NEP finds a partner in Oak Engage

15 June 2021

We’ve partnered with NEP Group, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania based and privately owned international production company that provides outsourced teleproduction services for major events throughout the world. We spoke to John Gierl, their Chief Information Officer, who tells us why they selected Oak and how we went the extra mile during the sales process.

What problems are you trying to solve with Oak?

We were looking for a new intranet site to enhance our organisation's overall communication and collaboration efforts. Our current intranet was implemented years ago when we were a much smaller organisation and located primarily in the US and the UK. Over the last four years, the company has grown dramatically through acquisition with our global footprint now covering 25 countries. Although we leveraged technology that invited collaboration, it consisted of numerous platforms because the original on-premises software was slow and inflexible for what we needed. We chose Oak because it provides us with a single platform offering the functionality we needed with the speed and access our remote teams require. We intend to leverage Oak to communicate and enable our new business strategy throughout the organisation. Oak allows us to bring everything together into a seamless, efficient communication and collaboration layer - a "one stop" gateway to all of the resources, tools and news our employees need to do their jobs effectively.

What made you select Oak over other providers?

One of the main reasons we selected Oak was their native mobile app - that’s big! Our employees are constantly on the go and having a consistent user experience is critical. No one wants to use a browser on their smartphone. They want that app, they want to click on it, they want it on Android and iOS. Another feature that stood out was the Push Notifications. Companies today want some type of a notification system or platform to communicate real-time with their workforce - to all employees or to sometimes only certain groups - and, normally, that is outside of an intranet. I don’t know of any other solution on the market that has this functionality built into a combined intranet and communication solution. It not only makes it easy and simplistic, but it also makes it stick, which is imperative from an adoption perspective.

We also felt we found a partner in Oak. We want to help set the direction for the product and the fact that it felt like a partnership made it a perfect fit. I think the most successful vendors are the ones that listen to and react to the needs of the customer. Oak listened to the issues we were trying to solve and gave us a solution, they just checked all of the boxes.

How well did the team tailor the presentation to your needs?

The team took the time and effort to understand our business, we haven’t seen that before from anyone and it was just exceptional. It was that extra effort and customer focus that really stood out. It was so detail-oriented and when you associate the company in the demo, it's very powerful. It was one of the most enjoyable sales processes I've had in years.

How was your experience with our team?

Another huge reason we selected Oak is their people and culture. The team has been and continues to be easy to engage with. Throughout the process, they have been attentive and answered every question we had. The response time was amazing during the review process and we were made to feel important. Even though our core team was in a different time zone, Oak still went the extra mile to make sure we had regular meetings and always responded quickly.