Bonterra ETO

Formerly ETO by Social Solutions

The main dashboard page/portal is attractive in color and font design.

Honestly I'm really trying to be fair, but there is nothing this software does particularly well from the users standpoint.

Some of the support staff have been responsive over the years.

Still waiting for a seamless connection with SOMS (Strategic Offender Management System which is CDCR's main software for the State). We have been promised these two systems would speak to each other, but there has been zero progress in 6 years, and locally, ETO blames SOMS which is not helpful since SOMS is robust and functional unlike ETO-ARMS. Human manual entry of data dumps has been the "solution".

The interface is far from friendly or intuitive. It also has serious functionality issues. It requires multiple duplication and excessive clicks for data entry (ex: entering the same date multiple times, not showing pertinent required info on the same screen, not remembering last entries and ERASING previous data entered when entering new data, using different terms for the same action, disallowing some corrections, not speaking to itself on basic logic - like having to enroll an individual profile just so you can tell the software to un-enroll him in 3 different fields etc). Another big problem is the reports generator cannot be trusted as the data is often wrong or dated (perhaps because it requires data from SOMS which speaks a different language).They don't understand how to filter previous entries and terms, so the coding is probably defective or misunderstood at the root. This is taxpayer funded programming that the state legislature requires for budget decisions. Entry touchpoints have fundamental basic flaws and reports are basically garbage. We have so many examples of issues...too many to list here. 2-3 years ago a team was set up to assess contract renewal with ETO, and despite multiple examples of problems submitted, we have zero progress, the team was disbanded and the contract renewed.

I understand that the issues we are dealing with may have more to do with the way our product was customized for California, and not necessarily the software's inherent capabilities, but either way, the ARMS part of ETO has become somewhat of a running joke. Even an ARMS support Manager admitted to me that ARMS "sucks". In my honest opinion the entire ARMS suite should be trashed and rebuilt with consultations from actual users. It is costing countless man-hours of lost productivity and employee frustration. Sorry but we have been dealing with these problems for years.

That's not my wheelhouse so to speak, but I [think] hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions have been wasted in lost productivity due to this flawed software.

Supporting and managing multiple programs related to helping Inmates re-enter into society.

Tracking the CAL-ID program as required by law. PC3007.5

Tracking the progress of the ISUDT participants at 33 Institutions.

None

Web-based data entry allows for real-time data entry from staff in off-site offices and in the field.

Highly customizable data entry options and security rules make it well suited to comprehensive service providers where goals and service delivery approach may vary greatly by service type.

ETO Results, the built-in reporting tool, is very flexible and powerful, automating and replacing much of what we previously did in MS Excel.

If an issue cannot be immediately addressed by fist tier customer support, it can take an incredibly long time to get answers, let alone a solution. First tier support seems friendly and willing to help, so I can only assume it's a shortage of staff to diagnose and solve the actual problems.

Account managers change at the drop of a hat and this frequently is communicated poorly. Actually, communication in general can be a challenge.

Social Solutions seems a bit out of touch with the non-profit market and is less responsive than it used to be. While I realize this is a some what unavoidable development as their customer base increases, one of the original draws to ETO was the company's ability to respond to customers and help us make the most out of what we'd purchased.

Non-profits often do not have funds for extras, such as sending staff to national conferences. These opportunities, while wonderful, involve not only the conference fees, but transportation and hotel costs as well. It would be nice if Social Solutions offered more regional opportunities (which would make costs more achievable for our budgets) or online options (which would again increase accessibility, even if the offerings couldn't be as robust).

Positive impact: our ability to adapt our data capture methods and reporting tools allowed us to increase both private and government funding (both in number of grants and amount of funding provided) while decreasing the time needed to generate our reports (reduced staff costs per grant and increased staff availability for other reports/agency needs) .

Negative impact: I can't begin to quantify the unnecessary amount of time lost trying to get useful updates about our support tickets and then find other ways to work around our problems when customer support couldn't provide useful, timely solutions. (One example among many: You've used a report for over a year. Unexpectedly, it doesn't work two weeks before your next report is due, because the universe isn't flattening correctly. You then waste time trying to get updates from support about actually fixing it (a solution) and asking them to manually flatten it (a temporary solution for the immediate time-sensitive problem), and then you have to start doing things by hand or accept that there's going to be X amount of data missing from your report or tell the funder your report will be late all because no one in support seems to have any answers. We have actually had this happen at different time for several different reports used for various compliance purposes and utilized all three of the DIY approaches.)