Highlights from Dimagi’s Inaugural CommCare Enterprise Summit in Washington D.C.

An exclusive event created for leading Organizations 

In September 2023, Dimagi hosted our Inaugural CommCare Enterprise Summit, where 14 out of our 16 CommCare software-as-a-service (SaaS) Enterprise Partners attended the 3-day event in Washington DC. 

These internationally acclaimed Organizations independently build and roll out digital solutions, reaching a collective 1.2 billion people around the globe. They represent some of the largest NGOs in the world, with most operating in multiple countries and with tens of thousands of employees. Collectively to date, 55,000 CommCare Enterprise users are creating impact across 613 CommCare projects spaces. On a monthly basis, we facilitate close to 2 million form submissions for Enterprise Partners alone. 

CommCare Enterprise Partners bring valuable experience and expertise to the table, having implemented real-world solutions globally across a vast range of humanitarian aid and disaster relief initiatives. While they are diverse in size and geographical reach, and use CommCare in very different ways, they share many of the same challenges. These challenges are both unique and complex, too, because of the sheer scale at which they operate. 

Three Days Together in Washington D.C.

Every Organization represented was able to benefit from shared knowledge, experience and problem solving. The summit created an environment for us to gain insights, too, into the needs and priorities of these leading Organizations, to enable us to further develop and improve our products and services. 

This year’s agenda was guided by our Enterprise Partners, who, prior to the Summit, were invited to give their input on priorities and topics of interest. Their feedback steered the summit agenda, and our three days together involved the following:

Day 1: Creating better impact by learning about and trying new features in CommCare and getting the chance to learn about and inform the product roadmap. 

Day 2: Learning from other Enterprise Organizations about ways to create more impact – including deep-dives on data strategies, service delivery, M&E, and open sessions. 

Day 3: On the last day, we collectively took what we had learned and focused on our digital scale-up plans for creating sustained impact. 

Three Takeaways from the Summit

After three days together, immersed in activities and sessions that fostered collaboration, knowledge exchange, and the generation of new ideas, the key takeaways can be summed up as follows: 

#1: Co-Designing the 2024 Enterprise Product Roadmap 

One of the benefits of being a CommCare Enterprise Partner is the opportunity to inform Dimagi’s Software-as-a-Service Product Roadmap. Dimagi shared eight new features on the Product Roadmap that cover 3 main categories: Administrative (App building features), Data workflows and Security. 

The new features were showcased in a live demo in CommCare, and Enterprise Partners also had an opportunity to share “blue skies” thinking for future roadmap planning including features, functionality and capabilities that they would like to see.

Participants responded to surveys in real time, sharing their input on which features were most important and most valuable to them. As next steps, Dimagi will be going through these to determine how to incorporate top features into our Enterprise Roadmap. 

#2: Sharing Lessons Learned Across Incredible Organizations

Our Enterprise Partners had an opportunity to share lessons learned from their own program experiences, which other Organizations – albeit vastly different in size and geographical reach – found incredibly insightful. The sessions included:  

• Panels on Global Indicator Collection, Service Delivery and Global Rollout
• Show & Tells on Baseline Surveys, Enterprise Dashboards and Data Grants
• Technical Deep-Dives on PowerBI, Data Democratization
• Interactive Working Groups on Frontline Delivery, Unique Identifications and others for rollout plans & ad hoc topics

Each Organization also took part in the Unlocking Impact Exercise and mapped their own path for 2024, focusing on areas such as SSO, Harnessing CommCare’s Potential, Standardization of CommCare applications and forms and many more. The Organizations worked individually and sought feedback from others outside of their Organization on ways to unlock more impact in their frontline programs.

The Organizations represented found that they had more in common than they realized, and formed 4 Technical Working Groups around topics of common interest. The Organizations that have signed up to be part of each of these groups will be working together over the coming months to advance each of these topics: 

• Capacity Building: Capacity building and Training on CommCare
• Frontline Experience: CommCare for Service Delivery
• Data Use: Integrations and Interoperability
• Governance: CommCare Governance and Management

#3: Making time for Personal Connection

Integral to any successful summit is an opportunity to connect socially. In addition to dinners hosted by Dimagi each night of the summit, participants enjoyed a moonlight monument tour on an old trolley that included a couple of stops where folks could hop off and immerse themselves in the city’s rich history!

Feedback from Enterprise Partners

Participants left the summit armed with fresh knowledge, enhanced skills, and deeper expertise to bolster their digital programs. The success of the CommCare Enterprise Summit was evident in the post-event survey where we received a 92% satisfaction rating from participants. 

Here are some of the things our Enterprise Partners had to say:

“This was really a great success and I cannot think of a conference I attended that created more value for me. Everything was perfectly organized and the services provided during (e.g. real time evaluation of polls) and those announced for after the conference…”

“I have learned much more in these 3 days than months within the Web resources…I think that a quick and easy way to understand is to share lessons learned from other colleagues.”

“Overall an excellent summit. I’m coming away with lots of ideas and a greater understanding of some of the challenges we need to address…I’m much better placed now to support the team to get more out of our use of CommCare.”

We are honored that our Enterprise Partners were able to extract so much value from our Inaugural CommCare Enterprise Summit, and we look forward to continued collaboration built on a robust, sustainable approach that maximizes impact today, and sets the foundation for tomorrow’s success.

To learn more about the benefits of being a CommCare Enterprise Partner, please visit our CommCare for Enterprise Page.