2) Focus your priorities

Prioritize your goals and where your team will focus. 

SAM is an enterprise system that can:
-track client demographic data
-the client's case and processes for your programs
-automate those processes
-track outcomes, events, surveys & reports
-support fundraising, volunteers
-link all of the people and organizations that support your clients and MORE!

A lot, right?! 

To implement SAM successfully, we recommend that you focus on one thing at a time, starting with simpler functions. SAM is a program that you can implement over time as you get more comfortable with it. Try not to get overwhelmed with all of your programs and processes at once or you might end up feeling like...

Remember that our team is here for yours for the long run to help you at each step of implementation. 

1) Revisit what's most important to the team.

Remember the goals you shared in our New Client Form? Well, even those may need to be narrowed a bit to create this focus. 

Because SAM is first a child welfare database, we generally recommend looking at your family and child programs first. Better tools for recruiting and preparing families for placement is why most agencies are drawn to SAM. Putting those tools in place will allow your team more presence for other activities. 

Some agencies prioritize other functions such fundraising or birth families instead and as a matter of fact, each SAM Admin may have different roles in your organization, agendas and priorities. 

These are important conversations with your team as you move forward with SAM.

2) Layout the programs that will be added to SAM. 

Write out your programs using vocabulary your agency uses to describe each. Do those programs extend to just families or do you have services for children and birth families and others that connect with each other or should they be considered separately?

In SAM, you can setup workflows and systems for all main entities: Families, children and birth families. This is because users don't interact with or require the same tasks of children as families, so their process in SAM will be different. 

Once the programs are clearly established, prioritize them and select which will get the efforts of your admin's time to setup first, second, etc. 

3) Determine the go-to team member for each program.

SAM Admins are often the "most techy" in the team, but may also be hired specifically and/or recently to implement SAM. 

Putting the right people in place will be instrumental as you start gathering workflows and documents as decisions on how SAM will be setup will need to be made regularly. These folks may or may not be the SAM Admin, but they are the people familiar with how programs are run currently and can make decisions on behalf of that program. 

 Up Next: Define Your Process