Company Overview

Champion Specialty Services Corp. represents the complexity and diversity of modern specialty contracting. With operations spanning from Fort Lauderdale to Washington State, from New York to Guam, the company has built a reputation for tackling some of the most challenging and specialized work in construction: nuclear power plant maintenance and coatings, large-scale bridge painting, specialty painting for high-profile projects like Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, and Department of Transportation contracts across multiple states.

The organizational structure reflects this diversity. Champion operates three distinct business units within the corporate umbrella, each serving different markets with different operational requirements. Additionally, they own Gemstone, a non-union painting company projected to reach $20 million in annual revenue. The company also maintains operations at four nuclear site locations, requiring unique safety protocols, specialized training, and strict regulatory compliance.

The leadership team brings deep technical expertise combined with strategic vision for operational improvement. Kyle Hough serves as Chief Operations Officer, overseeing field operations across all business units. Jenny Serrano, Business Analysis Manager, bridges the gap between field operations and financial systems, developing infrastructure and reporting capabilities while managing multiple technology implementations simultaneously. Dennis Floridia, as IT Manager, provides the technical perspective on system integrations and security requirements. Craig Spencer, IT Support Technician, handles the day-to-day technical implementation work.

The Business Model

Champion’s work spans an enormous range of project types and operational models. Their nuclear services division operates under strict regulatory oversight, working during planned outages where every hour of delay costs millions. These projects require meticulous documentation, comprehensive safety protocols, and the ability to mobilize large crews quickly for short-duration, high-intensity work periods.

The bridge painting and DOT work operates on a different model entirely—often fixed-price contracts across multiple states, with crews traveling extensively and working under varying prevailing wage requirements. A single crew might work two days in New Jersey, then move to Pennsylvania for three days, then on to South Carolina, each state bringing different wage rates, tax requirements, and regulatory compliance obligations.

The commercial specialty painting work showcases the company’s capabilities on high-profile projects. Work like the Mercedes-Benz Stadium demonstrates their ability to execute complex coatings projects on accelerated schedules with exacting quality standards.

This diversity creates operational richness but also complexity: different labor models (union and open shop), different payment structures (fixed price and T&M), different safety requirements (nuclear versus standard construction), and different reporting needs (regulatory compliance versus standard project controls).

THE CHALLENGE

Champion Specialty Services’ evaluation of Rhumbix emerged from a confluence of challenges: rapid growth straining existing systems, multiple technology implementations happening simultaneously, Vista’s Time Capture proving difficult to implement broadly, and an aggressive acquisition strategy creating additional complexity.

The Vista Implementation Challenge

Champion had implemented Viewpoint Vista as their ERP during COVID—a challenging circumstance for learning and adopting complex enterprise software. While they successfully got Vista operational and were using most modules, the Time Capture component—Vista’s field timekeeping tool—had proven problematic.

Time Capture includes a web-based platform and mobile app for field time collection, theoretically integrating seamlessly with Vista’s payroll and job costing modules. In practice, implementation proved difficult. Most job sites weren’t using Time Capture. A couple of locations had adopted it and were “getting it to work,” but broad deployment across the organization had stalled.

“Time Capture is quirky. That’s what we found out—we started to find out more and more that Time Capture is kind of quirky in the back end.” — Jenny Serrano, Business Analysis Manager, Champion Specialty Services

The challenges weren’t just technical. The user experience issues that made implementation difficult in one location would need to be overcome at every location. For a company with operations from Washington State to Guam, from upstate New York to Fort Lauderdale, rolling out a system that field teams found cumbersome represented a massive change management challenge.

Manual T&M Tracking at Scale

Perhaps the most striking operational pain point: Champion performs approximately $150 million in time and materials work annually, tracking it manually on every job. The process involved superintendents rolling up time, site managers consolidating into master Excel spreadsheets, and then extensive manual effort to bill and track this work.

At this scale, the administrative burden was substantial. More importantly, the delays between work performed and billing submitted directly impacted cash flow. The longer it took to generate, review, and submit T&M tickets, the longer Champion waited for payment—a significant issue when managing $150 million in T&M revenue.

The manual process also created opportunities for revenue leakage. Without systematic capture and tracking of all T&M work, it was possible for work to be performed but never billed or for billing to be delayed so long that questions arose about scope and pricing.

Production Tracking Limitations

Champion tracked production on Excel: a common approach for contractors, but one that creates delays in visibility and limits the ability to understand real-time project performance. Project managers couldn’t easily see how crews were performing against budgets until after the fact, limiting their ability to intervene proactively when projects trended toward overruns.

For an organization managing hundreds of millions in annual revenue across diverse project types, real-time production visibility represents significant value. The ability to identify underperforming activities early, understand productivity trends, and feed actual production data back to estimating could drive material improvements in project profitability.

Reporting and Data Normalization

Jenny Serrano’s background in programming and software development gave her a unique perspective on Champion’s data challenges. Her philosophy: “If you can get the data normalized and get the data correct, you can basically report anything you want.”

The problem was getting that normalized, correct data. With field teams using various methods to capture and report information—some using Time Capture inconsistently, others using paper and manual Excel entry, the data feeding into Vista wasn’t standardized. This lack of standardization made comprehensive reporting difficult and created opportunities for costs to be incorrectly allocated.

Jenny’s forensic accounting skills allowed her to uncover these issues. On a $300,000 job, it was relatively easy to trace where costs went. On a $15 million job, substantial costs could be “hidden”—not through malice, but through inconsistent coding practices. A field superintendent unsure where to charge a gas bill might simply “throw it into one of those accounts,” creating situations where a job could show $1 million in costs for a month but only $600,000 in billing, with no clear way to decipher what was billable versus overhead.

“I was able to report to them by their markets, by who’s their largest clients, give them projections using some basic algorithms that project out what you’re going to be spending in the next several months. And it being within the five percent marker—that’s what kind of sold the process.” — Jenny Serrano, Business Analysis Manager, Champion Specialty Services

The potential for standardized, structured field data collection to improve reporting accuracy and efficiency was clear. If field teams were constrained to enter data in standardized formats—selecting from defined cost codes rather than deciding where to allocate charges—it would eliminate the ambiguity that created reporting challenges.

Multi-Company Complexity

Champion’s acquisition of Gemstone, the non-union painting company, created a new set of integration challenges. Gemstone operated on QuickBooks with ADP handling payroll, taxes, and unemployment across multiple states where they performed DOT work.

The plan was to bring Gemstone into Vista for financial visibility and consistency, but the payroll question proved complex. ADP provided substantial value beyond just processing payroll, they handled multi-state tax compliance, unemployment filings, and benefits administration. The administrative burden of bringing those functions in-house would require hiring additional staff with expertise in multi-state tax compliance.

Yet keeping payroll in ADP while bringing job costing into Vista created a workflow challenge: employees would need to be hired in both systems, time would need to flow to both systems, and integration logic would need to keep everything synchronized. The current process—manually keying four hours of data from ADP into QuickBooks every week—was clearly unsustainable as Gemstone grew.

This acquisition highlighted a broader challenge: Champion’s aggressive growth through acquisition meant they would repeatedly face the question of how to standardize systems and processes across companies with different operational models, different technology stacks, and different cultures.

Resource Constraints and Competing Priorities

Jenny Serrano’s situation illustrated another challenge common to growing contractors: the person responsible for technology implementations and infrastructure improvements was also responsible for operational support, financial reporting, travel to job sites, and managing multiple vendors simultaneously.

Beyond Rhumbix evaluation, Jenny was working on Sage Intacct evaluation for another business unit, implementing AppExchange for Power BI integration with Vista, managing the Vista implementation for Gemstone, supporting the nuclear division during outage season, and handling strategic infrastructure development for the entire organization.

This “team of one” dynamic meant that even when solutions were identified, implementation timelines were constrained by available bandwidth. The urgency of improving field data collection had to be balanced against the urgency of every other initiative competing for limited time and attention.

The FD Thomas Referral

Champion’s interest in Rhumbix came through a peer referral—Kyle Hough had been discussing operational challenges with Jeff Jones at FD Thomas, a similar specialty contractor, who recommended Rhumbix based on their positive experience. This type of peer referral carries particular weight in the construction industry, where contractors trust the experiences of similar companies facing similar challenges more than any marketing materials or sales presentations.

“Basically, we do the same thing they do and more. Half of our business, we’re like the east coast version of FD Thomas. The other half of our business is all nuclear services. It’s a different model. And then we’ve got roofing and we’ve got environmental services.” — Kyle Hough, COO, Champion Specialty Services

The Solution

Rhumbix’s demonstration to Champion Specialty Services in February 2025 needed to address multiple audiences with different concerns: Kyle wanted to understand overall operational benefits and implementation feasibility, Jenny needed to evaluate technical integration requirements and reporting capabilities, Dennis required assurance about security and IT support requirements, and Craig needed to understand day-to-day configuration and management responsibilities.

Key Capabilities

1. Vista Integration Architecture

The fundamental question—how would Rhumbix work with Vista?—received immediate clarity. Vista would remain the source of truth for projects, budgets, cost codes, employees, and financial data. Rhumbix’s API integration would pull this data from Vista on a configurable schedule: once daily, twice daily, or triggered by changes detected in Vista (such as new project setup).

Rhumbix would serve as the field data collection mechanism, capturing time, production quantities, T&M tickets, and safety documentation in real-time. This data would then flow back to Vista—time to payroll, production quantities to job costing, T&M documentation for billing.

Critically, the integration could be configured to handle Champion’s complexity: different business units, different labor classifications (union versus open shop), different project types (nuclear versus commercial), and different billing models (T&M versus fixed price).

2. Flexible Time Collection Approaches

Champion’s diverse operations—from large nuclear outages with hundreds of workers to small DOT crews traveling between states—required flexibility in how time was captured. Rhumbix supported two primary methodologies that could be mixed and matched based on project needs:

Kiosk-Based Clock In/Clock Out: For large projects like nuclear outages, iPads could be set up as kiosks where workers clock in and out using PINs or QR codes. The system captures photos for identity verification, can enforce geofencing to ensure workers are physically on site, and provides administrators real-time visibility into who’s currently clocked in.

Foreman-Based Crew Timekeeping: For smaller projects or traveling crews, foremen could build time cards for their crews, allocating hours across cost codes based on work performed. This approach works well when foremen have good visibility into their crews’ activities and need to code time to multiple activities throughout the day.

3. Digital T&M Tickets

For Champion’s massive volume of T&M work ($150 million annually), Rhumbix offered a streamlined workflow that eliminated the manual spreadsheet process:

• Time Card Copy: Rather than starting from scratch, foremen could copy completed time cards directly to T&M tickets, pre-populating labor hours and allocations.
• Field Detail Entry: Foremen add work location, descriptions, equipment used (with run time and idle time), materials consumed from pick lists, and photos of work completed.
• Automatic Pricing: The system automatically applies labor rates, equipment rates, material prices, and overhead/profit markups configured at the project level.
• Digital Signatures: Tickets can be signed in the field on the device, or saved and sent via email for remote signature.
• Status Tracking: A centralized T&M dashboard shows all tickets by project with status (draft, sent for signature, approved), providing clear visibility into what’s billable.
• Bundled Billing: Multiple tickets for the same project/week can be bundled together for streamlined GC review and approval.

This end-to-end workflow meant T&M work could be documented, priced, approved, and prepared for billing in days rather than weeks—directly improving Champion’s cash flow on $150 million in annual T&M revenue.

4. Production Tracking Integration

Production tracking in Rhumbix integrated directly with the timekeeping workflow. After entering hours against cost codes, foremen could tap to the production tab and enter quantities installed—discrete quantities (cubic yards, square feet, linear feet) or percent complete.

As quantities were entered, the app displayed remaining budget in real-time, providing immediate feedback about progress and pace. This data flowed to gain/loss reports accessible by project managers, showing by cost code whether projects were winning or losing hours relative to budgets.

5. Complex Per Diem and Reimbursement Handling

Nuclear projects at Champion involved complex per diem structures, different rates for weekly versus daily per diem, additional allowances if workers didn’t receive the minimum weekly rate, and variations by craft and project. Rhumbix’s “shift extras” functionality could accommodate this complexity through configurable dropdowns and rates.

Rather than requiring foremen to calculate and enter dollar amounts, the system could present project-specific per diem options as dropdowns. Foremen select the applicable rate, and the system applies it to the time card. Payroll administrators review and can adjust if needed before approving for Vista integration.

6. Power BI and Reporting Integration

Champion’s investment in AppExchange for Power BI integration with Vista reflected their commitment to sophisticated reporting and analytics. Rhumbix’s full read/write REST API meant data could flow to Power BI for consolidated reporting combining field data from Rhumbix with financial data from Vista.

This capability aligned with Jenny’s data normalization philosophy: capture clean, structured data at the source, then report on it comprehensively. Rather than spending hours doing forensic accounting to understand where costs went, standardized field data capture meant costs were allocated correctly from the start.

The Gemstone Complexity

The Gemstone situation—needing to integrate Rhumbix with both ADP (for payroll) and Vista (for job costing)—pushed the boundaries of typical integration patterns but remained viable. The proposed architecture involved:

• Pull employee data from ADP to Rhumbix (keeping ADP as the HR/payroll source of truth).
• Pull job and cost code data from Vista to Rhumbix.
• Push approved time back to ADP for payroll processing.
• Push job number and cost code allocations (without employee names) back to Vista for job costing.

This approach allowed Gemstone to maintain ADP’s value for multi-state tax compliance while achieving the financial visibility Champion needed in Vista.

The Implementation

Champion’s approach to implementation reflected both the complexity of their operations and their resource constraints. Rather than attempting to implement across all business units simultaneously, they planned a phased approach.

Phase 1: Gemstone Vista Implementation

The first priority was completing the Vista implementation for Gemstone, bringing them out of QuickBooks into the enterprise platform. This foundational work needed to be completed before layering on Rhumbix, as the Vista integration would provide the project and cost code structure Rhumbix needed.

This implementation was already underway, with Jenny managing the process and hiring a Vista consultant (Greg Key from Denver) to assist. The timeline targeted completion by end of April 2025, at which point Rhumbix implementation could begin.

Phase 2: Rhumbix Trial and Pilot

Rather than jumping directly to full implementation, Champion planned a properly configured trial. This wasn’t a generic sandbox environment—Rhumbix would configure the trial with Champion’s actual projects, cost codes, and employees, allowing them to evaluate with real data and workflows.

Jenny identified a California project kicking off in April as an ideal pilot candidate. The project had a defined scope and timeline, providing a bounded opportunity to test Rhumbix in a real production environment before broader rollout.

My spidey sense kind of tells me everything I need to know, which is we’re going to probably need to install this in most of our areas of champion. If they’re not using time capture, then we’ll need to use Rhumbix.” — Jenny Serrano, Business Analysis Manager, Champion Specialty Services

Phase 3: Broader Rollout

Following successful trial, Champion planned company-wide implementation. The exact scope depended on trial results and organizational readiness, but the vision was clear: standardize on Rhumbix across all business units not successfully using Vista Time Capture.

This approach—one tool winning across the organization rather than maintaining multiple systems for similar functions—aligned with operational efficiency and training consistency goals. Having all field teams on the same platform meant training materials, support processes, and best practices could be developed once and applied everywhere.

Resource Allocation Strategy

Recognizing Jenny’s bandwidth constraints, Champion was actively hiring to build out the infrastructure development team. The Vista implementer being brought on board would become a key contact for Rhumbix, helping manage the technical implementation while Jenny maintained strategic oversight.

This approach—building internal capacity to manage multiple technology initiatives—reflected organizational maturity. Rather than expecting one person to handle everything, Champion was investing in the team needed to support their growth trajectory and technology transformation.

The Results

Based on Champion’s operational profile and the comprehensive nature of their planned Rhumbix implementation, several categories of benefits can be anticipated:

T&M Revenue Acceleration

The transformation from manual Excel-based T&M tracking to systematic digital capture, pricing, and submission represents the most immediate financial benefit. Reducing the time between work performed and invoice submitted by even a few days translates to measurable cash flow improvement on $150 million in annual T&M revenue.

Beyond cash flow, systematic T&M capture prevents revenue leakage. When every T&M work event flows through a structured process with status tracking and bundled billing capabilities, the risk of performed work not being billed drops dramatically.

Administrative Efficiency

Eliminating the manual processes around time compilation, Excel tracking, and data entry creates capacity for Champion’s administrative and project management teams to focus on higher-value activities. The four hours per week Gemstone’s accountant spent manually keying ADP data into QuickBooks represents just one example—multiplied across the organization, these efficiency gains accumulate significantly.

Data Quality and Reporting

Jenny’s forensic accounting work uncovered cost allocation issues on large projects—the ability to “hide” $400,000 in unclear charges on a $15 million job. Standardized field data capture addresses this at the source by constraining workers to select from defined cost codes rather than making judgment calls about where to charge ambiguous expenses.

This improvement in data quality cascades through the organization. Financial reporting becomes more accurate and timely. Project managers gain confidence in their cost reports. Estimators receive better feedback for future bidding. Leadership can make decisions based on data rather than educated guesses.

Project Performance Visibility

Real-time production tracking integrated with time capture enables Champion’s project management teams to understand project performance while they can still influence outcomes. Rather than learning about overruns after the fact, project managers can see early warning signs and intervene—adjusting crew composition, requesting additional resources, or having conversations with general contractors about scope changes.

Multi-State Compliance

For Gemstone’s DOT work spanning multiple states, Rhumbix’s ability to handle location-based rate changes and project-specific wage requirements streamlines what would otherwise be manual tracking and calculation. The system can automatically apply different rates based on project location, feeding correct information to ADP for payroll processing and Vista for job costing.

Acquisition Integration Playbook

With multiple acquisitions completed and more anticipated, Champion was developing a playbook for operational integration. Bring acquired companies onto Vista for financial visibility. Deploy Rhumbix for field data collection. Leverage AppExchange and Power BI for consolidated reporting. Maintain what works (like Gemstone’s ADP relationship) while standardizing what matters (like cost code structures and data capture methods).

This playbook approach meant future acquisitions could be integrated faster and more predictably, with less disruption to their operations and clearer paths to achieving the synergies that justified the acquisitions.

Key Takeaways

Peer Referrals Carry Exceptional Weight

Kyle’s conversation with FD Thomas about operational challenges and Jeff Jones’s recommendation of Rhumbix initiated Champion’s evaluation. In an industry where trust is earned through performance, peer referrals from similar contractors facing similar challenges provide credibility that no amount of marketing can match. The fact that FD Thomas—doing similar work at similar scale—had positive experience with Rhumbix gave Champion confidence the platform could work for their operations.

ERP Integration Challenges Are Real

Champion’s experience with Vista Time Capture—theoretically integrated but practically difficult to implement—highlighted that integration isn’t binary. Systems can be “integrated” on paper while still creating user experience or workflow problems that prevent adoption. Rhumbix’s API-based approach, allowing flexible configuration of what data flows when and how, provided the integration sophistication Champion needed while avoiding the rigidity that made Time Capture problematic.

Complex Organizations Require Flexible Solutions

Champion’s three business units, nuclear division, acquisitions, union and open shop operations, and multi-state work create genuine complexity that simple solutions can’t accommodate. The ability to configure Rhumbix differently for different projects—kiosks for large nuclear outages, foreman-based for traveling DOT crews, different per diem structures by project—meant the platform could adapt to their reality rather than forcing their operations to adapt to the software’s limitations.

Data Quality Drives Reporting Quality

Jenny’s insight about data normalization—”if you can get the data normalized and get the data correct, you can basically report anything you want”—captures a fundamental truth. Spending hours doing forensic accounting to understand where costs went is waste that results from poor data capture. Structured field data collection that constrains users to enter data correctly from the start eliminates this waste while improving decision-making speed and accuracy.

Resource Constraints Are Real Implementation Factors

Jenny’s situation—managing multiple major technology initiatives simultaneously while also supporting operations and traveling to job sites—reflects reality for many growing contractors. Recognizing this constraint and planning accordingly (phased implementation, building internal team capacity, realistic timelines) increases the likelihood of successful adoption. Pretending these constraints don’t exist or assuming they can be overcome through willpower alone leads to failed implementations.

Multi-System Integration Can Work

The Gemstone situation—needing to integrate with both ADP and Vista—demonstrated that non-standard integration patterns are viable when business requirements justify them. Rather than forcing Gemstone to abandon ADP’s multi-state tax compliance capabilities, Rhumbix could accommodate pulling employee data from ADP and job data from Vista, then routing time back to both systems appropriately. This flexibility prevented Champion from having to choose between operational efficiency and technical elegance.

Acquisition Strategy Demands Operational Standardization

Champion’s aggressive growth through acquisition—Gemstone acquired, another company following shortly after—meant they would repeatedly face questions about systems and processes. Having a standard field data collection platform they could deploy to acquired companies, rather than maintaining different systems indefinitely, provided a clear path for operational integration that matched their strategic growth plans.

$150M in Manual T&M Tracking Is a Massive Opportunity

The sheer scale of Champion’s T&M work—$150 million annually tracked manually on Excel—represented an unusual concentration of opportunity for operational improvement. Even small percentage improvements in billing speed or revenue capture translated to material financial benefits. This scale made the business case for digital T&M management particularly compelling and provided clear metrics for measuring implementation success.

Looking Ahead

As of April 2025, Champion Specialty Services was progressing through their phased implementation approach: completing the Gemstone Vista implementation, preparing for Rhumbix trial on a California project, and building internal team capacity to manage multiple technology initiatives.

The Broader Technology Transformation

Rhumbix represented one component of Champion’s comprehensive technology transformation. Simultaneously, they were implementing Sage Intacct for another business unit, deploying AppExchange for Power BI integration with Vista, standardizing reporting across business units, and bringing acquired companies onto enterprise platforms.

This holistic approach—recognizing that field data collection, financial reporting, project management, and business intelligence all needed to work together—positioned Champion for sustainable operational improvement rather than point solutions that might solve one problem while creating others.

The Growth Trajectory

Champion’s growth projections were extraordinary. One business unit expected to exceed forecast by $70 million. Another anticipated $10 million in additional revenue. They were bidding on a contract worth close to $200 million annually. This growth created both urgency around operational infrastructure and justification for the investment required to build that infrastructure.

“They’re saying, hey, listen, we might be coming in at 215 [million] because I don’t think we’re at our peak yet. You guys are doing 2 million dollars a week? You’re going to get to about 4 million a week. Yeah, we should be at 4 million here shortly, as we get bodies.” — Jenny Serrano, describing a project manager’s forecast

The constraint wasn’t work availability—it was operational capacity to execute that work profitably while maintaining quality and safety standards. Field data collection technology couldn’t solve every challenge, but it could eliminate administrative friction, improve visibility, and ensure that as the organization scaled, information systems scaled with it.

Nuclear Division Opportunities

The nuclear services division, with its unique safety requirements, regulatory compliance obligations, and outage-driven work patterns, represented both challenges and opportunities for Rhumbix implementation. The complexity of per diem structures, the need for comprehensive safety documentation, and the criticality of accurate time tracking during high-intensity outages all pointed toward significant value from systematic digital capture.

Success in the nuclear division could provide a template for similar high-compliance, high-documentation work across the industry. Nuclear contractors face unique challenges, and solutions that work in this demanding environment tend to be robust enough for less demanding applications.

Conclusion

Champion Specialty Services’ journey toward Rhumbix implementation illustrates how large, complex specialty contractors navigate technology adoption in the face of competing priorities, resource constraints, rapid growth, and operational diversity.

Their challenges weren’t unique—manual T&M tracking, Excel-based production reporting, ERP timekeeping tools that prove difficult to implement, acquisition integration complexity—but the scale at which they faced these challenges was substantial. $150 million in manual T&M tracking. Operations from Washington to Guam. Nuclear work demanding regulatory compliance. Bridge painting spanning multiple states. Multiple business units with different operational models.

The solution couldn’t be simple because the problem wasn’t simple. Rhumbix’s value proposition for Champion wasn’t just “digital timekeeping”—it was a comprehensive field data collection platform flexible enough to accommodate their diversity, robust enough to handle their scale, and integrated enough to feed their reporting and analytics requirements.

For Champion Specialty Services, Rhumbix represented not just a solution to current operational challenges, but infrastructure to support their growth trajectory and acquisition strategy for years to come. In an industry where sustained competitive advantage increasingly comes from operational excellence rather than just technical capability, the ability to capture, analyze, and act on field data in real-time provides differentiation that compounds over time.

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