NovaTech, a medium-sized provider of automation and engineering solutions serving electric utilities and process manufacturing industries for 40 years, recently announced the appointment of Conrad Oakey as its chief executive officer.
Oakey, who originally joined NovaTech in 2000, includes among his many accomplishments consolidating the management of the two business units (power and process automation), simplifying online ordering and customer support, as well as continuing to improve the functionality and ease-of-implementation of the company’s three product lines.
In his previous role as vice president of strategy and communications, Oakey focused on web technologies, search engine optimization, and other digital marketing strategies while tracking or managing multiple high-level change initiatives within the organization.
He continues to drive the digitization of internal information and work processes to increase responsiveness to customer needs.
During the pandemic, he successfully shifted NovaTech’s communications by introducing weekly educational product webinars for its power business customers and adopting real-time web-based collaborations to support process division customers during installations. These innovations helped keep NovaTech closely engaged with their customers during a period when they could not visit them in person.
As CEO, Oakey has a priority meeting with NovaTech’s customers as markets begin to open up.
“I want to make sure I spend as much time meeting with customers and advocating for them within our organization as possible,” he said. “Customer experience, not established practice, will continue to be of primary importance at NovaTech.”
Product innovation is another area of focus for the new CEO, including incorporating specialized versions of products requested by customers into standard releases to accelerate new feature development.
Oakey points to the latest version of their Orion product for substations that have been reduced to the size of a book. The smaller form factor enables the device to sit on a pole-top or inside larger equipment, where it can consolidate information and perform control actions for distribution feeders.
Oakey envisions moving beyond the company’s long-held strength in utility substations onto more points along the feeder, including pole-top sensing and control applications, underground vaults, small exchange points and mini substations.
Internally, Oakey will be leading a recently consolidated management team responsible for sales, marketing, operations, product development and employee services including IT, HR, finance and administration.
More info www.novatechautomation.com
