Bigger Challenges and
Improvements 2009-2015
56 EMPLOYEES
6 PHYSICAL OFFICE
7 ORGANIZATIONAL GROUPS
198 ACTIVE CUSTOMERS
$13.5M ANNUAL REVENUE
While the addition of many offices helped the company grow quickly, it highlighted the necessity of a more foundational business structure. In 2009, ownership was spread among a handful of Champion employees in leadership positions to solidify its base, and the company’s focus changed from rapid growth to smart, steady, sustainable growth. It was during this year that Champion laid out its company mission and completed its first major overhaul of the company website.
Champion’s business took a hit from the recession in 2010 but still grew slightly and took another step towards strengthening its foundation by adding a full-time HS&E Manager. It also started slowly adding personnel in remote locations, which later transitioned into additional offices like Grand Junction and Denver, CO today.
There was also a huge win with our customer Newfield that year, which involved the automation of almost 2,000 wells over the next 3+ years. It was so much work that it necessitated temporarily opening an office in Roosevelt, UT. While it provided lots of work, it also gave its own share of challenges as well.
MISSION STATEMENT
“T o improve the overall safety, well-being, and prosperity of our employees, our company, our customers, and our communities through the intelligent and efficient application of the resources and technologies currently available.”
Rocky Mountain Region
Business Manager
Champion for 9 years, 8 months
“T he Newfield project was quite a learning experience. It was approximately $5 million per year for three years. We almost doubled the office size in one year and more than doubled our gross income. This project was very taxing on me and our employees and taught me the art of delegation and the importance of having good employees that you can trust to get the job done.”
The sheer quantity of projects that needed to be managed helped push Champion’s transition to a more versatile and reliable accounting system. In 2011, Champion shifted from a combination of a small accounting product and a homemade database to Deltek Vision accounting, which is still in use today. Through the years, efforts have been made to take advantage of more and more of the components in the system to improve project management, at least from an accounting perspective.
ASSIST
Accounting Manager
Champion for 9 years, 9 months
“T he #1 improvement I have seen take place since I started is the refining and creation of administrative processes. I started at Champion when the Administration and Accounting Department was mainly managed by one person and it was still in its first stages. Many processes were either not in place or close to being outdated. Through the years, many processes have been added, most all processes have been refined and many more employees have been hired to make up the various areas of Administration. This reformation process has caused the Administrative area to now run smooth.”
Brian Prindle: “I think that we have become more organized especially in the time and expenses department. Prior to Vision, we had to enter time on an older time system and it would take 2 hours to enter time and expenses into the database and that’s on a good day!”
Also during 2011, all manufacturing was consolidated to the Lake Charles and Salt Lake City locations, and both facilities attained UL Certification. By that time, with around 80 employees, it became very important to hire an HR Manager as well.
Champions are no strangers to taking on large challenges. It is one of the hallmark traits that has allowed Champion to grow into the company it is today. Greg Hopkins in Baton Rouge states it wonderfully: “Most of us like problem-solving, so when a big challenge arises, there’s a great feeling of accomplishment when it’s solved.” So when team members succeed together on really large challenges, it makes an impression. Such is the case in this story of winning one of our larger customers after been giving an opportunity at a very large facility that we had never done work before.
Baton Rouge Automation
Project Engineering Manager
Champion for 7 years, 3 months
“W e were charged with getting several OMNI’s and a device called a Jiskoot communicating to their existing Honeywell TDC 3000 DCS. They had already run all cabling and wiring but had no idea how to finish the job. We knew it would be a challenge for us for several reasons: none of us had done this exact task before, the wiring they did was kind of a mess, and the drawings ended up being inaccurate. We had Girish from the Houston come in to help us because of his TDC 3000 experience. It took about four days for us to get it all working and when we did, I think we shared the loudest high five I’ve been a part of.”
That project was our first chance to impress this potential customer and today Motiva in Convent, LA is one our very top customers. Since that time we have been entrusted with much larger and more complex projects with Motiva such as a three-year Tank Farm Modernization Project at that same refinery. It is projects like these that really help with that feeling of accomplishment.
Marcus Stroder: “I was very proud to be a part of the Champion team from conceptual design to completion. Since completing the project, Motiva currently has a reliable tank farm control system and continues to add more automation.”
Throughout these six years, Champion turned many opportunities into large and loyal customers through extremely successful projects, like Freeport McMoran Oil & Gas, who trusted us to upgrade their entire aging topside controls on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico; Phillips66, who turned to Champion to upgrade the batch automation controls for four of their five lubricant blending facilities in the U.S.; and companies like UR-Energy, Holly Energy Partners, and QEP Energy in the Rockies region as well. The result of all of this hard work and dedication has been an average of nearly 12% YOY Revenue growth, which should reach $26,500,000 revenue by the end of this year. This performance has placed Champion in the LSU One Hundred fastest growing tiger businesses for the last three years.
In 2012, Champion brought on its first companywide Operations Manager whose focus was to implement standards, processes, and procedures, with the goal of eventually meeting CSIA best practices and helping to maintain average YOY revenue growth of at least 10% for the company. Great progress has been made toward all of these things, with the some of the initial completed tasks of finalizing Champion’s job descriptions, rolling out official career paths, and implementing SharePoint for better collaboration and file sharing.
In 2013, Champion began increasing efforts to promote its overall image and branding through enhanced marketing materials, participating in more industry conventions with booths and presentations, and recruiting at numerous career fairs. In was also around this time that Champion’s leadership contemplated and identified the core values of the company and how they are interlinked. They have all committed as a team to guide the company’s actions in the years to come using these values.
Over the years, Champion has made strategic adjustments, such as moving the Mississippi operations under New Orleans. In addition, we continue to have our sights set on other locations for potential future growth. Champion also implemented a strong internship/Co-op program that has enjoyed continued success at its larger offices in Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, and Salt Lake City, and introduced the Collaborative Way as part of its guiding values. Finally, since crossing the 100 employee mark in 2013, Champion moved from a Simple IRA plan to a full-fledged 401k plan as part of its large list of benefits.