All SAM Reviews
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Anonymous
2-10 employees
Used weekly for less than 6 months
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed May 2019
Just starting out
My experience has been great so far, I am able to navigate and find what I am looking for with minimal problems.
PROSThis software is going to allow us to go simi-paperless, it has so many areas for us to utilize.
CONSNothing - at this time I am still in the "learning" stage.
Vicki
Education Management, 2-10 employees
Used daily for less than 6 months
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
2
VALUE FOR MONEY
1
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
4
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed September 2023
Wanted this to work.....
It was extremely frustrating. They need a base system that actually works and that you can customize as you go. They desperately need someone in management who is a teacher...not a developer. There is little to no skill in the ability to actually teach people how to use this system.
PROSThe end product has some great functionality. There is product support but you are paying for services that should be included in onboarding. They expressed that some companies pay for 6-12 months before the software is even usable.
CONSThere is no. "basic" system in place....meaning you cannot use the software in any capacity until you as the owner learn a massive amount of backend jargon, platforms, loading etc. It was a NIGHTMARE. After 4 months of literally banging our heads against the way we cancelled and lost thousands of dollars. The system itself is pretty good....the set up is a nightmare. Every time there is an issue you are paying hourly for someone to sit and ramble at you and not actually complete the task at hand. We never gained any functional system after the 4 months....yet we were paying a monthly fee for a set up that was unusable as well as hundreds of dollars a month for "consultations:
Reason for choosing SAM
price point and the individual cost per user was lower
Reasons for switching to SAM
The other company was just starting out and we were their guinea pigs.
Kim
Professional Training & Coaching, 11-50 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
3
EASE OF USE
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed May 2019
SAM Review
SAM is an excellent tool for marketing and grant writing. The staff enjoy the ease of use.
PROSEase of Use is the biggest and most important feature in a program for our agency.
CONSWhen auto actions change without a change being made by our admin staff.
Melissa
Individual & Family Services, 51-200 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
3
FUNCTIONALITY
3
Reviewed May 2019
SAM has made our agency more efficient and better performing!
Social Workers in my agency love SAM. Before switching to SAM, we struggled to get basic data entered into our database as a result were unable to produce any meaningful data for our leadership and board. Since implementing SAM for our agency, we have not only increased data entry compliance but have expanded the data we collect to enable us to create complex reports, helping us make better agency decisions. We have even created a Family portal where families have their own web-based for and are able to upload documents and/or fill out data that is directly entered into SAM, thus managing part of their case. This has decreased the time it takes to get a family ready for adoption by almost 45%. Using SAM has made our agency more efficient and better performing.
PROSI love SAM! It is intuitive, easy to learn. It has a simple and clean user interface. As an administer, organizing the data entry experience for my end user, is straightforward and uncomplicated. A database admin, even someone with little to no experience with databases, can learn SAM quickly and create a custom database that is tailored for their agency that matches their agency's processes. It is very evident that the developers of SAM put in a lot of thought into what the end user was going to experience. Overall I recommend SAM for any social service agency wanting to increase their data collection and provide their workers with a simple, clean and easy to use database experience.
CONSAs much as I love SAM, there are some areas that have room for improvement. Reporting is limited to simple spreadsheet data lists with counts, averages and min/max calculations. There is no graph creation or complex data analytics. And SAM cannot link to data analytic software either. However, you can export reports to excel to create graphs and for use in BI analytics.
Jessica
Non-Profit Organization Management, 51-200 employees
Used daily for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
4
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed May 2019
A custom SAM for us
I feel like the most valuable part of SAM is how easy it is to customize for the subscriber. Taking the time to learn how to build in SAM is really an investment into the software, and the more work I put into it, the more work it does for my agency. InReach Solutions hosts webinars frequently and even if I am not able to attend the live event they are a great resource to fall back on when I have a specific question that needs answering. If I ever find that I am unable to resolve my question through watching the webinars or reading the FAQ's answers on the website I know that I can always send an email with my question and either schedule a phone call, or receive my answer directly in email form.
CONSI wish that there were more options for Template Building or a better interface with existing fill-able PDFs. We tend to have many forms provided by the State that they do not accept in any other fashion so our clients must fill these out by hand and then a worker has to input the information after the fact. If we were able to upload the State's PDF and set the fields to be fill-able with coordinating SAM Fields it would be ideal.
Jessica
Non-Profit Organization Management, 51-200 employees
Used daily for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed July 2019
SAM for foster care
Time saving has been great and the ability for others to access information on specific cases has been wonderful! It's helped communication tremendously.
PROSIt is so easy to navigate which makes it easy to train new staff!
CONSNot being able to customize EVERYTHING to our specifications! :) but it's actually very minor issues that can't be customized.
Reasons for switching to SAM
We needed a product that could really manage what we need to do to comply with the State of California and incorporate multiple facets of operations.
Katie
Individual & Family Services, 11-50 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
4
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed June 2019
Hands Across The Water loves SAM!
We love representative and these amazing customer service she provides. I have used numerous other databases in my work in child welfare, and this is by far the most flexible, intuitive and user-friendly. It considers the needs of agencies that do the work that we do in ways that other databases neglect.
PROSI love the easy, user friendly interface of this software. I love that the agency understands our work and is able to talk through what the agency needs to assist in streamlining processes and collecting pertinent data. They are patient and kind when the social worker mind butts up against statistics/data/IT mind and experiences paralysis.
CONSThere are some glitches and limitations, but company is open to feedback and responsive to suggested changes and fixes to help overcome problems to achieve the desired outcome.
Reasons for switching to SAM
Poor quality
Lisa
Civic & Social Organization, 51-200 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
3
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
3
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed May 2019
SAM Review
SAM has completly revolutionized the way we work with our clients and our co-workers. I can't imagine what we would do without it now.
PROSOn the front end I think the software is fairly user friendly and easy to navigate. There are a lot of customizable options.
CONSOn the back end, where SAM is customizable for agencies, it is less intuitive. There are few instructions within this area of SAM. I feel like I have to just "try it" and see if it works. then, if it doesn't, I'm told well you did it wrong.
Rory
Individual & Family Services, 2-10 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed September 2019
Saves so much time!
Excellent
PROSAs an older agency, we had paper files only. When we needed an old file previously, we had to order from a company that houses the files offsite. Now, we have the info at our fingertips and can access it from any computer.
CONSIf anything, there were a lot of fields we had to remove initially and it was a bit cumbersome to navigate but I know they made changes in response to feedback from clients.
Reason for choosing SAM
User interface/look of the software on the computer.
Hannah
Non-Profit Organization Management, 2-10 employees
Used daily for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed July 2019
Helps keep us organized
We have coordinators out of state who never come in to the office. This software helps us keep everything organized and allows us to share important information in a secure way.
CONSHonestly, there is little I do not like about the software. The main issues with this software is with user error.
Reason for choosing SAM
We chose SAM over an alternative product because it allowed us to personalize it more and there was more customer support.
Mary
Non-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
3
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
4
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed May 2019
SAM REVIEW
Overall, we continue to be really happy with the software. We can adapt it to meet our needs and Stefanie is awesome!!!
PROSThe ability to format the database to our needs, which is SO appreciative. The ease at which we can perform the tasks we need to - generally it's user-friendly!
CONSThe support used to be a little hard to come by (such as resistance to adapting the software to our specific needs), but that has changed lately, which we are so appreciative of that!
Steve
Non-Profit Organization Management, 201-500 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed May 2019
SAM by InReach Solutions Review
SAM has completely changed our ability to manage files (in a positive way) and auto-actions have made it much easier to track information that is time sensitive.
PROSThe single best part about SAM is the ability to customize it to our needs.
CONSWould like template creation to be more user friendly.
RICK
Civic & Social Organization, 11-50 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
4
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
4
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed May 2019
Our friend SAM
We are virtually paperless and this is great as we are geographically spread across the state.
PROSEasy to use and intuitive. Social workers grasp the system quickly.
CONSStill a few features we hope to see in the future.