Goran Haag, Founder and President of Champion Fiberglass, has always been fascinated with creating novel products. For Champion Fiberglass, this manifests as a fiberglass conduit, a leading edge material in the electrical conduit market.
Established in 1988, Champion Fiberglass recently celebrated its 35th anniversary — an exciting and impressive milestone for a company that began with just ten employees. Today, the company boasts 165 employees and has shown remarkable growth in nearly four decades of operation.
Why Businesses Choose Champion Fiberglass
Champion Fiberglass has a healthy customer base across several industries. The conduit is used in many applications such in data centers, bridge crossings, solar farms, wind farms, subway tunnels, and railway tunnels, to name a few.
Goran is a huge proponent of exceptional customer service and firmly believes that happy customers are more apt to stay with a company long-term. He recalled an instance when the conduit that Champion Fiberglass supplied to a job was installed incorrectly and, as a result, was not working.
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“Rather than faulting the contractor, we reimbursed them free of charge,” said Goran. “It’s because of that decision that we’ve continued to receive jobs from this client.”
For Goran, customer satisfaction ties into the “Hedgehog Concept,” a theory that played off of an old fable and was further ideated by author Jim Collins in his book Good to Great.
The Hedgehog Concept taps into three questions for business development:
- What can you be the best in the world at?
- What are you passionate about?
- How will you make money?
Goran embodies this by producing top-quality fiberglass conduit products and providing exceptional customer service. These are the key elements to Champion Fiberglass’s continued success.
Why NetSuite Was Perfect for Champion Fiberglass
With growth comes change, and change often means leveling up your business practices and systems.
Champion Fiberglass cycled through two other ERPs before finally landing on the best solution — NetSuite.
The company had identified several shortcomings in its existing ERP software that created consistent frustrations. One of these pitfalls was the perplexing inability to round off numbers to the decimal.
Goran said, “It sounds like a small thing, but we have huge orders, and when you can’t round off to three decimals, it becomes an issue. We would end up with discrepancies in pricing and then would have to go back and manually enter the correct numbers. Having to sit and rekey every single order was just frustrating.”
Goran’s experience with previous ERPs and their defects gave him a specific roadmap for his desired software. His requirements included:
- An ERP that was cloud-based
- An ERP that was fairly priced
- An ERP that had accounting modules that would talk to one another
- An ERP that could complete the seemingly basic task of rounding off numbers to the decimal to produce accurate orders and reports
- An ERP represented by a larger company with a solid reputation
Through his research, NetSuite was the clear winner across the board.
And to sweeten the deal, StratusGreen was able to apply a series of customizations fit to Champion’s specific needs. One of these is a preventative maintenance program that Champion Fiberglass now uses daily.
“We were using an independent program for preventative maintenance,” said Goran, “and we really didn’t like it because we’d have to enter data into both the independent program and NetSuite. Everything is integrated with the program StratusGreen created for us, so there’s no need for double entry.”
Customizations like this have been paramount in maximizing NetSuite’s efficiency and facilitating Champion Fiberglass’s success.
Why StratusGreen Was a Perfect Fit
Through his journey with ERP, Goran had several experiences with ERP consultants — none as exceptional as StratusGreen.
“When our previous consultant left, NetSuite recommended us to a third-party consultant. It was the worst experience we ever had,” said Goran. Goran found that he had to constantly explain business processes to their new consultant, and it simply wasn’t working.
“We really needed a consultant that could hold our hand,” said Goran. Specifically, he was looking for someone that could do scripting, was highly responsive, provided exceptional customer service, and understood accounting. When he connected with StratusGreen in 2019, he immediately knew it was a great fit.
Today, Champion Fiberglass and StratusGreen are in near-constant communication. From weekly requests to monthly check-ins, Goran is especially appreciative of the depth of knowledge StratusGreen brings and the communicative nature of the partnership.
Goran expressed, “I’m a big supporter of StratusGreen. They have been highly amenable to all of our customizations and have made everything we’ve requested happen. They’ve really fixed everything for us. StratusGreen provides good service, is highly competent, and always responds quickly.”
For Goran, StratusGreen mirrors his priorities at Champion Fiberglass: being laser-focused on customer service and going to any lengths necessary to ensure customer satisfaction.
Get Matched with Manufacturing Industry Experts at StratusGreen
Simply put — we specialize in helping manufacturing companies grow with NetSuite.
The StratusGreen consulting team brings nearly six decades of combined experience in manufacturing, making us the perfect complement to facilitating your business growth.
From implementation to custom-coded modules for customers like Champion Fiberglass, we listen first and build second. It’s a simple but incredibly effective two-step process that puts your manufacturing business’s goals at the forefront.
If you have any inquiries about using NetSuite to propel your manufacturing business, please reach out to us — we’d be happy to help.
