Tell us a little bit about George Courey
George Courey is a family business that provides institutional textile to various industries; namely hospitality, healthcare, and retailers, established over 100 years ago. We offer all kinds of soft and washable textiles in North America and Europe, from coast to coast. Our typical customers range anywhere from a 1-star to 5-star hotel, to a local hospital, and even nursing homes, and retailers.
Working in a family business
The best part about working in a family business is the trust we have in each other. It’s nice to have your loved ones involved in your work life and to be able to exchange stories over our big family dinners.
What is your role?
I am the Chief Operating Officer at George Courey. I have to manage warehouse operations, procurement, sales and finances. Therefore, data is a crucial part of my role as it allows me to have the visibility to make the right decisions.
What was your biggest challenge before working with Big Bang?
For over 100 years, George Courey has been relying on their intuition and their gut to make business decisions. It has led them to where they are today, which is amazing, but this approach is not sustainable in the modern world. Today, we depend on data and our biggest challenge was that we did not have access to that data. We had little visibility and it was important for us to understand our business and clients from a data perspective in order to learn how to use that knowledge to better serve our customers and grow.
What was the solution?
Once the decision was made to go after a new system, we started looking at the different options. That is actually how we met the Big Bang team. We had asked them to present to us a business process review and it made sense to choose them as our trusted advisors because they had fully understood and identified our business challenges and needs. They recommended we go with NetSuite as it was the best solution to address all our requirements. The Big Bang team helped us transition from a legacy system to NetSuite from the analysis phase to providing consulting services on best practices in the industry and ultimately helping us adopt NetSuite with technical training and support.
What was the value-added?
With the help of Big Bang, we were able to gain visibility on real-time insights and data. Having had to previously work with various systems at the same time, it was very important to centralize our data and integrate the existing systems with each other which is exactly why NetSuite was such a good fit for us. With its expertise, Big Bang custom-tailored the solution to our business needs so we are able to benefit from NetSuite’s advantages.
The Big Bang consultants are excellent advisors. They are very passionate about what they do and easy to work with. They took on a big challenge and did a great job on it, allowing us to easily access the data in a centralized system, just like we had asked.
How did NetSuite add value to your business?
NetSuite is great. The reporting functions are incredible and they completely changed the company. Its ease of use and centralization from CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) to finance, etc. have improved productivity and efficiency. NetSuite connects directly with our other systems and it is accessible from anywhere, at any time. It is really amazing being able to manage my whole company from my smartphone.
With NetSuite we were able to get easy reporting with a few clicks, which allows us to save time and use it on other profit-generating activities. Ultimately, we are able to gain better visibility of our data, make more accurate decisions, and perform better with our customers.
Currently, we have 80 satisfied NetSuite users.
Advice
“Don’t be afraid. It’s a scary thing to change ERPs and transform your business, but if you have the right consultants with you you can’t go wrong. Make bold decisions and don’t be afraid.”
– Jeffrey Courey, Chief Operating Officer, George Courey
Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
