Importance of Software User Communities (CoCentrix 2015 Western User Group Gathering)

I have been involved in numerous software vendor relationships over the years, but must admit each of them have had an amazing group of users. Users of the basic product who have been able to make the software provided by their vendor into workable and often customized to fit their business needs.

This is certainly true of the CoCentrix Western User Group (WUG). We met last week and I continue to be inspired and amazed by the talented staff across many agencies and their innovation and creative uses of the base products from CoCentrix (ProFiler and CCP). While the vendor can provide a workable base system it is the users in the field every single day that make a good system (in this case EMR) really sing for their respective agencies.

One of the first questions you should ask your vendor is about the user-community and opportunities to share these inspired uses of their product! Your vendors don't know your specific situations but your staff, with the help of these communities, can certainly make a good product even better! We all like to think we are 'special' and have unique needs, but it is always comforting to learn that each of us have more in common than we think and, for those truly unique needs, there are great minds and skills out there to help!

Tracy wrote this article and posted it to LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/importance-software-user-communities-cocentrix-2015-western-thompson

Thank you to Tracy Thompson of Jet Computers for sharing thoughts about user communities.