We at Veson are incredibly fortunate to have a vast and diverse user base that is full of great ideas. It is no secret that we owe our success to our close partnerships with clients, who have consistently guided us towards building and deploying valuable solutions for the industry.

However, outside of ONCOURSE roundtables and other events, these collaborative conversations are often 1:1 in nature. As we grow as a company and community, it becomes increasingly important for us to gather as many perspectives and opinions as possible, ensuring that we remain focused on the most important things. As an initial step in this effort, we launched the Veson Nautical Feature Board in January of this year.

The Feature Board is a singular, public, and free location for users and clients to directly influence the Veson product roadmap by sharing ideas and validating ideas proposed by others. Clients can track the progress of their feature submissions, as well as upvote and comment on submissions from the rest of the community. The Veson Product Team monitors these submissions daily and selects top requests for inclusion in upcoming development sprints.

Since the launch just over two months ago, the community has responded — over 900 votes have been cast and over 200 feature suggestions have been submitted – that’s about 6 new feature suggestions a day and growing. In addition, users are collaborating directly with each other via the comments section –  uncovering workarounds, sharing knowledge, and getting exposure to how similar problems are being solved in other organizations.

Over the last month, we have promoted the first handful of features from the board to development, and these items have now been released:

Additional Audit Reporting

This was far and away the highest voted feature – congratulations to Maryse Lefebvre, from CSL! This is the perfect initial “winner” for the Feature Board, as it is something that we at Veson would not have thought to be the most important item. Auditing and traceability are certainly increasingly critical, but the response from the community made it clear.

Warning When Deleting a Port with a Data Submitter

This is a great example of a small effort/high value usability item. For clients that connect to agents and port services suppliers through the API, the system will now warn you if you try to delete a port in the voyage itinerary with a Data Submission entry, helping to ensure that you adjust your itinerary with intention.

Emissions Calculator

While this wasn’t quite a top item in terms of votes, it happened to exactly overlap with a suggestion from one of our software engineers. The Feature Board presented a great opportunity to link these ideas together – and hopefully take CO2 emissions into account as we evaluate voyage options.

By assessing common pain points and collaborating on solution ideation, the Feature Board is helping to forge a larger conversation around what will bring the most value to the industry. Our community is utilizing the Board to reach new levels of transparency and collaboration in our product development process, helping Veson further connection and value-adding software and solutions in the industry.

We are incredibly excited to share these items with the community and look forward to more great ideas from the Feature Board!