InfoEd User Group Meeting 2019

From May 14 through May 16, InfoEd Global held its annual User Group Meeting (UGM), hosted by the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus.

UGM is a unique opportunity to simultaneously be face to face with InfoEd employees and a variety of people from other institutions who use InfoEd’s software. The goal of bringing everyone together is to collaboratively solve problems — from common, enterprise-level issues to niche pain points that require specific, custom-built solutions — and ultimately improve the software companywide.

Over the years, UGM has evolved from being more of a “show and tell” by InfoEd to being focused on hearing from clients firsthand how they’ve creatively molded the software to solve their problems. Which has much greater value, because InfoEd’s software is designed such that if an institution likes what another is doing with the software, it can replicate it with little effort. We got to hear a variety of vignette-style presentations from other InfoEd institutions on day one, then participate in smaller-group sessions over the two following days to learn more about the topic areas most relevant to NC State.

Nearly 200 attendees made the trip, representing 50 different institutions, ranging from Yale and Princeton to East Carolina and the University of Ghana. And NC State was well-represented, with over a dozen members of the ERA Project team in attendance.

As NC State gets further into implementation — and for every year we use RED — UGM will become even more valuable because we’ll have a much better understanding of the specific needs we’ll have of the software.

But UGM 2019 was still a more-than-worthwhile networking opportunity. And it further demonstrated the incredible customization InfoEd’s software allows, opening our eyes to the many different types of solutions that exist. Fellow institutions taught us plenty about the “dos and don’ts” throughout implementation and beyond. Of course, that said, while we were mostly there to soak up knowledge, we were also able to share some best practices of our own. ERA Development Manager Rusty Earl and Technical Business Analyst Natalie Boone both gave presentations that were very well-received.

We’ve got plenty of work ahead of us, but our UGM 2019 experience was definitely further indication we’re on the right track. Stay tuned to this blog and the ERA website for more information and updates about the ERA Project!