Aligning your business strategies with customer expectations is essential for fostering loyalty, differentiation, and long-term success. In this episode of What’s Your Edge?, Karen Norheim, President and CEO of American Crane, discusses how data-driven insights, innovation, and a customer-centric mindset can overcome challenges and deliver exceptional business and customer value. From navigating leadership transitions to leveraging smart technologies, recount the actionable strategies used to reimagine how customer value is delivered to drive sustainable organic growth.

At VisionEdge Marketing, we believe that anticipating and understanding customer needs is fundamental to enduring growth. This requires leveraging customer insights, market intelligence, and competitive analysis. Aligning business strategies with customer expectations creates a compelling value proposition—one that fosters loyalty, differentiation, and long-term success. In industries like Karen’s, where competition is fierce, a customer-centric approach is a necessity.

Karen, I’m delighted to have you with us today. Thank you for joining us. Let’s dive right in.

Failure is an Essential Part of Growth

American Crane, a company renowned for building high-quality specialty lifting equipment, has faced its share of challenges over the years. What are two or three of the biggest hurdles you’ve encountered, how did you tackle them, and what lessons did you learn?

One of the biggest challenges we faced was navigating the transition to new leadership after my father’s passing in 2021. While we had succession plans in place, there were still unforeseen emotional and operational hurdles that required quick adaptation. I had to establish my leadership style while ensuring continuity and honoring the foundation my father built. To tackle this, I leaned on my team, prioritized clear communication, and remained committed to our core values to provide stability during the transition. This experience reinforced the importance of preparation, teamwork, and adaptability during periods of change.

Another major challenge was balancing innovation with execution. Early in my leadership, I had ambitious plans for modernization, technology integration, and process improvements. However, I quickly realized that pushing too much change too quickly could lead to resistance. For example, when we introduced new technology to improve efficiency, some employees struggled with the transition, leading to frustration instead of immediate buy-in. This taught me the importance of meeting people where they are, providing support, and implementing change at a pace that allows employees to adapt. Change is most successful when people feel involved and supported throughout the process.

Finally, workforce development has been an ongoing challenge, especially during times of high demand. Instead of rushing to hire at any cost, we took a strategic approach by analyzing recruiting data, refining our hiring strategies, and focusing on cultural fit. This ensured that we brought in the right talent without compromising the integrity of our company. Additionally, I’ve learned that some challenges, like process inefficiencies, can build up over time if not addressed early. In the past, we assumed minor delays would resolve themselves, but over time, these inefficiencies compounded into larger operational bottlenecks. Now, we focus on early intervention to prevent small issues from becoming major obstacles.

Through these challenges, I’ve come to embrace the idea that failure is an essential part of growth. It’s not about avoiding mistakes, but about how quickly and effectively we learn from them. By staying open to feedback, being adaptable, and maintaining a long-term perspective, we continue to grow stronger as a company and as leaders.

What a great point about failure being an essential part of growth.  Most of our customers grapple with similar obstacles, and we’ve found that agility, adaptability, and resilience are key to overcoming these. A growth mindset is equally essential.

Companies that embrace a growth mindset leverage data in five critical ways:

Making Informed Decisions – By analyzing customer behavior, market trends, and operational efficiencies, businesses can refine strategies to stay ahead of the competition. Deepening Customer Understanding – Data serves as the backbone of customer-centricity, helping companies identify what customers truly value, anticipate needs, and seize new opportunities. Enhancing Operational Efficiency – Pinpointing inefficiencies and optimizing processes leads to cost savings, improved productivity, and a stronger foundation for growth. Fueling Innovation and Adaptability – A data-driven approach enables companies to experiment, iterate, and strategically pivot in response to evolving market conditions. Measuring and Strengthening Business Performance – Establishing and tracking meaningful performance metrics ensures that business efforts align with growth objectives. How Data-Driven Insights Empower Customer Success and Forward-Thinking

In short, data empowers organizations to make smarter decisions, elevate customer experiences, and future-proof the organization.

Karen, how does American Crane leverage data to fuel its growth initiatives and create customer value?

At American Crane, data plays a critical role in driving our growth initiatives and enhancing customer value. By leveraging advanced technologies such as NorLink Smart Crane Systems and NorLink MHIot, we collect and analyze real-time operational data to improve equipment performance, enhance predictive maintenance, and reduce downtime. These data-driven insights enable our customers to optimize their operations, proactively address potential issues, and increase overall efficiency.

These innovations have also expanded American Crane into a whole new industry—data-driven industrial solutions. By integrating smart technology into overhead crane systems, we are not only providing lifting solutions but also equipping industries with intelligent, automated tools that transform the way they manage maintenance and productivity. This expansion allows us to serve a broader range of industries, positioning American Crane as both a leader in material handling and a forward-thinking provider of cutting-edge industrial technology.

Beyond technology, we leverage data to refine our internal processes and continuously improve our products and services. By analyzing customer feedback, equipment performance metrics, and industry trends, we ensure that our innovations are directly aligned with real-world needs. This data-driven approach allows us to enhance the durability, functionality, and usability of our equipment, ultimately delivering greater value to our customers.

Looking ahead, we remain committed to leveraging data and smart technology to help our customers stay ahead. Whether through automation, predictive maintenance, or process optimization, we are dedicated to creating solutions that not only improve equipment performance but also drive long-term success.

Embrace Innovation to Create Long-Term Customer Value

It’s clear that American Crane fosters a growth culture—one that embraces change and prioritizes data-driven insights. One of the things I most admire about you and your team is your relentless focus on delivering customer value.

Exceptional customer value is the cornerstone of a successful business strategy. It’s about solving customer problems, exceeding expectations and creating lasting impact. The ability to deliver value consistently is what separates industry leaders from the rest.

Karen, what does creating and delivering customer value mean at American Crane?

With a legacy dating back to 1972, American Crane is a well-established leader in its field. Many long-standing companies struggle to break away from traditional ways of doing things. Yet, innovation—whether through new products, services, or operational improvements—is essential to staying relevant and competitive.

What an amazing legacy. We too have found that innovation is essential to staying relevant and competitive. Karen, what are your customers’ expectations when it comes to innovation at American Crane?

Innovation often requires reimagining how value is delivered. Our customers expect innovation at American Crane to go beyond just new technology—they look for solutions that enhance efficiency, reliability, and safety in their operations. They want smart, data-driven systems that make it easy to predict maintenance, reduce downtime, and improve overall performance.

With advancements like the NorLink Smart Crane System and MHIot Devices, we’re not just meeting these expectations; we’re exceeding them by leveraging real-world data to refine our technology continuously. Our focus is on delivering practical, customer-centric innovations that drive measurable improvements, ensuring that our solutions provide long-term value and adapt to evolving industry needs.

Innovation is More Than Technology; It’s About Delivering the Best Solutions 

I imagine you need to rely on technologies and processes to facilitate innovation. What new technologies and processes have helped you enhance customer value, and how have they impacted your business?

At American Crane, we are continuously leveraging new technologies and processes to enhance customer value by improving efficiency, safety, and reliability. In 2019, we made a deliberate move toward integrating modern technologies into our equipment, recognizing that staying at the forefront of innovation is critical for long-term competitiveness. This commitment led to the creation of our Innovation Lab, where cross-functional teams explore and develop advanced solutions such as NorLink Smart Crane and NorLink MHIot. These technologies allow for enhanced automation, remote monitoring, and predictive maintenance, which improve uptime and reduce operational disruptions for our customers.

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However, innovation isn’t just about technology—it’s also about how we work. To ensure we are delivering the best possible solutions, we have enhanced communication between our engineering, manufacturing, and service teams, ensuring that real-world customer insights directly influence product development. This has allowed us to refine our solutions in response to actual field needs, making our equipment more efficient and user-friendly.

Beyond technological advancements, we have also focused on addressing industry-wide challenges such as workforce development and supply chain resilience. By investing in employee training and fostering strong supplier relationships, we have built a more agile and adaptable operation that allows us to meet customer demands with greater reliability.

Looking ahead, we see significant opportunities in automation, data-driven decision-making, and predictive maintenance, all of which will continue to enhance customer value. By embracing new technologies, expanding into new markets, and staying committed to our core principles, we are ensuring that our customers benefit from cutting-edge solutions that improve their operations and drive long-term success.

Use Performance Measures to Deliver Customer and Business Value

I know firsthand—through initiatives like developing our SaaS application, Accelance®—that innovation demands enormous commitment and investment.

How have your investments in innovation and customer value strengthened American Crane’s ability to deliver on customer and business value?

Investments in innovation and customer value must translate into tangible business outcomes. That’s why it’s crucial to establish meaningful performance measures that track impact and guide strategic decisions.

At VisionEdge Marketing, we emphasize using performance metrics to ensure companies stay relevant to customers while maintaining a competitive edge.

Karen, what key performance measures—especially related to customer value and innovation—does American Crane track?

We track key performance measures that ensure we are delivering customer value and driving innovation. One of the most impactful ways we do this is through our continuous development and refinement of the innovative products we can bring to market.

Beyond technology performance, we also track customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and long-term reliability. By leveraging real operational data and direct customer feedback, we continuously improve our products and services to deliver top-quality solutions and superior customer support. This commitment to innovation, data-driven decision-making, and continuous improvement reflects our dedication to making our customers’ lives easier and ensuring their long-term success.

I truly believe that data-driven decision-making is at the heart of business success. Dashboards and reporting tools provide real-time visibility into key metrics, enabling organizations to make timely and informed decisions.

Karen, can you share an example of a strategic decision you’ve made based on your performance measures?

To meet the industry’s demand for smarter, data-driven solutions, we launched pilot programs in 2024 to introduce the NorLink Smart Crane System and MHIot Devices in real-world environments. These pilots enable us to collect usage data, performance analytics, and customer feedback to refine features, enhance usability, and optimize data insights. By leveraging real operational data, we ensure our technology delivers measurable benefits such as reduced downtime, increased efficiency, and improved predictive maintenance. This commitment to continuous improvement ensures our NorLink Solutions line of products evolves into customer-driven solutions that provide lasting value to the industry.

Using pilots is an excellent way to experiment and gain customer feedback. Karen, thank you for being our guest and providing insights into how American Crane navigates challenges, leverages data and innovation to create long-term customer value, and sharing your organization’s passion for helping your customers succeed.  I am confident our community has taken away at least one actionable idea from our conversation.  Congratulations to you and your team for being adaptable, and maintaining a long-term perspective, to support American Crane’s growth. We wish you continued success.