SEMA News—May 2020
Evolving to Serve You Better
Chris Kersting
More recently, SEMA has evolved a wide variety of new programs and even new business units such as the SEMA Data Co-op (SDC) and SEMA Garage, each offering more specialized services. As those specialized benefits become available, SEMA aims to reach relevant individuals within each company who might want to know about them. For example, a product data manager would be specifically interested in the SDC’s benefit of digitized product information—necessary to allow broader B2B and B2C exchanges in an increasingly online world. Similarly, SEMA Garage offers services specifically useful to product-development specialists and engineers, and SEMA legislative and regulatory alerts are of interest to company CEOs, legal advisors and those who communicate with the enthusiast community. It’s quite possible that information about such services and opportunities reaches its intended target less frequently if the member company’s primary contact is the only one informed of it.
In short, as SEMA’s industry benefits evolve, there has grown a need to communicate more directly with individuals within member companies as a means of better serving their needs, based on their roles and functions. Simultaneously, modern communications methods have made that process entirely possible. Mobile and desktop devices and social-media tools provide the opportunity for SEMA to reorient and build a direct connection and relationship with individual employees within a member company.
Toward the end of 2018 the SEMA Board of Directors approved the long-range development of a model where individual employees within a dues-paying SEMA-member company can build a personalized connection with the association, its staff and its programs through content delivery and technology. Starting with a redesigned www.sema.org website and continuing with increasing the relevance of association emails, we expect this revolutionary change to improve each industry professional’s ability to interact with SEMA and focus on the relationships and SEMA tools that mean the most to that person.
Technology, including mobile and desktop devices, will make this initiative more effective for the individual, but it will also improve the SEMA community by building stronger ties and greater value return for members.
Under this concept, an employee within a member company will be able to get the information they select based on their job function, market segment and personal interests. That creates the possibility of reducing irrelevant messages from SEMA, which can be perceived as clutter and become a deterrent to effective communication.
Once implemented, the plan will allow members to engage through individual and personalized interactions, participate in social communities, and receive news and information that is relevant to their occupations and interests. In the end, we expect to better tailor the quality and delivery of industry information, to enhance the individual user experience, and to improve access to SEMA services and benefits.
SEMA is currently preparing infrastructure and systems to begin offering services more directly to employees of our member companies—a move that will begin this summer and continue into the SEMA Show season. It’s a project you’ll be hearing more about in the future as we move forward and continue to build resources for our industry.
Since its inception in 1963, the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) has had companies as its members and communicated with them through a single company representative—the “primary contact.” Up until recent years, that single primary contact might have been the only individual who received association information and publications. Consequently, the primary contact was usually each business’ only conduit for information about association services, benefits and opportunities.