OMEGA (West Virginia’s Oil Marketers and Grocers Association) provides lobbying, educational seminars and trade shows for its approximately 175 members, comprised of petroleum marketers, convenience store operators and grocers throughout West Virginia.
Company Story:
Bricks Without Straw has a long history with OMEGA, building its initial website and maintaining it since. Traci Nelson, Member Services Coordinator for OMEGA stated, “Jamie is constantly updating the site and making it more user friendly.
Online Testing System:
One major addition to the website has been an online training and testing system, a complicated endeavor which Nelson says Jamie “did an absolutely fantastic job getting all the bugs worked out, making it easy for our members to use and for us to use as well.”
The testing system was direly needed by the association, due to government requirements affecting federal funding for owners of underground storage tanks, stipulating that employees be trained in dealing with emergency situations.
Designing and implementing the system became a group effort. An association member developed a power point training presentation and a 15-question test; Jamie then implemented these onto OMEGA’s site. The system is designed to allow employees to register online, take the test online, and immediately print test results and certificates which can then be kept in store. Jamie and another company also worked together to enable Nelson to filter the test results, allowing her to sort and find test results and email them to members, if necessary.
OMEGA’s members are thrilled, according to Nelson. “If they had gone to an outside provider, it would have been extremely expensive. We really weren’t sure when we went into this what we really needed and how we needed to do it. Jamie has really done a lot of work on this testing system.”
Jamie “did an absolutely fantastic job getting all the bugs worked out, making it easy for our members to use and for us to use as well.”
Saving Time and Money
BWS has suggested other money and time saving options. Jamie strongly advocated a digital newsletter, a move Nelson also strongly believed in. “He was just really adamant that we really need to stop wasting so much paper, stop spending all this money. . .” Nelson said. The association did eventually adopt a digital format, dwindling their mailing list. “It’s saved us a lot of money—we don’t have the mail expense, the paper expense. . .time wise, the stuffing of the envelopes. . .”
Jamie helped train Nelson when OMEGA went to the different format, working with her until she felt comfortable with the new software. He also remains actively involved in the newsletter and mini editions, adding content which Nelson supplies and updating headers and graphics on a regular basis. He also suggested ListMessenger, an email management tool which allows OMEGA to quickly and efficiently send the newsletters and important bulletins to its members, saving Nelson more time, a valuable resource in an office such as hers.
“We’re a staff of three. . .we have a president and two staff people. . . we don’t have time to keep things updated on our website. And I don’t have the technical knowledge to do it either. Anything I send out Jamie immediately gets on the site or one of his staff gets it on the site so I don’t have to worry about it; it’s not another job that I have to do because I don’t have time to do it.”
Nelson concluded, “Jamie is just extremely efficient. He works hard to take care of his clients in a timely fashion. Weekends, evenings, anytime I send him a note for anything, he is immediately right back with me and working on it. He’s a hard worker.”
