I've owned the BCD996P2 for about a year and half now. It's a good scanner, I like it.
You will need some software for programming, this is a must. I use Proscan myself. there are NXDN & DMR systems I listen to, Freescan doesn't support those. I just recently entered a system and it took about a hour to do on the computer where it would have taken me several hours to do through the keypad.
You can have someone else program the radio initially, but you will need to learn to program yourself should you want to add systems later.
I've also downloaded systems from Radio Reference and imported them in to the scanner, not a big fan of this option. This will add encrypted and other channels that you will need to lockout or remove as they just take up memory space.
Thanks, Randy