required
Additional Details
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Penelope software is priced on a Named Active Users model, with a minimum of 25 users. There’s also a one-time fee for implementation of the software, and our Tailored Services team is available to quote on additional services as required.
We have been using ETO for a while. I haven't come across another reporting system quite as robust as ETO. For this reason, we are continuing with ETO.
No other software package we've researched can match ETO's reporting capabilities. All other software packages, however, have better interfaces, are browser-neutral, and are mobile-friendly. We selected Social Solutions ETO because it was the best software package we could …
Penelope is more controlled, well designed, and easy to use. We like that Penelope has some structure to it while having a decent amount of opportunities to be configurable to our own specific needs. Our staff finds Penelope easy to navigate and enter their data into the system …
ETO Social Solutions should be avoided until they start caring about the problems generated by their software. In regards specifically to the ARMS suite utilized by the entire state of California, until the ETO software learns how to speak with SOMS, and unless it can be customized by knowledgeable people who consult with front-line users. It is not appropriate to provide the state legislature with bad data. I have 6 years of experience with it and I have multiple sources of agreement from fellow users throughout the state.
Even if Penelope by Social Solutions is useful for case noting and any other file management, coordination and reports, it is not user-friendly. It does not let you delete your mistakes easily, it does not let you go back, and all the other issues mentioned, which are minor, added too much for a system that is supposed to support your work. However, some of the characteristics have been chosen by the system administrator and are not Penelope by Social Solutions's fault.
ETO's customization allows for the use of so many different and unique applications.
The ability to build extremely customized reports also allows us to get very detail oriented results or very broad building wide stats.
The additional added features such as workflow, referrals, and ETO Engage are useful in their own way and add more ways to better track and record data while simplifying some end-user processes.
The user interface is not intuitive and exceptionally difficult for non-tech savvy people to learn.
The system is not as customizable as we were led to believe at the initial purchase.
The system does not interface well with other systems. Organizationally we are moving towards data integration, and we will likely replace ETO because of this limitation.
Considering the limitations of the system, the cost is quite high. We've seen only marginal benefits of this system over pen and paper, and the ROI is not promising.
The initial build process was very frustrating. We didn't understand what the developer was billing us for. Something like simple touchpoint forms was billed for more hours than it would seem to require.
A system like this should be both fully mobile compatible and have offline functionality.
We would benefit from more nuanced security settings.
Social Solutions has been great for our organization. It has allowed us to not only report on data, but to dive into it to see trends and give snapshots of the current status of our neighbors. Social Solutions has been helpful in getting us to see additional ways we can use our data and ways that it is easier for front line staff to use this tool
Penelope is saving us so much time and providing us with much-needed consistent regular data tracking and documentation. It has been a game-changer for our organization and we should have had it years ago. It has allowed us to have an efficient organized system to use daily in our non-profit agency.
As a technically savvy person with experience learning new database software systems I find ETO relatively straightforward now that I've been trained in it's use. However, many of our staff are less technically savvy and the learning curve for ETO can be grueling for many, who require frequent troubleshooting and support from me. Additionally, there are small quality of life improvements that would increase usability even for me - such as allowing multiple tabs to be open simultaneously or being able to use the browser's "back" and "forward" buttons.
Penelope has a lot of features and options which is one of the reasons why it is so great. With a lot of features also comes a lot of time to learn all of them. For someone who is part of the development and implementation process, it is a lot of learning to fully understand how everything works. This is good to know in advance when choosing a team to develop your database. The great thing about Penelope is that you can customize the features for each level of staff that will be using it so the staff only have access to the parts of Penelope that they need and will be using regularly. This makes the training process for staff a lot easier.
Routine maintenance is announced with plenty of lead time, and the few times I've been unable to log in to the system properly a simple refresh was all that was required to fix.
Mostly really strong now, although I understand that for some years before switching their hosting service to AWS performance was a real issue with ETO and we had frequent problems with pages timing out or other glitches stemming from performance issues. With AWS that is mostly a thing of the past, although it is still a major issue with the reporting tool which is unable to run reports on the entire database due to performance limitations, instead requiring admins to define universes prior to running queries.
We love the first tier customer support folks! They're friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable within the scope of their position. The experiences we've had with their supervisors have also been mostly good and again they seem to be doing what they can within the scope of their positions. This is what prevents me from selecting 1. Unfortunately, none of these wonderful folks can offer real solutions when things are actually broken. They verify there's a problem and send it to the black hole called "the developers". After that, we don't hear anything useful and we figure out how to live with/work around the problem ourselves. (Requests for updates typically get "still with the developer" responses.) This is highly frustrating given that most of our issues are basic system issues (functionality that worked then broke after an update by Social Solutions, servers not syncing, report universes not flattening automatically, etc.). All we want is for the system to work as designed and to be fixed in a timely fashion when it doesn't. Apparently, that's too much to ask. (And no, we don't expect it to happen instantly, programming and quality control checks obviously take time.)
Our support person with Penelope has been a dream to work with since day one. She is accommodating to our ever-changing schedule and has worked around us for training and Zoom meetings. She is always available via e-mail and is quick to respond to our many inquiries throughout the development and implementation process. Our Zoom meetings have been like talking to a long-time staff member. She explains things in a way that everyone can understand and will review with us as needed. She has been innovative in ways that Penelope can work for us and our needs and we have been so pleased with the support we have received.
Really good trainer and exhaustive curriculum covered, but ETO is a complex enough system that you don't *really* know how to use it until you've been in the trenches for a few weeks. For instance, I took a Report Writing training and emerged with some fluency in the reports interface and a vague understanding of the process, but immediately encountered a legion of instance-specific idiosyncrasies that would have been totally impossible to address in a webinar training for a dozen folks from different orgs working in different instances.
Hard to say, as I was not with the agency at the time. However, based on our use of the software ~5years later I can say that there were no catastrophic design choices made during implementation that have become unduly burdensome as we've scaled up.
Be sure to have a good team of staff that will be on board with the training and will dedicate time and energy to the process. You want to have people who are motivated and excited about the new program that you are investing in.
When we made our decision several years ago Social Solutions had just acquired Apricot. At that time it was recommended to use ETO based off our revenue stream. However, it seems like Social Solutions has put in a lot more time and effort into Apricot over ETO and it seems more modern and user friendly. I think it is worth a second look once our contract expires
Penelope is more controlled, well designed, and easy to use. We like that Penelope has some structure to it while having a decent amount of opportunities to be configurable to our own specific needs. Our staff finds Penelope easy to navigate and enter their data into the system in a reliable and easy way. We valued that at the time of purchase, Penelope was a Canadian company that understood our specific needs as a Canadian nonprofit.
The core product scales well, and we've grown quite a bit as an agency during our use of ETO. However, there are some real pain points particularly around creating new programs and managing report universes that require extensive offline checklist resources and a full-spectrum understanding of how changing settings in one part of ETO can have downstream impact in other areas. This can introduce a "chilling" effect on proposed changes to the system, where there is strong incentive to leave things as-is to avoid unforeseen consequences.
I would say that at this point the overall ROI has been negative as we aren't getting much more out of our data by the switch we made to ETO, but the cost is much higher. I anticipate that will change as we get better at using ETO.
Most users that have switched to ETO in our organization prefer it to what they were using before and some are more appreciative of the value they can get from the data.
