The British Agricultural and Garden Machinery Association (BAGMA), the UK trade association for garden and agricultural machinery dealers, has chosen oomi CRM to underpin its future development of membership services.
BAGMA provides a range of services and benefits to its 550 trade members including advice, legal support, training and education, and also lobbies government on the industry’s behalf. In the latest development in its long 100-year history, the organisation is now part of the Agricultural Engineers Association (AEA), a recent change that meant it needed to source a suitable stand-alone system to support its membership management and administration.
“It was a no-brainer to move to oomi,” says Keith Christian, Director at BAGMA. “They have a good reputation as a long-term specialist supplier to trade associations. And from using their CRM at the British Independent Retailers Association (BIRA), our previous owners, we knew what it did and that it worked for us. Also important to us is that they are an independent company – and their people are just great.”
BAGMA will be using the core oomi CRM and membership management modules to automate key but often repetitive and time-consuming tasks related to membership administration. This involves integration with their finance system, Sage, to streamline invoicing and renewals via direct debits. The system will also support digital marketing – with API integration with Mailchimp – improving communications to members. Potential future plans include creating a better, interactive website making use of oomi’s online portal functionality.
“We are a small team and the efficiencies that oomi CRM provides us will give us even more time to dedicate to communicating with our members and enhancing our services to them. We’ll also be able to focus on member recruitment,” adds Christian.
Joel Trotman, Sales Director at oomi, comments: “It’s fantastic to welcome another historic trade association to our userbase and look forward to working with them on this next stage of their development. Our solutions are specifically designed to manage the often complex activities and relationships that trade associations have, helping them to be more efficient and member-focused.”