Database systems in general, and AIMs/Advice pro, pro’s and cons.

We are a Disability Advice Service offering information and advice to people with Disabilities and Long Term Health Conditions, their families and carers, and professionals working with them. We deal with a range of issues from enquiries regarding equipment and holidays through to appeals representation as far as Upper Tier Tribunal Level.

We are currently looking at replacing our client database system. We are looking at Advice Pro and AIMs.
What systems do others use and what are your experiences of these two in particular? We are thinking about both client record keeping and the ability to pull off reports for statistical and funding requirements..

Thanks

I used AIMS about six years ago when I worked at a Local Authority Welfare Rights Unit. My abiding memory is that the User Interface felt quite old school even then so unless they’ve updated it in the mean time it’ll probably feel even older! That being said I do recall it being very easy to pick up and use (at least as someone who is fairly tech savvy) to record information about clients and cases. Reporting I seem to recall was fairly simple as well. One thing I do recall was that it was a site specific licence to the point that if anyone tried to use it when working from home it got very unhappy and tended to stop working entirely. But overall I don’t recall having any real issues with it. But then my next experience of case recording software was Citizens Advice’s Petra which still to this day elicits groans of dismay from anyone who used it so in comparison AIMS came out quite well!

Where I am currently we’re using CharityLog which I think is a fine bit of kit when it comes to case recording and management. It is extremely powerful (one could argue too powerful if you’re a very small organisation!) with a lot of different options but you can easily slim it down to meet your specific requirements. It’s also got a fiddly but very powerful reporting function (though some are easier than others, if you want to check how much money has been raised in x period that’s quite simple). They’re also very quick to help you sort things out when something goes wrong either via telephone or email.

Advice Pro is very good- lots of reporting and flexibility available and very user friendly- highly recommended.

I’ve used them both in the past year, but only with AIMS have I had admin rights.

AIMS has a dated interface, but does what it says on the tin. Recording is intuitive and straight forward, reporting, mailmerge etc requires the user to be a bit tech savvy.
AIMS has a free demo, so you can have a look yourself: https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/aims/aims-demo/

AdvicePro has a better interface (still fairly outdated). Recording is a touch more complicated and multiple users in the CAB I worked in at the time found it difficult to use. I didn’t have a chance to try the reporting function. Mailmerge functions etc worked pretty well, most people could probably manage if a decent admin has set it up.

If my budget had allowed it I would probably have gone with AdvicePro, but as it stands AIMS is providing good value for money.

Julie1 - 12 December 2019 10:28 AM

Advice Pro is very good- lots of reporting and flexibility available and very user friendly- highly recommended.

We’ve just moved to advicePRO and whilst it’s early days (and I have Admin. privileges I’ve yet to explore) it’s certainly not what I would call user friendly. A few examples:

- no document view for a case. If you want to find a document you need to know which note it’s attached to and when you attached it. Adds several stages to an otherwise basic task. Try that when your case is two years old!

- works terribly with anything other than a browser set at 100%.

- the amount of scrolling required on every page is just incredible and, whilst you can minimise menus, they default to open every time.

- the need to Save is not clearly indicated and the Save button is often obscured. There’s also no consistency. Sometimes it’s top right and sometimes it’s bottom right. There’s even one page where if you enter something in a field it saves automatically but if you want the rest of the page saved you need to click on Save.

I obviously have a different perspective as someone with a complex sight impairment but for that reasons “user-friendliness” is top of my list and I’m hyper sensitive to when something introduces 4 steps to do something which really ought to be 1 for example.

Thanks for replies so far - anyone else used ‘Charity log local’