CBJ's Largest Privately Held Companies 2018
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
GreatAmerica Financial Services<br />
6<br />
TONY GOLOBIC<br />
CHAIRMAN & CEO<br />
GreatAmerica Financial Services passed the quarter-century<br />
mark last year, but it hasn’t lost the lean,<br />
hungry attitude that propelled it from an upstart in<br />
the commercial equipment finance business to a major<br />
player.<br />
The Cedar Rapids-based company’s assets have<br />
topped $2 billion, up from $1.8 billion in 2016 when Great-<br />
America placed fourth on the CBJ’s <strong>Largest</strong> <strong>Privately</strong> <strong>Held</strong><br />
<strong>Companies</strong> list. In the meantime, the company has increased<br />
its employee base from 460 to 516 and broadened its information<br />
technology capabilities,<br />
Chairman and CEO Tony<br />
Golobic said.<br />
GreatAmerica aims to<br />
grow an average of 10 percent<br />
per year, but it doesn’t<br />
meet that goal by focusing<br />
solely on dollars, Mr. Golobic<br />
noted.<br />
“We want to be the best at<br />
helping our customers be more<br />
successful. Revenue growth is<br />
important, and it has always<br />
followed – year over year since<br />
inception – our strategic objective<br />
of being a business without<br />
competition.”<br />
GreatAmerica is “planning<br />
for a more IT-centric future<br />
that provides a frictionless environment for our customers,”<br />
Mr. Golobic added. “Though we are still in the primary business<br />
of financing equipment and software for our resellers’<br />
customers, we want to strengthen our online presence for customers<br />
and prospects who need answers to questions beyond<br />
financing and more about running their businesses.”<br />
Recruiting and retaining talented employees and maintaining<br />
a strong corporate culture have been strengths from<br />
the outset. GreatAmerica shares that expertise via its human<br />
resource consulting arm, which helps clients with the selection<br />
and training of personnel in sales, information systems, managed<br />
services and other areas.<br />
The company’s Collabrance and Portfolio Services business<br />
units have also “grown nicely,” Mr. Golobic said, adding that<br />
jobs in those areas require emerging skillsets in IT, database<br />
management and systems analysis.<br />
Collabrance provides managed IT customers with U.S.-<br />
based, live-answer service desk and network operations functions,<br />
including private label programs that allow clients to<br />
have customer calls answered as if by their own company.<br />
Portfolio Services allows clients such as banks, equipment<br />
leasing companies and solar finance companies to outsource<br />
contract servicing at reduced costs and with fewer operational<br />
barriers. That allows them to concentrate on their core strengths.<br />
Other value-added services include FleetView, a remote<br />
monitoring system for printing devices on a network, and Info-Zone.com,<br />
a secure network that gives proprietary access to<br />
customer files and details of individual leases.<br />
The widening focus has led GreatAmerica to increase its<br />
hiring of beginning to mid-level IT specialists over the last two<br />
years, and change its<br />
recruiting strategy to<br />
include more social<br />
media engagement<br />
and greater use of online<br />
tools such as Indeed,<br />
LinkedIn and<br />
Google. Internal employee<br />
referrals have<br />
gone from about 40<br />
percent of hires to 50<br />
percent, Mr. Golobic<br />
said.<br />
Despite the challenges<br />
of continuous<br />
growth, GreatAmerica<br />
has elected to stay private<br />
rather than access<br />
public markets to raise<br />
additional capital.<br />
“Being public has<br />
some pluses and many<br />
drawbacks,” Mr. Golobic<br />
said. “Publicly-held<br />
companies tend to face<br />
THE TEAM<br />
EXECUTIVE TEAM<br />
Tony Golobic, Chairman & CEO<br />
Stan Herkelman, President<br />
David Pohlman, COO<br />
Joe Terfler, CFO<br />
BOARD OF DIRECTORS<br />
Tony Golobic, Chair<br />
Stan Herkelman<br />
Doug Olson<br />
Paul Rhines<br />
Emmett Scherrman<br />
Doug Sedlacek<br />
John Smith<br />
SUPPORT TEAM<br />
Bank of America<br />
Deloitte<br />
KPMG<br />
Simmons Perrine Moyer<br />
Bergman PLC<br />
Wells Fargo<br />
quarterly pressures<br />
that put short-term<br />
results ahead of long<br />
term objectives. The<br />
ultimate direction and future of publicly owned companies is<br />
subject to pressures from different ownership groups.”<br />
Fortunately for GreatAmerica, “our profitability has enabled<br />
us to generate our own capital for growth and buy out our investors,”<br />
Mr. Golobic noted. “We now have the luxury of being in<br />
control of our future by being a family-owned private company.”<br />
— Emery Styron<br />
16 CBJ’S LARGEST PRIVATELY HELD COMPANIES <strong>2018</strong>
Change language