SEMA News—April 2013

CHRIS KERSTING

Whether CEO or Tech Geek: Drive Technology to Drive Sales

No matter what your role in your company or your knowledge of today’s business tech tools, everyone is striving to increase sales. This issue of SEMA News is loaded with info on great business technology that will help you do just that.

One biz tech system all SEMA members should be aware of by now is the SEMA Data Co-op (SDC), and we have big news—a new tool to help members get started and maximize product sales.

The paragraphs immediately below can help even a CEO who is not a biz tech wizard learn why the SDC is an essential sales driver. Then you can pass this issue of SEMA News along to your tech and marketing folks to dive into the details. If you’re a techie, consider this an SDC update and enjoy the articles in this issue, which go deeper. In either case, I hope this information prompts you to learn more—and sell more—by participating in the SEMA Data Co-op.

How Does the SEMA Data Co-op Help Sell Parts?

Parts sales today are driven by the availability of good product information—marketing copy, images, video and more—in digital formats that your trading partners can easily find, access and use. The SDC is an industry-owned and -operated “meeting place” to share your product information with your trading partners. In that respect, it’s much like our highly regarded SEMA Show. You and your trading partners can use this shared information so that those looking for your products online can find them and place an order.

Full Launch and a New Tool

We are pleased to report that the SDC recently achieved two important milestones. First, we completed a successful six-month beta phase—including hundreds of SEMA manufacturers and channel partner participants—and have now launched full-scale service.

Second, we released a break-through new tool for the industry—SEMA PIMS—to help your company easily organize your product information and have it accessible to your industry business partners.

SEMA PIMS is a robust and very useful Product Information Management System where each manufacturer controls the content and distribution of their product data—and it’s yours to use as a member of the SEMA Data Co-op. The tool ensures that all data brought into the repository complies with industry standards through a very intuitive, web-based interface. And don’t worry about getting started, SEMA PIMS and our entire SDC suite of services provide a fulltime Help Desk to assist companies at any level. In short, for those who dream of a really good system to organize and update your product information, we now have a super product-info tool at your fingertips.

You’ll find a full update from SEMA Data Co-op CEO Jon Wyly in this issue, in which he talks about SEMA Search, another powerful SDC feature that is just on the horizon. Meanwhile, we look forward to meeting with SDC users as the opportunity permits, and we anticipate some informative user-group meetings in the near future.

—Chris Kersting, SEMA President and CEO