We have used Penelope Case Management system since 2003. It is very versatile and many changes have been done to make it portable and easy to use. The ability to create documents for our own needs is a fantastic function of the system. We have created Initial Assessments, Progress/Closing Documents, activity notes and outcome tracking forms all for our specific needs. The ability to customize fields at all levels for the system to track information we need for grants and statistics is also very helpful. I would recommend this system to any one agency or organization that tracks a variety of data elements and wants to organize your data to meet your needs.

The versatility. It has a ton of user defined fields that can be setup in any combination that works for your agency. Billing is relatively simple and creating service units and activities is easy to do. Tech support has been very good over the years and the system is very rarely down. System outage issues just don't exist.

I would like to have a report writer system build into Penelope instead of using pivot tables to create customized reports.

I like the ease of reporting functionality. It is very easy for me to see how often our clients are being serviced & how they are progressing within our programs. I like being able to link records with family members so we can get a wholistic view of what is happening with more than one client in a family group. The technical support that has been given to us has been fantastic.

Penelope is more suited to a clinical environment. There are a number of features within Penelope that we do not use. Some screens are hard to navigate & has some functions that are not relevant to our program needs. In the beginning of the process members of the Penelope project team with MPREC had a teleconference with customer rep. This was a very long drawn out meeting & was one that all of us did not get any benefit out of. Please when introducing your product find a better person to try to sell the program. Her presentations were very monotone & quite boring. We found ourselves drifting away from the meeting.

it has a diary schedule linked to cart items. it's god if you only want Penelope to do one thing, ie, ATAPS service & payments

UI poor resulting in clunky data entry and more time spent entering data. not mobile / tablet friendly Reporting function does not provide dashboard, only reports in pdf or that you have to cut and past into Excel. Case file / service file structure creates privacy issues - we may have to move away from this product on the basis of legal advice Lack of technical support available in Australia

With Penelope, we are able to share necessary client information with other case managers with greater ease and efficiency. Scheduling for client appointments is centralized and contains all the data that is needed so that clients and service providers never miss an appointment. Using Penelope has saved our organization countless hours in searching for information and communicating with each other.

The best part about this software is the customer support that comes with it. We were able to customize it with the help of the Athena team to meet all of our case management needs.

It's hard to say what we like least about the software because it has been so helpful in meeting the needs for which we purchased it. It does take a little while to get used to using it and to learn all the facets but once you do, it's very easy to use.

Overall, Penelope has been a great asset to our organization. It has helped to gather our data into one secure location for all staff to access. We love the ability to configure Penelope to best fit our organization, and we look forward to the reporting updates in the near future.

The ability to unite multiple programs with varying services is by far the best feature. This software allows us to track our families and the services they utilize, regardless of location and which program they attend. The ease of access to log into Penelope and the extensive help support (trainings, guides available on the website, and direct technical support) are additional key features Athena excels in.

In the beginning, it was a bit challenging to integrate this software with our current business processes. The inability to export data using Excel is the most challenging. Although there is an option to export data, it requires further training and time especially with merging pertinent identifying and service information.

We are a care coordination division of a TPA, providing case management, utilization management, care transitions, and chronic condition management services to 80,000 members. Penelope has been so easy for us to use. The nurses love it, because they can communicate with other team, have our MD remotely look at notes, and we can easily pull case reports for underwriters. I used Penelope in my former job, and when we did this start up, it was the first thing I thought of to use. The support staff are friendly and understanding, and are great with training. I would highly recommend.

The reports are easy to to understand - especially to non-user stakeholders and our clients. The forms are easy to create and adjust, and the billing/ cart system is easy for my staff to use for their billable hours.

Our overall experience has been great! Our cases are cleaner, more accessible and reporting is more efficient. Penelope is a great software for case management.

The software is user friendly for those utilizing it daily. It's functionality of the software and its accessibility for reporting is great. Penelope has made our cases cleaner and faster to access.

When adding a photo under profile, the photo can't be seen 100% after it's downloaded. So for our restricted users, it's hard to view a client’s photo because only the forehead if visible. It would be great if our case plans could auto populate from the initial one so we don't have to reenter the same information in the progress and closing plans.

I've been using Athena's Penelope Case Management Tool in our Community Acquired Brain Injury service for over 8 years. In that time it's proven itself a valuable and reliable source of organisational data as well as an essential tool for sharing person-centred information within a multi-d team. It's powerful out of the box, but can be configured to many different kinds of interaction. Being cloud based, it makes accessing the records you need easy, whether you're working onsite or off. Athena have managed to evolve the system impressively, and it has more than kept pace with changes in the way we work and use technology.

Powerful feature set and configurability. Cloud based.

Interface could do with some tweaks to improve navigability

For the first time our organization has been able to capture better client and partner data that has allowed our multiple departments to work more cohesively. The ease of use of the Smart Documents and Forms has enhanced the way we gather demographic and program information for grants and funding purposes. While the overall functionality of the database has been very helpful to capturing client and partner data, we hope further updates with the Search function and Calendar will better serve our organizational needs, for example searching by Event Description (specifically Indirect Events). Both the launch support and technical support team have been wonderful to work with and respond quickly to our inquiries. Overall: Cloud Based, Easy to create Forms, and Smart Docs are great features. Reports within Penelope are great for capturing basic information. Easy for most staff to use.

It'd be helpful if more fields were more customizable and if reports could be more specific (more Breakdown options) in Penelope instead of having to utilize the Open Database Connectivity. Search function includes many fields to filter by, but not all the fields that we need- would like better customizable search options.

It accomplishes having a medical records. We stay with it due to the headache of changing and being a small non-profit.

I am not a fan of Penelope at all so there is very little I like.

It is terribly difficult to schedule clients, indirect appointments, or interface with other staff members. The fees are too high for what you get. It is impossible to get basic reports. Due to the high fees we are unable to purchase enough licenses for everyone which means we have to take turns entering information into the system.

It's a full featured program that you can adapt to many different scenario's - but you need to set it up right.

It has the ability to capture data for every aspect of the process. Feature rich. There's the ability to report directly from the raw data (from the back end) but this requires a fair bit of extra knowledge to get it working effectively.

The data is all over the place - you need to know where to go to enter/find what you're looking for. Reporting is somewhat lacking - lots of standard reports but often quite specific.

I am able to efficiently chart for each of my students. The layout and software is user friendly. It is quality!

The organization and ease it provides. I utilize Penelope on a daily basis and our counseling clinic enjoys it.

When we initially utilized Penelope I accidentally delete en entire file. That bug has been fixed now which is outstanding news.

Overall Penelope has been a great match for what our organization needs.

The software has grown as our organization has grown, and continues to implement new innovative features

Can be difficult to teach new users the organization behind the software, not always intuitive, billing statements are incredibly complicated

The product is targeted to our industry. Its installed and we are used to it. We have little issues with it.

No portal functionality. No way of connecting external systems for resource management/bookings. No self help intake process (clients filling in their own information).

We have had Penelope for several years and use it for our Clinical Counseling services. Especially like the Profile, Accounting and scheduling segments of Penelope.

Scheduling and client profile information.

It is not easy to pull reports that we need specifically.

Penelope enable us to document all events by client Easy to train any new employees-user friendly Easy to get data by staff, client, date, service type, etc. Staff can do collaborative documentation with client in the community.

User friendly, flexible, you can design to fit the needs for Case Management Program

I wished there is one report that I can run to obtain all the critical data I need in one report.

very good experience with the team and support. When we have a recommendation they have taken this and tried to assist.

The software does allow for customization once we have a trained team onsite

It is not as intuitive and involves several steps for things that should be more smooth. It also is difficult to get information and reporting off the system for our funders

Ease of use

Understanding the software helps, once you do this and you can appreciate it more and what it does and becomes a very simple solution.

May need a redesign of the workflow but probably more so in training of navigators. Feedback from customers is essential in developing a catered solution for that market but keeping the same NGO concept of the original design and perhaps improving the use of the product based on your target market.

I like the versatility within the site. We have numerous programs in our company that we run out of this system.

When pulling specific reports can be hard because we don't have all the reports built in that we need.

Enables our organization to easily retrieve information even though you may not have personally put the information in the system.

Great resource for storing records, adding updates and retrieving information on clients. New accounts are very easy to set up.

Some parts are difficult to navigate without referring to the written instructions.

I don't use the software as often as some of our field staff but the process of customizing the software to fit our needs was great. Representative was our point of contact/penelope expert and did a fabulous job of walking us through the significant amount mapping and customization that our case management process requires.

Penelope was the best solution available for the advanced case management work our staff do across the U.S. Our customized employment professionals needed a case management system that allowed for a significant amount of narrative description and the folks at Athena were able to accommodate this need.

There's a bit of a learning curve with Penelope but it's well worth the effort to learn.

Web base has been extremely easy. It is very easy to maneuver due to us being at different school sites in a day at times. Being able to have all the documents that we need on line. Our assessments are in bedded within Penelope. Our supervisors are grateful to be able to see the associate's BIRP's .

Software is easy to navigate and to access since our team work at school sites and we sometimes do not go to our offices. Being able to access clients files is so much easier than when we were doing it by paper.

It took about a year to complete from talks about what we want it and how we were going to use it to actually going live.

Penelope is used at my workplace to document client interactions. In many ways, the system is complex and integrated. It allows our 110-member staff to record information in the correct categories. We are able to source the data collected from Penelope and integrate it into our excel spreadsheets. There are some bugs that create mild frustration, but overall, it was programmed by a specialist here to suit our needs. I am grateful we have the program.

Integrated data

Not overly intuitive

Our trainer has been very responsive when we have questions and need further direction! I am very excited to finish the production side of our project and to start using the program.

I like that using this program will allow our office to reduce our use of paper and switch over to digital health records.

The set up is very time consuming, do not underestimate how much time this project will take. Some of the terminology is different from what we use geographically and in our office, that takes some time to get used to as well.

Great!

I like this program for all our employees to use, its not hard to navigate and we all pretty much like it