How NEM Health bypassed a logistical nightmare to deliver seamless wellness benefits and win major corporate accounts.

With the technology that Bardge brings, we're able to manage the wellness experience of our customers through the Bardge app," says Dr. Asishana. "Clients can generate their one-time password to access the services. We're not burdened with the contracts of the gyms and spas. We're not bothered about the enlisting."

At a Glance

• The Challenge: Fulfilling a surging corporate demand for lifestyle benefits required immense internal manpower to source, vet, and individually negotiate with gyms and spas across the country.
• The Solution: NEM Health integrated Bardge’s technology and aggregated wellness network, completely offloading the administrative burden of vendor management and digitizing user access.
• The Impact: The partnership eliminated operational bottlenecks, delivered a seamless enrollee experience, and served as the direct "deal breaker" that helped NEM Health win a high-value corporate account.

The Challenge: The Logistical Nightmare of Manual Expansion

The corporate healthcare landscape is shifting rapidly. As companies work to balance the needs of a multi-generational workforce, HR directors are increasingly looking beyond traditional hospital coverage. Today’s employees—particularly the growing Gen Z demographic—are actively clamoring for proactive lifestyle benefits like gym access, spa treatments, and healthy eating discounts.

For NEM Health, recognizing this demand was easy. Fulfilling it internally, however, presented a severe operational hurdle.

"Bringing on board gyms and spas has become a top priority for most HMOs... to remain competitive in the market, you have to offer these services," explains Dr. Sanni Asishana, Group Head of Medical Services at NEM Health.

Attempting to build a nationwide wellness network from scratch meant that NEM Health’s internal teams had to act as a massive vendor management operation. Enrollees were requesting facilities in every location, demanding access to gyms on their specific streets.

Meeting this demand manually meant sourcing individual gyms, conducting facility audits, negotiating tariffs and pricing, and signing individual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with every single vendor.

"The sheer manpower that was required to sign up multiple gyms across the country... was a nightmare for us," Dr. Asishana notes. The manual acquisition model was simply not scalable, and the logistical nightmare of onboarding vendors was threatening to slow down their competitive edge.

The Solution: Seamless Technology and Aggregated Infrastructure

NEM Health recognized that the future of their lifestyle offering relied on scalable technology, not isolated, manual partnerships. By partnering with Bardge, NEM Health immediately resolved their operational bottleneck.

Instead of deploying manpower to sign up gyms one by one, NEM Health plugged directly into Bardge’s established network via their app infrastructure.

"With the technology that Bardge brings, we're able to manage the wellness experience of our customers through the Bardge app," says Dr. Asishana. "Clients can generate their one-time password to access the services. We're not burdened with the contracts of the gyms and spas. We're not bothered about the enlisting."

For NEM Health, whose core organizational mantra is "Seamless access to quality care," the Bardge integration delivered exactly that: a frictionless way for enrollees to enjoy lifestyle services without creating administrative chaos for the HMO.

The Impact: A Multi-Million Naira Deal Breaker

The partnership with Bardge did more than just streamline internal operations; it provided a distinct, competitive differentiator that directly impacted NEM Health's bottom line and new client acquisition.

Because Bardge actively aggregates a diverse and highly specific network of wellness facilities, NEM Health can now meet highly tailored corporate demands during sales pitches.

Dr. Asishana points to a recent scenario where the breadth of the Bardge network directly resulted in closed revenue.

"We had a client who wanted a specific all-female gym, and Bardge had that gym on their network," he shares. "For us, it was one of the deal breakers that made us win that business worth a lot of money... without the Bardge collaboration, it would have been difficult for us to scale through that to win that business account for NEM."

Looking Ahead: The Drive for Deep Neighborhood Inclusion

Having successfully offloaded the burden of vendor management, NEM Health is now looking toward the future of the partnership: deep, geographic inclusion.

To drive real health outcomes, wellness needs to be close to home. While premium, central gyms are great, true utilization happens when working out is convenient.

"Because of the crave and request for these wellness centers, we really need to expand the network across the country," Dr. Asishana emphasizes regarding their Q3 focus. "Bring in more neighborhood gyms, bring in more neighborhood spas. Inclusion is what will change the game. We need to support the small gyms, not just the premium gyms... We need their comfort, really. Just go to a nearby gym and work out without stress."

By leveraging Bardge to handle the supply-side infrastructure, NEM Health is now perfectly positioned to scale their lifestyle benefits aggressively, ensuring that proactive health is accessible, inclusive, and entirely seamless.