Today’s conversation explores how a lean process improvement initiative, originally launched to address patient complaints about long wait times, evolved into something much more: a deeply embedded customer-centric culture grounded in customer value and customer-centricy, and a move away from random acts of efficiency toward a systematic, measurable approach to customer experience. Stephanie Collins, CEO of Austin Retina, a practice that has been serving patients since 1979, joins us today as our guest for What’s Your Edge.  Stephanie has been with the organization for 25 years, rising through the ranks to lead the practice through significant growth. The practice has grown from a single provider to 19 physicians and nearly 300 employees. And recently, it became a part of Cencora, a global leader in pharmaceutical and medical supply distribution. Stephanie, I’m looking forward to learning how Austin Retina reframed time as a critical dimension of value, how you operationalized customer-centricity, and how you measure the impact of customer value on growth, loyalty, and performance.

Stephanie, welcome to the show.

Stephanie, let’s start with the moment that really catalyzed change. In 2015, Austin Retina initiated a lean process. One of the primary triggers was patient feedback that they felt the practice didn’t value their time—that they were being treated like a number. I imagine most everyone listening has experienced this feeling. In fact, nationally, studies suggest that patients spend roughly 11–18 minutes just waiting to be seen in a doctor’s office, and when you add travel and disruption to the workday, researchers estimate about $89 billion a year in lost time due to medical visits. Now, when we wind back the clock, patients were often in the office for three hours, and these patients often see their physicians every 4–6 weeks. That is a significant time commitment. We can easily see why the initial goal of the lean initiative was straightforward: shorten wait time. Congratulations on achieving your goal and reducing the wait time from three hours to about 90 minutes. Take us back to that period. What were you hearing from patients that made you realize “we have to do something different”? Was there a specific story or piece of feedback that made the leadership team say, “We cannot continue this way”?

When I think back to that time, what really struck me wasn’t just that patients were waiting a long time — it was how that wait made them feel. We began hearing consistent feedback that patients felt like they were being processed rather than cared for. One moment that stuck with me came from a long-time patient who very kindly said, “I know you’re all working hard, but it feels like my time doesn’t matter.”

For a patient who is already managing a chronic condition, that comment was eye-opening. Many of our patients visit us every four to six weeks, and for many years. When they’re spending three hours in our office each time, it adds up to a tremendous burden.

That was the moment when our leadership team realized this wasn’t just about efficiency — it was about respect, empathy, and dignity. We couldn’t continue operating in a way that unintentionally signaled that our time mattered more than theirs. That realization is what pushed us to take bold action and pursue a lean initiative.

I personally believe time is our most precious asset. How did you and your team come to frame the problem—not just as an operational issue, but as a patient or customer value issue?

As we started digging into the long visit times, we realized the real question wasn’t just “How do we make the process faster?” — it was “Are we delivering what patients truly value?” That shift in thinking was important. We wanted to reduce waste, costs, and redundancies in the process, but never at the expense of the quality of their care or the relationship they have with their physician.

Framing the problem through the lens of patient value helped us focus on improving flow and eliminating waste while still protecting the elements of care that matter most. It allowed us to design improvements that were more meaningful, more patient-centered, and ultimately more sustainable.

I love the fact you stepped into your customers shoes.  In our work, we define customer value as the balance between what customers receive and what they must give up, such as time, effort, money, and risk, to obtain that value. For many customers, time is one of the most precious currencies.  From your perspective, when did you begin to see time not just as a scheduling issue, but as a core component of the value proposition Austin Retina offers its patients?

The turning point for me was recognizing that time is deeply emotional. It’s tied to autonomy, to a sense of control, to quality of life. In retina care, many of our patients already feel like they’ve lost control — their vision, their health, their schedule revolves around injections and follow-ups.

So, when we began mapping the patient journey, we realized that if we could give time back to them, we were restoring some of that control. That’s when it became clear that time wasn’t a scheduling matter; it was a core part of our value proposition.

You started with a lean initiative to reduce wait times, but over time, that effort evolved into something deeper—a cultural shift toward patient or what we call customer-centricity. At what point did you recognize, “This is no longer just a process improvement project; this is reshaping our culture”?

For us, the moment we realized this had grown beyond a process-improvement initiative and had truly become a cultural transformation was when patients started commenting on their own. We began hearing things like, “I don’t know what you’re doing differently, but keep it up!”

Those spontaneous comments were incredibly validating. They showed us that patients weren’t just experiencing a shorter visit — they were feeling a real improvement in how they were cared for.

What was just as meaningful, though, was what happened internally. As patients started noticing the changes, our staff re-engaged in a way we hadn’t seen in a long time. They began bringing forward new ideas, suggesting areas where we could streamline or improve the experience for everyone. You could feel the excitement building — this sense that we were accomplishing something important together.

That combination of patient appreciation and staff enthusiasm is when we knew we weren’t simply adjusting workflows. We were reshaping our culture around valuing time, reducing frustration, and creating a better experience across the board.

What an excellent point about how the process helped reshape the culture. We often talk about the need to operationalize customer-centricity; that is, to move from slogans about being customer-focused to embedding customer value into processes, metrics, and decision-making. What were some of the concrete operational changes that signaled to your patients, “We heard you, and we’re changing how we work to respect your time”? And how did you make those changes stick so they became “the way we do things here” rather than a one-time initiative?

Some of the most meaningful changes were:

What made these changes stick was that we embedded them into daily management. They weren’t “projects”; they became expectations. And as soon as patients started noticing shorter visits and smoother experiences, the team became even more committed.

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I think that’s a powerful point about making changes expectations. We often emphasize that customer-centric growth depends on being able to define, measure, and monitor customer value. We’ve written about customer value metrics that facilitate customer-centric growth and about the importance of identifying the variables that matter most to your customers, like time, access, outcomes, relationship, and so on: What measures and metrics are you using to track whether you are delivering that value? For example, do you track average total visit time, wait time by stage, on-time starts, or visit variability? And have you adopted or adapted any form of customer value metrics beyond the measure of time, such as combining time, satisfaction, and clinical outcomes into a composite view of value?

To truly understand whether we’re delivering value, we had to measure the elements of the visit that matter most to patients. Today, we focus on a set of operational and experience metrics that give us a clear picture of both efficiency and patient perception.

We measure:

By looking at these measures together, we’re able to evaluate not just speed, but predictability, consistency, and overall patient value. It helps us pinpoint where improvements will make the greatest difference in the patient experience.

Stephanie, these seem like meaningful measures. Thank you for sharing them. We strongly believe that customer value delivers faster organic growth. And that organizations that explicitly manage and measure customer value tend to grow faster and more profitably. Stephanie, how has focusing on patient value, particularly time, influenced your organic growth? And have you seen changes in referral patterns, patient retention, or word-of-mouth as a result of this shift?

The shift to shorter, more predictable visits has had a tremendous impact on our growth and our reputation in the community. Patients consistently tell us how much they appreciate not having to spend hours in the clinic, especially given how frequently they need to see us. That positive experience translates directly into word-of-mouth referrals — patients recommending us to family and friends because they genuinely feel cared for and respected.

It’s also strengthened our relationships with referring providers. We hear often that patients go back to their optometrist or primary eye care provider and share how smooth and efficient their visit was. That kind of unsolicited feedback builds trust and reinforces the confidence referring doctors have in sending patients to us.

And operationally, the improvements in flow and visit time have enabled us to care for more patients in the community. When you increase efficiency without compromising quality, you expand access — and that’s incredibly important in a specialty like retina, where timely care can make all the difference.

We often describe the value proposition as the customer-centric bridge between your business and your customers’ definition of value. In a specialty like retina, patients are often with you for a long time, returning every 4–6 weeks. That creates not just a series of visits, but a relationship. In what ways has your value proposition evolved as you’ve become more intentional about being patient-centric?

Consistency is everything. We reinforce our value proposition by making sure patients feel it at every touchpoint:

I couldn’t agree more about the importance of every touchpoint in delivering on the value proposition and promise. Stephanie, How do you communicate and reinforce that value proposition, whether that’s respect for time, quality of care, continuity, empathy across your touchpoints (scheduling, front desk, clinical staff, physicians)?

We internally post and discuss metrics with our entire team and celebrate these metrics and the positive feedback we receive on a daily basis.  When patients provide feedback either spontaneously during their visit or via a Google review, we share those highlights with the whole organization thanking them for their commitment.

We’ve written about how relationship strategy and brand equity are strengthened when organizations consistently deliver on what customers value and measure that delivery. Have you seen evidence that your patient-centric approach has enhanced your brand equity, for example, in how referring physicians talk about you, or how patients describe you to others?

Patients consistently mention shorter and smoother visits and feeling genuinely cared for.  When patients begin describing you as “efficient and compassionate,” you know you are doing something right.

It takes commitment to sustain a customer-centric culture and leveraging best practices.  What practices or mechanisms help you maintain alignment around customer centricity?

We use several mechanisms to keep us aligned:

In terms of process and best practices, I’m curious about how you reinforce your processes. Are there thresholds or targets you manage to—for example, “no patient should be in the clinic longer than X minutes” or “Y% of visits must start within Z minutes of scheduled time”?

Yes, we do track and report on certain metrics and targets for each doctor and their team monthly.  We aim for a 90 min lead time, an efficiency score that looks patients time in clinic compared to the staffing ratio, and of course, always measuring these against patient satisfaction scores and feedback.

Many organizations say they want to be customer-centric, but they struggle to translate that aspiration into metrics, processes, and behaviors. They end up with what we call “random acts”.  Random acts of customer experience, random acts of improvement, random acts of efficiency. As opposed to a disciplined, value-driven approach anchored in customer value metrics. How can leaders avoid “random acts” and instead build a systematic approach to customer value, similar to what you did with lean and patient experience?

One of the biggest lessons we learned is that you don’t have to — and really can’t — build a full systematic approach all at once. That’s where many organizations get stuck. Creating something from scratch can feel daunting, and when you try to design the entire system upfront, it becomes overwhelming and unsustainable.

Lean taught us the value of small, intentional steps. Instead of chasing big, complex solutions, we focused on small-scale trials. We would identify a specific problem, bring the right people together to brainstorm a potential solution, test it on a very small scale, and then track the metrics closely. If it worked, we refined it and expanded it. If it didn’t, we learned quickly and adjusted.

Those small cycles of testing and learning helped us avoid what we call “random acts” — one-off improvements that don’t stick. By taking small steps, guided by data, we were able to build a systematic approach over time. And the team gained confidence because they could see the impact of each incremental improvement. That momentum is what ultimately created sustained cultural change.

In our conversation, I feel like we’ve made the case that customer-centricity is not a project; it’s a way of operating. It requires clarity about what customers value, the right metrics, and a commitment to continuously aligning your processes and decisions with that value. What routines or governance mechanisms help you keep customer value at the center of strategy, operations, and growth?

We have internal hard and soft skill training and onboarding programs, internal certification programs for LEAN and Leadership Development, recognition programs, per physician and team scorecards as well as the leadership team has weekly meetings, and quarterly strategic planning discussions.

Stephanie, thank you for sharing your experience with us.  Based on your journey, what advice would you offer leaders who want to embed customer value—especially time—into their culture and operations and what are some your biggest lessons learned about listening to customers, redesigning processes, and measuring what matters?

My biggest advice is to really listen — and be willing to hear what’s uncomfortable. Patients were telling us the truth long before we acted on it.

Second, don’t underestimate the cultural side of operational change. You can have the best processes in the world, but if your team doesn’t believe in the “why,” they won’t sustain them.

Third, measure what matters. If you believe time is value, then track it relentlessly.

And finally, stay humble. Improvement is never finished. Customer value is a journey; the moment you think you’ve arrived is the moment you start to slip.

Stephanie, your story shows how listening to customers, treating time as a critical dimension of value, and embedding customer-centric practices into processes and metrics can transform both the experience and the business.

For those of you listening, Stephanie’s experience at Austin Retina is a powerful reminder that time is one of the most important forms of customer value. When you make time visible, measure it, and design your processes around it, you move from random acts of customer experience to a disciplined, customer-centric system that improves satisfaction, loyalty, and organic growth.

When you’re ready to move beyond good intentions and truly operationalize customer-centricity in your organization, we’d welcome the opportunity to help you identify practical steps you can take to put time—and customer value—at the center of your strategy, operations, and performance.

(written by Penn of Sintra.ai)

Q1: What is customer value in the context of healthcare and patient experience?

Q2: Why is time considered a critical dimension of customer value?

Q3: How did Austin Retina use lean process improvement to enhance patient experience?

Q4: What are customer value metrics, and which ones did Austin Retina focus on?

Q5: How does customer-centricity differ from traditional efficiency initiatives?

Q6: How can focusing on customer value drive faster organic growth?

Q7: What governance and routines help sustain a customer-centric culture?

Q8: How can leaders avoid “random acts” of customer experience and build a systematic approach?

In this episode, we’re joined by Stacie Feller, President of Kanga Roof. Stacie’s journey is a powerful illustration of how the absence, or presence, of customer data can dramatically impact business decisions. We’ll go behind the scenes to explore how a lack of customer insights created missed opportunities, and how a renewed focus on data has since transformed her decision-making. Today’s conversation takes us from instinct to insight and ultimately to impact by exploring how data transforms business decisions into measurable growth.

Stacie, at the outset of the pandemic, uncertainty was the order of the day. Like many leaders, you and your team anticipated a sharp decline in business. Yet, the reality was the opposite. Instead, you experienced a surge in demand for roofing services. Despite this unexpected opportunity, Kanga Roof was unable to fully capitalize. The supply chain faltered, and your organization was caught off guard. This wasn’t simply a story of external disruption, but a wake-up call for the importance of customer data.

This scenario is not unique. According to Forrester, “insights-driven businesses” are growing at more than 30% annually—far outpacing their peers.  The difference? These organizations don’t rely on gut instinct; they invest in data-driven decision-making.

Let’s start at that critical moment. What were the early warning signs that your assumptions about customer demand might be off? How did you recognize that the root issue was a lack of actionable customer data?

During the early days of the pandemic, we assumed business would slow down like it did for most industries. But when the phone started ringing off the hook, we realized our assumptions were off. Homeowners were home, noticing roof issues they hadn’t before, and investing in their property instead of travel.

The problem was that we didn’t have good data on who our customers really were, how they found us, what services they needed, or how their priorities were shifting. We were reacting instead of planning. That’s when I realized we needed a stronger system for capturing and using customer insights to guide decisions instead of relying on instinct.

What you described is something we see across many organizations: decisions made from instinct or urgency rather than insight. We often refer to these as “random acts”. Random acts of marketing, planning, selling, or even customer engagement. They feel productive in the moment, but often lead to inefficiencies or missed opportunities. Once you recognized that pattern, what steps did you take to move from these random acts to more deliberate, insight-driven actions?

We had to get intentional. We started by documenting every customer touchpoint—how they heard about us, what problems they were trying to solve, and what factors drove their buying decision. Then we implemented tools to track trends in lead sources, service types, and timing.

Instead of reacting to what we thought was happening, we began making decisions based on what the data told us. It wasn’t just marketing; it was operations and staffing.  For example, we have trained our appointment coordinators to gather data that will help them determine who is the best roofing advisor to send to them.  That shift from gut feeling to evidence was a real turning point.

Your experience highlights a common pitfall: acting on assumptions rather than evidence. As you reflect, what was the impact of not having real-time customer insights during that period? What decisions do you wish you could have made if you’d had better data?

Not having real-time data caused us to miss opportunities. We couldn’t predict demand surges, so we were short on materials and labor when business spiked. Looking back, I wish we’d had a clearer view of customer intent, like knowing who was in research mode versus ready to buy. If we’d had better insights then, we could’ve staffed more efficiently, adjusted pricing based on material shortages, and prioritized the right jobs. It taught us that every delay in understanding our customers costs both time and revenue.

Many organizations realize they need better insights—but struggle to know where to start. We have found it is helpful to have a practical framework organizations can use to move beyond intuition and experience. That’s why we developed our  8 Steps for Applying Business Data-Derived Insights approach that transforms data into a disciplined decision-making process. The framework offers a systematic way to recognize, validate, and apply insights from quantitative and qualitative data. It emphasizes that data-derived insights, when leveraged through a disciplined, eight-step process, enable more objective, scalable, and predictive decision-making, leading to above-market growth and significant EBITDA gains, somewhere between 15-25%.  Stacie, what were your first steps in building a more robust customer data foundation? Did you focus on capturing customer feedback, transaction data, market trends, or something else?

Our first step was organizing the data we already had. We pulled customer information from estimates, service calls, and follow-ups into one system so we could see patterns. Then we started collecting feedback after every job and tracking reviews to understand what customers valued most.

We also began layering in operational data—things like lead times, call volumes, and job profitability. It wasn’t just about collecting data; it was about connecting it so we could make better business decisions across departments.

I know you are very familiar with the value of the supply chain.  When it comes to insights, there is a supply chain as well. The insights supply chain entails five critical stages: plan, source, make, deliver, and return. By mapping and continuously optimizing this “insights supply chain,” organizations can efficiently transform vast amounts of data into timely, relevant insights distributed across business functions. Proactive management of this process is essential for maximizing customer value, sustaining competitive advantage, and supporting long-term business success. How do you ensure that your data collection and analysis processes keep pace with evolving customer needs and market conditions? What systems or routines have you put in place to keep your “insights supply chain” flowing and relevant? What obstacles did you encounter as you tried to close the gaps in your data supply chain?

We treat data like an ongoing process, not a one-time project. Every quarter, our leadership team reviews trends in customer behavior and operations. We look for shifts—like a rise in roof repairs versus replacements—and adapt our marketing and staffing accordingly.

One obstacle early on was data accuracy. We learned quickly that bad data leads to bad decisions. So, we trained our team on why clean data matters, built checks into our CRM, and made data quality part of everyone’s responsibility.

Because effective business planning and decision-making require more than intuition. It demands a disciplined approach to identifying trends and patterns within both internal and external data. By understanding and leveraging these trends (general directions over time) and patterns (repeatable occurrences), organizations can anticipate customer needs, allocate resources strategically, and drive future growth. The real advantage comes from combining data trends and patterns to inform forward-looking, customer-centric business strategies. With a stronger data foundation, how did your decision-making evolve? Can you share specific examples of business decisions—whether about staffing, marketing, or operations—that you can now make with confidence thanks to data? How do you distinguish between a trend and an anomaly when interpreting your data?

Today, data drives a lot of our major decisions. For example, we track which zip codes convert best and adjust marketing budgets based on that. We analyze job types to know when to add or cross-train crews. Even our customer service scripts are refined from feedback trends.  We created a dynamic internal webpage for our appointment coordinators to follow that helps with this.

To tell a trend from an anomaly, we look for consistency over time and across multiple data points. One busy week doesn’t mean a market shift…but three quarters of the same pattern does. That discipline has made our decisions much more confident and less reactive.

I can see how important it is to take the right action at the right time. Stacie, a lot of people find it difficult to justify investing in data initiatives. We have found that two key metrics for evaluating the ROI of data are time to insights (TTI) and time to decisions (TTD). By tracking how quickly an organization can transform raw data into actionable insights (TTI) and then convert those insights into informed business decisions (TTD), leaders can quantify the productivity and profitability gains from their data investments. Accelerating both TTI and TTD is essential for gaining a competitive edge, improving operational efficiency, and maximizing the value derived from data-driven strategies. How do you measure the value of your customer data today? What metrics or business outcomes do you track to ensure your insights are driving results? How do you connect your data efforts to tangible business value?

We measure success by looking at conversion rates, job profitability, and customer satisfaction.  We also monitor how fast we move from data to action—if it takes weeks to act on insights, that’s a lost opportunity. The faster we turn information into decisions, the more value we get from our data investment.

Simply accumulating more data does not guarantee better business insights or outcomes. Throughout our conversation, you’ve mentioned that it is important for organizations to establish a disciplined process for data management. You brought up a great point about the quality of data, its relevance, and the need for structured analysis to extract actionable insights that drive strategic decisions. As you mentioned, value comes not from volume, but from a systematic approach that transforms the right data into meaningful intelligence for business growth. For leaders just starting their data journey, what advice would you offer? What are the biggest lessons learned about collecting, analyzing, and applying customer data? For those further along, what best practices or next-level challenges should they anticipate?

Start small and stay consistent. Don’t get overwhelmed by collecting every piece of data—focus on what helps you serve your customers better. For us, that was understanding where leads came from and why customers chose us. Once we had that, we could build from there.

The biggest lesson is to actually use the data. Too many businesses collect it but never act on it. Create a rhythm of reviewing, learning, and applying what you see. That’s where the real growth happens.

One of the biggest hurdles we see is that many organizations operate through what we call “random acts”.  These are isolated efforts not anchored to a clear data-driven strategy. Avoiding these requires discipline, process, and focus. For leaders just starting out, how do you recommend they prevent these random acts from creeping into their data and decision-making processes?

Random acts happen when there’s no clear strategy or accountability. We prevent that by setting measurable goals and reviewing performance regularly. Every initiative—marketing, hiring, or operations—must be tied to a specific data point or outcome.

That discipline keeps us focused and ensures that everyone understands why we’re doing something, not just what we’re doing.

Stacie, it’s clear you and your team have found actionable customer insights to be a critical driver of business growth, enabling your organization to anticipate needs, personalize offerings, and build stronger relationships. We believe that by systematically collecting and analyzing customer data, you can see patterns and preferences that inform strategy and foster innovation. And your story seems to bear that out. By leveraging customer insights, companies can differentiate themselves, improve customer value, and accelerate sustainable growth. How do you ensure that customer insights are systematically collected, analyzed, and translated into strategies that deliver measurable value and sustainable growth?

We’ve built a rhythm of gathering and sharing insights across the company. Our CRM gives every department visibility into customer trends. We use that data to forecast sales, plan staffing, and even improve training programs.

When people see how their input feeds into better decisions, they take ownership of the data. That’s how we’ve sustained a culture of continuous improvement.

As we wrap up, let’s talk about building a data-driven culture, which requires more than technology. It takes leadership commitment, clear processes, and continuous investment in data literacy across the organization. It is critical to align people, practices, and incentives to ensure that data and insights are consistently used in decision-making at every level. The key is to foster collaboration, encourage curiosity, and make data accessible and actionable, so organizations can embed a culture where insights drive performance, innovation, and long-term growth. What are the most important steps leaders can take to embed a truly data-driven mindset across the organization, ensuring that customer insights consistently inform strategy and innovation?

As a leader, I try to model curiosity—asking questions like “what does the data say?” before making decisions. We include data reviews in leadership meetings and align our KPIs around both customer experience and profitability.

The key is making data part of the conversation, not an afterthought. When leaders value it, everyone follows suit.

How do you, as President, ensure that data accountability is part of leadership discussions—perhaps even boardroom conversations—so that insight-driven decision-making becomes part of your organization’s governance?

Data accountability starts at the top. We are transparent about what’s working and what isn’t. We discuss metrics so everyone understands how their numbers tie to the company’s goals.

Over time, that’s built trust and alignment. People know decisions are made based on facts, not feelings, and that’s changed how we lead.

Stacie, thank you for sharing your story and the lessons learned from your journey and highlighting how moving from instinct to actionable insights fundamentally transforms C-Suite decision-making.  Through your real-world experience, we see the tangible impact of building disciplined data processes, investing in data literacy, and cultivating a culture where insights drive strategy, operations, and growth. Our conversation underscores that sustainable business success depends on embedding data-driven thinking at every level of leadership.

Ready to take your organization from instinct to insight? Connect with us to discover practical steps you can implement today for a more resilient, customer-centric, and competitive future.

(written by Penn at Sintra.ai) 

FAQ: From Instinct to Customer Insights for Better C-Suite Decision Making 

In this episode of What’s Your Edge? we’re focusing on a foundational driver of sustainable growth: innovation. Research from McKinsey suggests that companies that prioritize innovation generate significantly higher growth than their peers. In one study, “innovation leaders” achieved 2.4 times higher total shareholder returns than laggards over a 10-year period, underscoring that innovation is not a “nice to have,” but a core driver of long-term value. 

As everyone listening knows, true innovation isn’t a one-time event or the product of a lone genius. It’s a disciplined, iterative effort, woven into the culture and operations of high-performing organizations. You may have read our article “Massive Action Leads to Business Growth, Innovation, and Operational Excellence,” where we explored how companies that operationalize innovation, where it is everyone’s responsibility, are the ones that consistently outpace their peers.  Today, we’re talking with Ed Trevis, President and CEO of Corvalent, an industrial computing manufacturing company, whose leadership journey offers a compelling blueprint for transforming a legacy business through innovation. 

Welcome Ed! 

Thank you, Laura, for inviting me to this episode. You’re absolutely right that induced innovation can drive profound transformation. In my 32 years of leading the company, we’ve experienced multiple moments where we had to break from the norm and pivot, whether for technological advancement, shifting markets, or economic and financial pressures. As CEOs, we must maintain a healthy paranoia about the possibility of becoming obsolete, and it’s often in those moments that real action and breakthrough innovation occur.

Ed, I’m so glad you mentioned that innovation starts at the top. And that Leaders must set expectations, model curiosity, and foster accountability. Ed, you’ve led Corvalent since its founding in 1993. Can you share the pivotal moment when you realized Corvalent needed to embrace a culture of innovation? What was the catalyst for this shift?

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There were several moments in the life of our organization where we had to be more than innovative, but there was one that I even wrote in my Portuguese book about innovation. The chapter is called “The dangerous silence and how demotivation threatened our future”. We faced a silent, but devastating problem: employee demotivation. A widespread feeling of stagnation, low engagement from employees, and a disconnect from the real impact of their work. It was like their tasks just felt like simple tasks, without a greater purpose. Over time, this created a cycle of dissatisfaction, low productivity, and no personal growth.  

Worse still, when a team loses the belief that their work doesn’t matter, the team loses vitality. 

Disconnection was subtle, but became very evident: 

Teams were less collaborative, silos were created throughout the organization, resistance to change, and in some cases, great talents left the organization. 

When we identified the silent problem, we realized something fundamental. It wasn’t enough to innovate products and services; we needed to innovate in how we managed people and culture. 

I like your phrase, the silent problem. We know from our experience that no transformation is without challenges. Changing culture, especially in a long-established company, requires trust, communication, and clear incentives. How did you secure buy-in across different teams and functions? 

Innovation became part of the strategic pillar within our corporate objectives. A living practice throughout the company, across every single department. 

We needed to change mindsets. 

As a result, we gave everyone a voice, encouraged participation, promoted exchange of ideas, made innovation part of everyone’s life at Corvalent, as well as personally. 

Making innovation a part of everyone’s life at Corvalent was quite an undertaking. At VEM, we believe innovation flourishes when it’s systematic and measurable. Encouraging innovation in every part of the organization, from HR to finance to product, and setting a target to innovate every year is a great example. How did you structure the expectation that every team would contribute to innovation annually? What systems or processes did you put in place to support this? 

One of the main objectives of our yearly strategic planning is Innovation.  

Every department in the organization develops what we call “Rocks” for the year based on corporate objectives. These rocks are like S.M.A.R.T. goals. They are thought of and established before the end of the prior year. Every team member, either individually or in groups, is assigned within every department to help accomplish those goals. 

Innovation is always a main corporate objective; the company may have ideas of innovation to be implemented for the year, and teams set them up to support the corporate objective.  

Sometimes, the best ideas come from unexpected places. Can you share an example of an innovation that surprised you—perhaps one that emerged from a department not traditionally associated with product development? 

As a designer and local manufacturer of industrial computing solutions, it operates through a well-structured organization with multiple departments, including sales, engineering, production, and shipping. Recently, our marketing team developed a new website architecture and design that clearly separates our two distinct product lines, hardware and software, each serving different industry segments. The result is an intuitive, easy-to-navigate, and highly functional online experience that effectively communicates the full scope of Corvalent’s capabilities. 

That’s a great example. Innovation must solve real problems. You created a new platform, which provides preventive and predictive maintenance data, that was developed in response to customer needs for reducing downtime and costs. What is the name of your platform, and what customer insights or market signals led to its development? How did you validate the need for this solution? 

CorGrid Suite is an industrial IoT platform that integrates both software and hardware components, providing a complete solution for data collection, monitoring, and intelligent control across industrial applications. 

Key industry segments we focus on today are Industrial Automation Process, Smart Machines, Smart Energy & Utilities, Oil & Gas, Petrochemical, Smart Building and Infrastructure, and Smart Cities.

Over the last decade, we observed that our capital equipment customers were closely following the global adoption of Industry 4.0 among large manufacturers. Through continuous conversations and analysis of their competitive environment, we identified a key objective shared across the industry: the need to implement preventive and predictive maintenance, along with some level of operational control of their equipment. 

Building on this insight, we designed a solution framework not only to meet those needs but also to empower customers to manage and resolve field issues more effectively, all through a unified, single-pane-of-glass platform that integrates monitoring, tracking, and control. 

As we know from “Ensure Strong Innovation Adoption,” even the best solutions can face adoption barriers. Despite a clear value proposition, you mentioned the initial adoption rate was lower than anticipated. What did you learn from this experience, and how did it influence your approach going forward? 

Our segments focus, acquisition of proof of concepts, and creation of a full turnkey solution to help customers from assessment, software, to hardware, to installation, are a key part of our approach. A large majority of prospects are not prepared to implement the entire automation on their own, so we developed a process to support customer implementation. 

Successful innovators are relentless iterators. When adoption lagged, Corvalent didn’t just push harder on existing customers. You looked outward, identifying new verticals like smart buildings, smart energy, and smart cities, and leveraged beta sites to build credibility. How did you and your team identify and prioritize these new verticals? What role have beta sites played in gaining traction and validating use cases? 

We conducted two years of consultative marketing research and a pre-sales exercise prior of having specific applications designed under our PaaS platform. This enables us to understand the pains of each segment, challenges, market potential, customer ROI, and competitive landscape. 

Ed, iteration is a recurring theme in your leadership. How do you foster a culture where experimentation and learning from setbacks are valued?  

Learn by doing is part of our culture, the positive state of mind of going through the experience, whether it is a success or a failure. Strategic thinking and Planning, post-mortem, lessons learned, and true positive reinforcement leadership style. Knowledge + Experience (good or bad) = Wisdom as an organization 

We advise our customers to measure not just outputs but outcomes, using clear metrics and feedback loops. What metrics or key performance indicators do you use to measure the success of innovation initiatives at Corvalent?

Over the years, we have developed dashboards that encompass not only results, but also metrics for intercompany communication and processes on activities of engineering, marketing, sales, and operations development, focused on constant “team feedback”. Making sure nothing is missed or forgotten. 

Plan – Delegate – ongoing, constant feedback behavior rather than follow-up management as a culture. 

Some of the key performance indicators and metrics we use in our company are customer and employee surveys. Their feedback helps us understand their input about innovation. Helps us define and measure employee and customer retention. A major part of what we sell, and our ideology, is longevity and consistency.  

Driving adoption in new markets requires more than just a great product. What strategies have proven most effective for accelerating the adoption of innovative solutions, especially in unfamiliar verticals? 

We use advisory boards, marketing surveys, attend conferences, exhibit at vertical tradeshows, and leverage beta site deals to help drive adoption. 

Your long tenure as a CEO gives you a unique perspective on leadership and innovation. How has your leadership philosophy evolved as Corvalent has become more innovation-driven? What personal practices or beliefs sustain your edge as a leader? 

Early in my career as a CEO, I realized that leadership can be a lonely place. That realization led me to join Vistage International, a global community of more than 47,000 leaders, where I’ve been a member for 24 years. Through this community, I’ve learned not only from the experiences of fellow executives but also from world-class speakers who cover nearly every topic imaginable in business. 

These decades of shared insight have reinforced a fundamental truth: leadership and innovation are inseparable. They are the drivers of longevity in business and the forces that push us to continually improve as leaders and thinkers. To me, the belief (mantra) is simple: to innovate is to live a meaningful, productive life. 

Looking ahead, the pace of change will only accelerate. What are your priorities for Corvalent’s next phase of innovation? Are there new frontiers or technologies you’re particularly excited about?

I’m truly energized by the emerging frontier of an All-Americas Free Trade landscape, a powerful vision where more than one billion people across over 50 countries and territories come together in unprecedented collaboration. Within a mere 2–5 hour time-zone span, and united by shared linguistic and cultural roots, the entire hemisphere is poised to ignite what could become the greatest economic boom of the next 50 years. 

Together, we can share our greatest technologies, elevate innovation to new heights, and build a future defined by peace, partnership, and widespread prosperity. This is more than free trade; it’s a historic opportunity to uplift nations, empower people, and unlock the full potential of all the Americas, estimating an economy of over 50 trillion dollars in less than 20 years. 

Thank you, Ed, for illustrating what it means to build and sustain a culture of innovation. I found your message that, rather than treating the silent problem as a human resources issue, you and your team recognized it as a strategic threat and used it as a catalyst to innovate your products and how you managed people, culture, and performance. By elevating innovation to a strategic pillar and embedding it into corporate objectives, you’ve shown us how innovation can make a “living practice” across every department. Thank you for sharing your experiences and insights. For our listeners, remember that building a culture of innovation is within reach for any organization, provided you commit to the process, measure what matters, and never stop learning. 

If you’re ready to move beyond one-off initiatives and build a true culture of innovation, start by asking the same questions Ed did: Where is the “dangerous silence” in your organization? How are you equipping every team, not just product, to innovate? 

To explore how to operationalize innovation, improve adoption, and use data and process to accelerate growth, check out our resources on innovation, iteration, and performance management. 

Let’s talk if you’d like help assessing your current innovation readiness or building a roadmap for your next phase of growth.

(Written by Penn at Sintra.ai) 

Over time, these steps can help you move from isolated efforts to a repeatable, scalable innovation system. 

You’re probably experiencing what so many of our customers do.  Data pouring in from every direction. Transactions, digital behavior, product usage, customer feedback, and more. As organizations have amassed more information, the real challenge has gone from data collection to translating data into actionable insights and business intelligence. At VisionEdge Marketing, we’ve found that a data-driven culture is a foundational capability for sustained growth and customer-centricity. (See Why a Data Driven Culture Needs to Be at the Top of Your List).

To explore this topic, I’m delighted to welcome Kuber Jain, Senior Data Scientist for Product Analytics at Headspace. Headspace is a leader in the mental health and wellness space. He is an expert at leveraging analytics to drive member engagement and retention. Kuber and I share a similar philosophy.  The key to gaining better insights from data is asking the right questions.

Kuber works closely with the Chief Product Officer and Product Managers, leading efforts to define the key metrics that matter and to leverage insights for optimizing business outcomes and delivering more personalized member experiences. Today, he helps us unpack how to use analytics to drive engagement and growth, explore practical first steps for any organization, and discuss how AI is reshaping the analytics landscape. Most importantly, we’ll focus on how to move from simply having data to making smarter, faster business decisions.

Welcome Kuber!

Thank you, Laura. I’m really excited to be here. In my current role at Headspace, I focus on enhancing member engagement and outcomes by partnering closely with executive stakeholders to define key metrics, size business impact, and lead experimentation initiatives. What excites me most is the ability to translate data into decisions that not only drive growth but also make a meaningful difference in people’s mental health journeys. For me, analytics is about more than dashboards—it’s about helping people connect with the product in a way that improves their lives.

With so much data available, the most valuable skill in analytics is knowing what to ask. The right questions focus your attention, clarify your objectives, and ensure you’re measuring what truly matters for business performance.

At VEM, we regularly advise clients to “count what matters”—to align metrics with business outcomes, not vanity numbers.

Framing the right questions is a competitive advantage. For example, in our work with B2B organizations, we seethe difference between teams that ask, “How many users did we acquire?” versus those that ask, “Which acquisition channels yield the highest lifetime value, and why?” The latter question leads to actionable insights and better resource allocation.

Kuber, as a Senior Data Scientist at Headspace, what are the most important questions you’re asked to answer by product and business leaders? How do you determine which questions will drive the most value for the business?

That’s such an important point. At Headspace, the most valuable questions I’m asked are the ones that tie directly to outcomes—like, “Which experiences are most likely to help members build a lasting habit, and how do we double down on those?”

I prioritize questions based on their connection to impact. If a question can help us retain members longer, drive more meaningful engagement, or identify opportunities to grow sustainably, it rises to the top. And often, my role is to reframe questions so they shift from “what happened?” to “why did it happen, and what can we do about it?” That’s when analytics becomes a real driver of business value.

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Once you’ve defined the right questions, the next step is turning insights into action. This is where many organizations struggle. They have the data and maybe even the answers, but translating those answers into growth strategies is another matter. The key: Take a customer-centric approach. Use data to understand your customers’ journey, identify and eliminate break points, and design interventions that improve both acquisition and retention.

For example, map out your customer touchpoints and use analytics to pinpoint where prospects drop off or disengage. By focusing on these critical moments, you can create better experiences or adjust product features to better meet customer needs.

Kuber, how does your team at Headspace translate data-driven insights into actions that drive customer acquisition and retention? Can you share a practical example where analytics led to a measurable improvement in member engagement or business results?

Translating insights into action is where the rubber meets the road. A big part of my work is making sure the insights we generate are embedded in product and marketing decisions.

For example, one insight we uncovered was that members who completed their very first meditation within 24 hours of signing up were far more likely to stay engaged over time. Acting on that, we partnered with product and lifecycle marketing teams to redesign onboarding nudges—making it easier and more natural for people to take that first step right away. That single experiment created a measurable lift in retention and long-term engagement. It shows how small, insight-driven changes can unlock real business impact.

Many organizations, especially those early in their analytics journey, feel overwhelmed. They may lack the resources of a Headspace or the infrastructure for advanced analytics. The good news is that you don’t need to be a data giant to get started.

At VEM, we recommend a stepwise approach:

In our experience, organizations that follow these steps and create a data-driven culture —no matter their size—see measurable gains in both efficiency and impact. Research has found that organizations with a strong data-driven culture are 58% more likely to exceed their revenue goals than those that are not data-driven.

Kuber, what practical first steps do you recommend for teams that want to use data more effectively, whether they’re just starting out or already have a robust analytics function? How should they prioritize their analytics investments?

My advice is: start small, but be intentional. First, align your team on a few core outcomes that matter most to the business. At Headspace, we rally around metrics like retention, daily active engagement, and outcomes tied to well-being.

Second, build a cadence of review and action. Even if you don’t have advanced AI or a large analytics team, you can ask, “What story is this data telling us, and how do we respond?”

And finally, invest in the basics: clean data pipelines, clear metric definitions, and cross-functional alignment. Once that foundation is set, you can scale into advanced analytics and experimentation with confidence. In my experience, even small teams see outsized impact when they focus on discipline and clarity over complexity.

Well, we certainly cannot have a conversation about data, analytics and insights without touching on Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is rapidly transforming how organizations unlock value from data. AI can automate the discovery of patterns, surface hidden insights, and enable more personalized, predictive experiences. At VisionEdge Marketing, we’ve explored how AI enhances user intent detection and customer-centricity—making it possible to anticipate needs and deliver the right message or product at the right time.

The market is moving quickly: According to Gartner, 61% of global data and analytics decision-makers say their firms are implementing or expanding AI capabilities to drive business outcomes.

But AI isn’t just for the data-rich or tech-savvy. Even organizations with limited data can benefit from AI tools that help identify trends, segment customers, or automate reporting.

Kuber, how is AI changing the way you approach data analysis and member engagement at Headspace? If you’re a business leader with limited data, how can AI help you get started? And if you have lots of clean data, what should you be doing to maximize value and competitive advantage?

AI is changing how we work every day. At Headspace, we use AI to better personalize member experiences—like tailoring recommendations based on behavior—and to automate parts of our  analytics workflows so teams can focus on strategy instead of manual reporting.

If you’re just getting started, AI can help with simple but powerful tasks like segmenting customers, identifying common drop-off points, or even automating reporting. For organizations with richer datasets, the opportunity is to move toward predictive modeling—anticipating when a member might disengage, or recommending the next best action in real time.

The key is to treat AI as an accelerant. It’s not replacing the human element, but it enables us to ask bigger questions and act faster on the answers.

Headspace, like many leading organizations, operates on a SaaS and product-led growth model. This approach relies on analytics to optimize every aspect of the customer experience—from onboarding to engagement, retention, and upsell. Product-led growth puts the product at the center of the customer journey, using data to inform everything from feature development to support strategies.

Lessons from SaaS leaders are broadly applicable:

Kuber, as we wrap up, what are some best practices or lessons from Headspace’s journey that any company—regardless of industry—can apply to increase engagement, enhance customer experience, and drive growth?

From Headspace’s experience, I’d say the biggest lesson is to stay relentlessly focused on the member experience. A few principles stand out:

And finally, remember that empathy matters. The data tells you what is happening, but listening to your customers tells you why. When you combine both, you unlock growth strategies that truly resonate.

Thank you again, Kuber, for your insights and candor. As we close, I want to reiterate a few key takeaways that apply to any organization—regardless of size or industry:

Change is constant, but those who use analytics to inform and adapt their strategies will lead the way. And as always, if you have questions or want to continue the conversation, connect with me on LinkedIn.

In this episode of What’s Your Edge? we’re joined by Doug Norton, Chief Marketing Officer of Inspire Semiconductor, a company founded in the early days of the pandemic that’s now launching its groundbreaking Thunderbird “supercomputer cluster-on-a-chip.” Doug is a veteran in the semiconductor space. With Doug’s help, we’re going behind the scenes of a Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy and talk about what it really takes to bring a new product to market, and how mapping the right ecosystem, focusing on customer needs, and measuring what matters can make or break a product launch.

Please join me in welcoming Doug to What’s Your Edge?

Doug, you joined InspireSemi at a critical juncture. One of the first things you did was make a strategic decision not to chase everyone, but to focus on market segments that were underserved. We believe that segmentation and customer-centricity are critical to the success of launching a new product.

Can you walk us through your process for mapping the ecosystem, selecting your initial target markets, and how you decided which segments and partners to prioritize?

That’s exactly right, the very first thing was to determine the markets we would – and just as importantly, would not – go after.

Believe it or not, the initial target for what ultimately became our Thunderbird was crypto mining.  Our founder saw a lucrative opportunity for some undervalued alt-coins due to the focus on Bitcoin, so he initially created an ASIC for a couple of these algorithms. It was a technical success, but for just a short time, since, unlike Bitcoin, the alt-coins constantly change their algorithms, making an ASIC (Application Specific IC) a dead end. This convinced him what was needed was a very versatile and easy-to-program chip that, of course, also needed to be very energy efficient to profitably mine crypto.  Our CEO, who was an advisor at the time, saw the potential for this to be a much broader and more significant device.  So they brought me on shortly thereafter, given my background in AI and HPC (High Performance Computing).

My favorite business book is Blue Ocean Strategy. I suspected the right answer was not to chase the bright shiny object of AI like everyone else, since that is a very “red ocean.”  Just as important, I have partnered with NVIDIA in the past and knew better than to compete head-on with them. 

What I could see happening was the HPC market, who invented and drove the h/w and s/w infrastructure AI now leverages, was being left with few options as all the chip companies rushed to cash in on AI. HPC encompasses important applications used every day in the real world for engineering, science, and manufacturing. Areas like computer-aided engineering, finding and producing energy (both renewable and Oil&Gas), vehicle crash simulation & analysis, genomics, financial modeling, nuclear fission and fusion simulations, climate & weather modeling, and cybersecurity. The underlying need for all of these big math problems is highly accurate math, which requires double-precision floating point (aka FP64).  Meanwhile, all the GPU players and AI chips were chasing very low-precision math that GenAI LLMs require (currently 8-bit, moving to 4-bit).

It sounds like you realized you needed to pivot, and once you had clarity on the target market, you were able to lock down the feature set, design, and specs. In your industry, this is often completed years before the product launch. Drawing on your experience, what are the biggest lessons learned so far?

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Never assume anything, especially if creating a product that will take years and millions of dollars to get to market like a high-end semiconductor. Once we knew the market we were targeting, it was important to ensure product-market fit. So, I reached out to my network and did this, with a key decision being which memory technology we should use. Fortunately, most of our choices were exactly what customers and OEMs wanted to see for the HPC market. But including them in the process was important, helping them buy in early. Most importantly, it gave our team, our investors, and our Board of Directors the confidence to move forward with product development.

You also mapped the ecosystem.  You recognized that your core customers would be big computing centers, national labs, and OEMs in sectors like aerospace, automotive, and pharma. Knowing what the customer needs and values and how your product delivers is essential to creating the positioning, messaging, and strategy. At what point did you address the value proposition, positioning, and messaging in the Go-to-Market strategy?

Yes, that was the next step, now that the target market and competitors were identified and engineering was off and running. Another nice thing about focusing on HPC was that open-source software is highly valued. I learned early in my career that hardware is just a platform for software. HPC users were the first to adopt the Linux operating system, and 76% of all HPC applications are open source. And it is often these DOE national labs, universities, and supercomputing centers, including UT TACC here in Austin, that work with these applications and can help port them to a new hardware platform like our Thunderbird. And big enterprise companies in markets like aerospace, automotive, energy, and pharma partner with these organizations and draft off their early work.

But we also don’t want to ignore that 24% of software that is commercial, so we have also engaged with some key ISVs in these application areas.

To jumpstart the S curve, we needed to get software development going, so we launched an early access program with select customers.  We provided them with simulators and emulators to get going prior to us having actual silicon, and they will be the first to receive the initial Thunderbirds. The ideal scenario is that these orgs will recommend Thunderbird for these apps, or even say they run best on Thunderbird.

Thank you. Having launched numerous products, I know a lot goes into successfully bringing an innovative product to market. It’s a high-stakes endeavor.  Research from MIT Professional Programs found that as many as 95% of new products miss the mark. With so much on the line, having a robust Go-to-Market strategy and the right success measures is more critical than ever. Success depends on what happens long before the product makes its way into the market. What we refer to as Upstream Marketing, that is, where customer insights, competitive intelligence, and strategy are addressed to help ensure faster product adoption.

What are the most critical steps you took in the pre-launch phase to support customers rapidly adopting the product, and how did you engage channel partners and technical influencers to build early momentum?

For sure, never underestimate this. From the ecosystem work, it was clear to me that the best Go-to-Market path was to leverage what works rather than try to change it. This meant the initial product should be a standard PCIe server add-in card that the computer OEMs and integrators would sell. Customers don’t typically just buy compute accelerator cards and replace the ones currently in their servers.  They buy new servers populated with the new accelerator cards. Plus, Linux has also become the de facto datacenter OS of choice, so the computer OEMs typically ship their servers with Linux.

But the challenge with an indirect model vs. direct sales is that they don’t work for you. You can only influence and encourage them. The key was to engage with the OEMs early on, in parallel with doing business development with our target end-user customers and markets. This let them hear early customer feedback, so they saw firsthand customer reaction to our value propositions. It also built trust, demonstrating we are committed to an indirect channel by bringing them in early. Then there is the financial aspect; the old saying is that salespeople are coin-operated. The server OEMs often lament that a compute accelerator card can cost as much as an entire server, and each server usually has many of them installed. The icing on the cake was that they can get a much higher deal size, with much better margins, by working with us.

We also continued to work with important industry analysts and various technical press, plus participated in the key trade shows both here and in the UK and Europe.

Stakeholder engagement is one of the many key success factors. You’ve talked about the importance of getting both technical and business analysts on board, and now you’re focused on procurement contacts. That’s a complex and multi-layered approach.

How do you ensure internal alignment across the InspireSemi team, especially between product, sales, and marketing members, and also with your external partners?

Yes, though engaging deeper into our OEM partner organizations is just the next logical step on the journey. This includes continuing to work with the CTO offices and now engaging with server product teams for validation, and of course, the procurement people. Another good thing about our early access program was that it was a paid engagement, so it was a bit of a pipe cleaner to work with those procurement teams and see what they were going to require.

For alignment, the key was all of us getting on board with the strategy initially as we pivoted to HPC. This, of course, meant the leadership team and employees, but that was perhaps the easiest part. And I own both sales and marketing, so that alignment is by default. What took more work was that we also had to get our early investors and Board of Directors to agree and stay committed. This is an ongoing process, with regular board meetings and business update webinars for our investors.

And of course, having strong analyst, press, and customer validation is good for all our stakeholders

As you and our community know, at VisionEdge Marketing, we’re passionate about, some would say, obsessed with measurement and performance management. You’ve shared that you’ll be tracking product adoption rates and OEM pick-up rates as key indicators of Go-to-Market success. What was the thinking behind the performance targets and measures you’ve selected?

End user product adoption is clearly what will drive everything else since we will be fulfilling through the OEMs once we start to ramp. We will certainly measure which OEMs work best with us and are most successful, which will also help us determine how to help those who are having trouble or are not focused on us. For launch, it will primarily be on the take-up of early units and the different vertical markets they are going into. I have an idea what they will be, and there are a couple of areas I want to focus more on to ensure we have a very diversified mix of industries. The next step will be looking for the increased availability of software applications in the verticals we are targeting.

As we wrap up, what advice would you offer to other leaders launching a complex, high-stakes product in a competitive market?

Do your homework, starting with strategy and high-level market needs, opportunities, and threats. Engage industry analysts to confirm or course correct.  They can also help give you market sizing and projection numbers to help your business plan and secure investors. Then engage potential customers and partners early, bringing them into the process and working both in parallel, so you will have end customers and a sales channel that is primed and ready to fulfill. As noted earlier, this also helps get the rest of your internal team as well as investors on board. Lastly, hire and partner with A players. Always best to have people who have the experience to know what works – and just as important – what does not. There are some good multi-million-dollar lessons from mistakes made by big companies in many industries.

Doug, thank you for taking us behind the scenes of your Go-to-Market strategy and new product launch.  We hope the new product is a huge success and becomes an industry standard. I’m confident that our community will take away at least one good idea for building a data-driven, customer-centric GTM strategy.  Bringing a new product to market? Let’s talk about your GTM strategy.

Victor Gichun, Vice President of Business Development at Excess Logic, a nationwide leader in surplus equipment and electronics liquidation, offers businesses a seamless way to manage excess and obsolete inventory. What sets Excess Logic apart is its ability to create value through a robust ecosystem of providers and a laser focus on customer experience and competitive differentiation. In this episode, Victor shares how Excess Logic has engineered its customer-centric processes and ecosystem strategy to create value and growth, differentiated itself in a crowded market, and aligned its operations to deliver measurable results.

Victor, I’m looking forward to your insights and hearing how Excess Logic’s ecosystem and differentiation strategies have enabled it to create value and drive growth. Your story highlights the importance of aligning resources, fostering collaboration, and standing out in a crowded market.

Victor, let’s start by discussing the challenges your customers face. Managing surplus and obsolete equipment is a complex and often overlooked part of business operations. What are the most common challenges your customers encounter, and how does Excess Logic help them overcome these hurdles?

Hi Laura, thanks for having me here. One of the most common challenges our customers encounter is what to do with the excess equipment and electronics they no longer need. In the US, companies can’t just throw it into a garbage bin; they need to dispose of any electronic equipment properly to make sure it doesn’t end up in a landfill and doesn’t pollute the environment.

Excess Logic solves this problem.

It sounds like Excess Logic provides a lifeline for businesses struggling with these issues. Given your commitment to creating customer value, how do you ensure your solutions are tailored to meet the diverse needs of customers across industries?

To ensure that our solutions are tailored to meet the diverse needs of customers across industries, Excess Logic established a surplus equipment remarketing and disposal ecosystem across the nation. This is something that differentiates us from the competition. 

Excess Logic operates in a very competitive and cluttered market, making growth challenging. Yet the company is growing by focusing on customer experience. How do you differentiate your company from competitors, and how do you embed these qualities into your operations and service delivery?

To differentiate Excess Logic from competitors, we provide a one-stop solution. Any company has different departments with different types of equipment and electronics. The IT department has laptops and computers, the research department has analytical and R&D instruments, the production department has manufacturing equipment, and so on and so forth. A one-stop solution covers all departments and all types of surplus equipment anywhere in the US at once. A lot of our current clients, and we have over 500 clients now, used two or more different vendors for each location before they started working with Excess Logic, because each vendor they used before helped them dispose of a particular type of excess equipment. If the company has 15 locations, it works with 30-45 different vendors. As a result of our extensive provider network and streamlined logistics. This makes for a better customer experience and major cost savings, which drastically improves our customers’ bottom line.

We believe firmly in understanding and mapping the ecosystem and using the ecosystem to identify prospects and better serve customers. It’s a powerful growth strategy. Your nationwide reach and extensive network of providers are impressive.  How does this ecosystem enhance your ability to serve customers efficiently and effectively?

This is a very good question. Since 2018, when we started working with Google Excess Logic has developed a true nationwide network. This ecosystem allows us to provide same-day excess equipment removal services anywhere in the US, except Alaska and Hawaii.

This flexibility allows our customers to feel confident that the excess equipment sitting in the way of the new equipment will be removed on time and disposed of properly or resold for the maximum value.

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We have found in our work that customer experience is often the linchpin of long-term success. Where does customer experience fit into your company’s strategy, and how do you ensure it remains a top priority?

Over 50% of our business is repeat customers. This is because our clients, once they receive our services, prefer to use Excess Logic again and again because it’s easy, dependable, and valuable.

Besides the value of removing and disposing of excess equipment, Excess Logic remarkets excess equipment to recoup the investments our clients made into equipment. Our ability to sell it via online marketplaces to end users and recover the maximum value makes our service invaluable.

In our experience, customer experience plays a critical role in customer retention and lifetime value. Data is critical to making sure you deliver what customers want. Without good data products and services, especially new ones, can end up being a market flop. While data is no guarantee you’ll have a hit, it can go a long way toward improving your odds of success. What data do you use to stay ahead of trends and continuously deliver value to your customers?

This is another very good question. Since we sell surplus equipment via online marketplaces, we need to make sure that the asking price is right. Excess Logic uses one of the most advanced data sources that shows how much surplus equipment has been sold for the last 90 days anywhere in the world. This data allows us to put surplus equipment on the market at the right price and therefore recover the maximum value for our clients.

Data is a powerful tool for identifying opportunities and driving innovation. What are some examples of data-driven insights that have enabled you to be more customer-centric?

We use a unique system that provides us with the actual prices the equipment we are selling has been sold for. This system integrates all major online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, Rakuten, and many more. Based on this information, we set the asking price, which is the highest price the market can pay. This insight allows Excess Logic to sell surplus equipment for much hire prices than traditional auctions or competitors that don’t have access to this system.

Operational excellence is at the heart of delivering consistent value. McKinsey’s article on analytics and asset management highlighted the importance of analytics and insights in the asset management space to improve distribution effectiveness, investment performance, and productivity. What steps has Excess Logic taken to leverage analytics and insights to improve the efficiency of the ecosystem and enhance the customer experience?

Automation, combined with our nationwide ecosystem, enables us to scale efficiently while maintaining high service quality.  For example, this allows us to schedule 5 pickups a day from five different locations and provide unified reports within one week.

It’s clear that your focus on process and operational excellence has positioned Excess Logic as a trusted partner for businesses nationwide and accelerated your growth.

As we wrap up, is there any advice you have for other companies looking to reengineer their processes for growth or create an ecosystem?

My advice to the listeners. If you run a business or want to start one, here are three things to consider:

Victor, thank you for sharing your insights and giving us a closer look at how Excess Logic leverages analytics, automation, and a powerful nationwide ecosystem to deliver operational excellence and enhance the customer experience. Your story highlights the powerful role of aligning processes, outsourcing, and leveraging data to scale efficiently while maintaining high service quality.

We welcome a conversation with you if you are looking to drive growth, focus on operational excellence, and/or create a seamless customer experience through data-driven decision-making.

Most of us operate within a hyper-competitive marketplace.  A compelling value proposition is a critical business asset and one of the most effective competitive differentiators. Companies that succeed in attracting and retaining customers are those that focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences and creating measurable customer value. In this episode of What’s Your Edge?, we explore how Rebecca Woan, founder of Chartwell Insurance Services, a boutique property and casualty insurance provider, built a thriving business by staying true to a customer-centric strategy, using her firm’s value proposition to stand out in a crowded field, and foster long-term loyalty and growth. Rebecca and her team recognize the importance of making customers feel valued and finding value.

Rebecca, congratulations on building a customer-centric organization.  I know our community is eager to hear what you and your team do better and differently to deliver value to your customers.

What we do is anything but radical.  We take care of people.  We had a retail brokerage that specialized in a very different end of the business, and I had a number of prospects in the high net worth or what is also referred to as the “successful individual” space.  I found markets and serviced them to effusive praise. I thought to myself, I’m just taking care of them.  Then I asked myself why their brokers weren’t taking care of the, and then I had the lightbulb moment that there was perhaps a business opportunity in being responsive and educating clients. This was the recipe for our growth, along with a team of people who care as much about clients as I do.  There is no substitute for hiring good people.

Let’s jump right in.  I love this topic because we truly believe that a compelling, meaningful, and relevant value proposition is at the heart of finding, keeping, and growing the value of customers. It’s what enables companies to gain market share and charge a premium price.  You operate in an extremely competitive industry. I did a little research and learned that there are over 4,000 property and casualty insurance companies in the US and that the top 25 have nearly 79% of the market share.  And that the average churn rate for the industry is 16 out of every 100 policyholders.

Rebecca, what is your value proposition, and how has it enabled you to retain and create loyal customers?

Insurance is often sold on price, especially in the consumer sector.  We’ve all seen the name your price commercials and the you’ve been paying too much commercials.  We work with clients who recognize value over price and not as an unavoidable and unwanted expense, but as an important means to protect their real and personal possessions and help guard against assaults on their assets through liability lawsuits from aggressive third parties.  They also want to be placed with insurers who have a reputation for fair and generous claim settlement.  Not everyone is fortunate enough to make that choice, and that’s the market we operate in. 

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I’ve heard you say that “the most recent interaction is the interaction the customer remembers.” We love Jan Carlzon of Scandinavian Airlines book, Moments of Truth.  He defined a “moment of truth“ as any interaction with a customer or any event in which a customer uses or experiences a company’s product.” A moment of truth has a huge impact on customer satisfaction, retention, and advocacy. Employees are the keepers of moments of truth.  What have you done differently to empower your employees to deliver exceptional interactions?

That’s so true, however, you can only empower employees once you know they are well-trained. It’s important to have mentorship and make employees part of the conversation so they learn by hearing and observing.  We also share experiences and how we solve problems, so we can be collaborative and offer a team approach to service.  It doesn’t serve a customer well if the one person who knows about their program is out sick or isn’t available.  Having well-documented files makes it easy for someone else to pick up. This requires constant reinforcement, and more than once, I have one of my team members reminding me when I need to do a better job.  No one is perfect, and the converse is also true, so we all have to own our mistakes.  I firmly believe customers cannot be fooled, and they appreciate an apology and a fix more than a cover-up, which only gets worse over time. 

The idea that customer experience is essential for long-term growth is not new. For a decade, Gartner has been saying, “companies will compete primarily on the customer experiences they deliver.” Even so, many companies still struggle to map the customer journey and eliminate the breakpoints.

Earlier, you said that the challenge is to consistently make customers feel valued and find value in the product.  Process is an integral part of creating customer value.  What kind of processes have you implemented to engage customers and deliver a superior customer experience?

I remind my team that we cannot assume our customers understand all the nuances and the insurance lingo, so we need to clarify in our communications.  We start with a welcome call to let clients know what to do in case of an emergency, to call us first, and that we have an emergency 24-hour emergency service.  We are very proud of our collateral materials, which are clean and easy to read for proposals and reviews.  We also follow up conversations with emails to memorialize, because you can never over-communicate, in my opinion.

People might not connect innovation with insurance.  Yet you talk about the need to think outside the box and to innovate as a critical factor for competing.  What kind of innovations have you developed, and how have they enabled you to outmaneuver the competition?

I’m not sure we have outmaneuvered the competition, but we have looked at how AI can improve our communication and education, and I believe this will be a critical differentiator going forward. I’m delighted to now be part of a larger organization. We sold to EPIC, which has a large national footprint, and they have the resources for the budget that this really needs.  I do feel that in the short term, there will be an advantage for the larger brokerages that have the resources to implement these AI strategies.

Two of the many things we have in common are our passion for customer-centricity and strategy. We believe that a good strategy that is customer-centric and well-executed has the ability to positively impact a market and a company’s competitive position. What kind of customer-centric strategies have you employed, which ones have been the most successful, and why?

We are in the service business, so I don’t think we could be anything but customer-centric.  We have people who communicate.  We make phone calls to deliver difficult news, and in this very hard insurance market, we have a lot of that.  We like to meet customers at their comfort level. Some want a lot of automation, and others want more interaction.  We’ll make file notes about issues that are specific to them, or how to best approach them, or if one spouse prefers to delegate to another, or if it’s important to include both spouses in interactions. 

Crafting a customer-centric strategy takes solid data about who your customers are and which ones are a good fit. I imagine in your industry, it is essential to be able to hone in on the right segments and personas. Rebecca, what data does your firm use, and how do you use it to find, keep, and grow the value of customers? And how do you use the data to distinguish an ideal customer from one that isn’t?

We have not been that granular with data.  We do track retention and success with prospects, and also data about how pricing has changed quarter to quarter. There is probably a metric out there, but instead we look at patterns and conversational responses in a prospect call to determine whether there is a good fit before we complete the labor-intensive proposal process.  The goal is to have a very high win percentage for proposals delivered.

Win-rate. That’s a terrific metric. As we wrap up, I’d like to return to the start of our conversation about creating a customer-centric value proposition. Customer-centric companies build value props that offer a unique promise of value to their customers and articulate the benefits and solutions customers can expect. One of the key things we help our customers do is shift from value proposition construction to value proposition measurement. Measurement helps ensure a value prop remains strong, relevant, and capable of sustaining the vital connection between your business and its customers. We recommend selecting measures that measure the connection between your business and your customers, such as customer lifetime value, customer effort, customer retention rate, and others.  I’m curious to know what customer-centric measures you track and report, and why?

We look at the size of the account we need to be compensated for the cost of servicing. If the account is too small, we have made the difficult decision to politely decline the business. Also, once in a while, we have to tell a client that we cannot make them happy, which is our equivalent of the Dear John conversation.  Sometimes we recognize that our approach is not a good fit for someone who might not understand and appreciate our expertise and has an unrealistic expectation of what we should deliver. 

Rebecca, you’ve been at the helm of Chartwell for more than two decades. I imagine there have been both ups and downs. As we wrap up, what is some parting advice and lessons learned that might help our community outsmart their competitors.

You need to focus on what you can do best. I once heard a presentation about ideas which has stayed with me.  There are very few unique ideas, and chances are someone else is trying to do something very similar, and success comes from the one who executes best. Small businesses cannot afford to make a lot of mistakes, so they need to figure out where their profit margin is largest and which products or services are scalable.  If they can’t do this, or if the field is too crowded or the product is becoming obsolete, like the typewriter, for example, they need to pivot. 

This is an excellent reminder for all of us that to successfully complete and grow, we must focus and execute on what we do best, and that it’s important to know when to pivot. Thank you, Rebecca, for being our guest and revealing how you created and used a clear and compelling value proposition that served as a true competitive differentiator—even in a crowded and price-driven industry like insurance. Customer education and responsiveness and empowering employees, and leveraging processes for superior service delivery are critical to operationalizing customer-centricity. Your journey underscores that long-term success stems from consistent execution, deep customer understanding, and a relentless focus on delivering value.

Is your value proposition strong enough to attract and retain the right customers? Let’s talk about how we can help you assess and strengthen your value proposition to create a measurable edge in your market. Contact us to start your journey toward smarter growth.

Christina Porter, the President of Stallergenes Greer Canada and Vice President of Strategy for Stallergenes Greer North America. The company provides therapies to help improve life for people who suffer from allergies. In 2017, Stallergenes Greer acquired a successful family-owned Canadian company to create a fully integrated Canadian operation. The company encountered several challenges during the transition that required them to take some steps back and re-engineer customer-centric processes, in order to grow and improve service quality and customer experience. And that’s the focus of this episode of What’s Your Edge?

Christina, we are grateful that you are willing to share the challenges you faced as a result of the acquisition. Every company we’ve ever worked with that has gone through a merger or acquisition has told us that the integration process was anything but a cakewalk. Some of the issues we’ve heard companies have faced post-merger include cultural clashes, talent loss, customer retention issues, integration cost overruns, and integration fatigue. All of these can impact the customer experience and impede growth.

What can you share about the situation you were facing during the transition?

It’s all the things you mentioned and in a predictable pattern (although in our naïve optimism, we didn’t predict it, unfortunately!):

First: culture clashes: we are a global company purchasing a 2nd generation family business- our expectations regarding policies, procedures, documentation, decision making, almost everything were different, and it was a very uncomfortable, tense time for everyone

Second: talent loss: The natural progression of culture clash is talent loss, and when most of the company’s intellectual capital is institutional knowledge, that’s a huge problem.   We lost the 2 owners very quickly, despite our expectation of a 2-year transition.  And many of the key people followed right behind, taking their institutional knowledge with them.

Third: production/delivery disruption.  Without the key players in the company, we rapidly became unable to fulfill orders. 

Fourth: customer dissatisfaction – you can imagine how our customers reacted.

Fifth: more disruption and delay caused by managing angry customers, and trying band-aid, reactionary solutions- training new employees, adding shifts, hiring consultants.

In my career and as part of our work, we’re big proponents of service quality. In the book, “Delivering Quality Service, “ first published in 1990, based on the authors’ research found that reliability and responsiveness account for over 50% of how customers evaluate service quality. What kind of data was your team seeing that indicated you had a service quality process issue that needed to be addressed?

Well, the first and most obvious source of “data” was the phone lines and voice mailboxes.  The phones never stopped ringing with complaints, and as fast as we were answering calls in person, more calls were filling the voice mailbox- to the point there was no physical way to answer everything- and anyway, we couldn’t answer the main question we were being asked – we called it WISMO- where’s my order???

The next was the very visual signal of orders piling up. Our orders mainly came in via fax at that time, and they were literally spilling and piling up on the floor, surrounding desks, and any other flat surface. In fact, our first initiative was to create a filing system just to hold backlogged orders- there were hundreds of them. We called it Bertha!

As we tried to solve problems, it quickly became obvious that we actually didn’t have the data we needed to pinpoint exactly where things were going wrong and therefore where we should prioritize our efforts.  It was a sobering time when we came to the realization that we couldn’t just work harder to get out of the situation we were in.  Instead, we needed to take a step back and become very analytical to make a sustainable solution.

You’re singing our song about taking a step back and being analytical.  As you analyzed the data, what decisions did you make?

We knew we had to carve out time to dissect every part of the business if we were going to improve- to get that time, we had to make the very painful decision to reduce the number of customers we could serve.  This led to some difficult, but honest discussions with valued partners to tell them they should go elsewhere because we could not serve them the way they deserved.  We counted on the fact that this transparency would serve us well when we were back on our feet and could reach back out for their support.   

We also had to purposely part ways with some long-standing but draining customer accounts where we couldn’t negotiate for a solution that worked in the new reality.

I know you had relationships with many of the clinicians and medical groups you serve. Being a customer-oriented person, I imagine “firing” customers was a very difficult decision for you. We believe that credibility and transparency are critical to maintaining market and customer trust during tough decisions. Beyond lost revenue, what was the impact of the decision on the organization, and what did you do to maintain customer trust?

Yes, this was such a difficult period of time for me and all our employees, especially because the business was built on customer service, and this is a core value for our leaders and all the people we hire.

The truth is, there was a significant loss of trust as we found our footing, and it was frankly embarrassing. But once the decision was made, we focused on being open and transparent about our situation, communicated regularly about the work we were doing to improve things, brought customers along with our vision as we innovated and finally, provided objective metrics to prove that when we asked them to come back, they could be confident in what to expect.

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There’s a process for analyzing the process and getting to the root cause.  What did you and your team do to analyze the entire process to understand what was creating the service quality problem and close the critical gaps?

We started with pure data collection at each point in the production process so that we could start to get a handle on what was going on and create a baseline.  Things like how many calls we are getting, how many orders, how many corrections, what kind of mistakes, how much time every step takes, etc.

Next, we attempted to simply see where the easiest and most obvious places to make improvements would be, we picked the “low-hanging fruit.”

But then we moved on to the detailed work of process mapping using six sigma tools such as value stream mapping, 7 wastes, 5S, etc.

It sounds like you employed the power of process mapping. All businesses run on processes. Process mapping provides a clear roadmap for improvement and optimization. What steps did you take to reengineer the process, and how did you envision the revised process would improve the customer experience?

We reengineered the org chart for role clarity, we re-designed the physical space for efficiency, we instituted a data management system so documents could be found easily and electronically, we standardized the ordering process, we introduced a prioritization protocol for order processing, we questioned the rationale for everything, we deleted and deleted and deleted any redundant steps or touchpoints we documented everything and created training metrics so skills became transferable and are reproducible, we added clear metrics at each stage of the process and instituted a bonus program that paid for performance, we created transparent dashboards and shared access to information with all employees so they could see the progress and we opened a formal process for feedback for continuous improvement.

Today, we are industry leaders in quality, consistency, and speed of delivery. When customers came back, they got what they were promised plus more.

In addition to clarifying gaps, process mapping creates opportunities for operational excellence. Did you find that this exercise helped align your team and streamline decision-making?

This is very true.  When we began this transformation, we thought we were just trying to get back to the way things were before the disruptions created by the integration, but what we discovered was that there were multiple ways to surpass good to become excellent by making the right decisions on where to focus our energy.

From a practical standpoint, once our teams could see the quantitative data, we could set ambitious goals to improve. We found that people became very engaged in making suggestions for incremental improvements in their day-to-day work- it’s now a very motivating part of our culture.  Teams are encouraged, empowered, and rewarded for implementing process improvements that streamline our offering. And because of the dashboards and other reporting tools we created, they can really see when their projects lead to real benefits for customers.

Tell us a little more about the steps you took to reengineer the process and how you imagined the revised process would improve the customer experience.

In our business, there are two things our customers care about: Quality and speed.  They need to be confident that what they order will be made correctly, using the highest standards, and that they will consistently receive their orders in the expected timeframe.  We worked to improve both of these areas.  In an interesting dichotomy, these two things often run at cross purposes.  High quality takes time, and you can gain speed by compromising on quality. When deciding where to focus, we took the decision to never compromise on quality and to manage expectations on speed.

We communicated clearly with our customers about the quality improvements we were making, and we vowed to offer the most transparency in the industry, often educating customers on best practices.  In this way, our customers could be assured, confident, and knowledgeable about what they were getting.  And we let them know what kind of trade-off this emphasis on quality would require.  So instead of going for record-breaking or even industry-leading speed, we promised consistency.

This combination, consistent delivery plus the highest quality product, turned out to be the winning formula.

You have shared a lot with us today about process engineering. What advice would you give to someone who is going to reengineer a process?

This is hard work that takes patience, persistence, and so much communication inside and outside of the organization.  It’s detailed work that takes precision.   It’s rewarding, but it can feel like you are taking one step forward and two steps back, and for people who are builders, as most entrepreneurs and CEOs are, this can be draining.

I think it’s worthwhile to hire someone with the right skills and mindset to both lead and manage this type of transformation.  Operational excellence is not a one-and-done type of event, instead, it should be seen as foundation building and continuous improvement.  This will give you the satisfaction of serving your customers in a consistent and high-quality manner they deserve- and that will mean you can spend your time business building, confident of the commitments you can make and the difference you can ultimately make in the world.

Reengineering the process was quite an undertaking. I imagine the next challenge was to win back customers. In our experience, we’ve seen that regaining customer trust and loyalty after a major transition requires a strategic blend of customer-centricity, clear communication, and delivering measurable value.

We’ve found that incorporating the voice of the customer can be a game-changer for identifying gaps and improving customer experience. Did you leverage any customer feedback mechanisms, like surveys or advisory boards, to guide your decisions during this time?

I think we were afraid to ask for the voice of the customer!  Actually, it would be a good idea to do that now. Now that our processes have become so standardized, we’re able to implement change without disruption – we’d be able to act on any feedback we receive.

I will say that we get excellent feedback from the field about our offerings and especially about our customer service. It’s a great feeling to send salespeople out, knowing that they ask customers to come back with confidence.  It speaks volumes about the level of trust we garnered by being so transparent about our struggles.

The company is growing, so clearly the process and the strategy worked. What strategy and steps did you take to bring customers back and accelerate sales?

Even though it was painful, we stuck to the strategy of reducing volume, re-engineering our processes, transparently communicating with customers during the bad times, and creating systems for measuring everything.  We’re now able to back up our claims of quality and service with data and leverage word of mouth recommendations from new and returning customers.  We’re growing, and I guess it turns out that sometimes you have to go backward to go forward.

Is there any final piece of advice or insight you’d like to leave our community with?

I’ve had so many learnings from this experience but the thing that lives in my heart is that even though business can be cutthroat, in the end, if customers trust and believe that your true core value is to put them at the center of what you do, they will give you a second chance- even if you royally mess up!

Christina, thank you for sharing your insights and experiences. It’s clear that Stallergenes Greer Canada’s journey required emphasizing data and customer-centric processes to overcome challenges and achieve growth. Your story reminds us that while change is never easy, it can lead to significant improvements in customer experience and business performance. I admire your willingness to embrace a bold initiative to eliminate the chaos of random acts—those reactive, short-term fixes that drain resources and erode trust.

If your organization is stuck in a cycle of random acts and reactionary measures, or trying to navigate growth, integration, or customer service challenges, now is the time to take a deliberate step toward operational excellence.  Let’s talk about how we can help you reengineer your processes with a deliberate, customer-centric strategy that drives measurable growth and lasting customer trust.

Mark L. Vincent brings a wealth of expertise in driving customer-centric strategies at the C-Suite and board level. What I admire about Mark is his commitment to bridge the gap between executive leadership and boardroom strategy. In this episode of What’s Your Edge?, Mark and I discuss how boards of directors (BOD) and C-Suite (CXO) members can collaborate effectively to align goals and accelerate growth through customer-centricity by using data and performance management to support governance and forward-thinking. Mark L. Vincent is a process consulting pioneer and (meta) Systems Convener with more than 30 years of service as an Executive Advisor and Corporate Board Member. He currently serves on the boards of Century Companies and the Center of Steward Leader Studies and chairs the board for Mygrow.

In our experience, the relationship between the C-Suite and the board often determines the direction of an organization. Boards become significantly more effective when they are equipped with actionable insights derived from data. This allows them to support strategy development and make faster, fact-based decisions—critical for driving innovation, excelling at meeting customer expectations, and remaining relevant in the market.

Mark, as a board member, what data do you need from members of the C-Suite to help you make key strategic decisions?

I’m a fan of the hard work of distilling strategy into one-page plans supported by operating systems, a growing example of which is EOS. This enables information to be shared transparently, accurately, and in real-time, up and down the organization. I like to see this combined with 12-month trailing financial indicators and dynamic budgets adjusted for the next twelve months in accordance with what the data reveals. 

When these are used in combination you have the entire organization working with the same data set and from the lens they are to bring to the organization.

Many enterprises do not do this.  They use a budget plan that they update once per year, using financial reports that are already a month old. We could do an entire podcast on the many ways employees and executives game this system to their advantage and to the long-term harm of the business.

I’m a big fan of the one-page plan too, which is why created our patented SaaS application – Accelance®. It visually connects investments and activities to business results on one page.

Mark, many organizations are swimming in data and as a result are challenged to identify important patterns and signals needed to tease out the meaning behind the data. In addition, good narratives tell stories. Mark, how can C-Suite executives prepare a data-driven narrative that speaks to board members’ needs for operational resilience, financial performance, and innovation?

This is an area where I’ve done a lot of work with organizations across the years. An organization that has a compelling mission backed up with key products or services, and powered by a strategic direction with key initiatives, has a great outline for a budget narrative that tells the story of intention, and the reporting data that tells the story of results.

One look at the business plan of the organization will tell you what the real mission and real story is. Either it matches the narrative of the mission/strategy or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, then the mission and strategy is a farce. The financial plan and its results tell you where the priorities really are.

I agree, it’s easy for distractions to get our attention.  The key is to focus on priorities. I think somebody has written a book about that. A key role of the BOD is to ensure that the leadership team has the resources, support, and framework to successfully embed customer-centricity into every part of the organization. In this capacity, a BOD member’s role is about oversight and alignment rather than day-to-day management.

Mark, what role does customer data, like lifetime value, customer effort score, or customer retention, play in these discussions? And how can boards use these metrics to guide discussions about resource allocation and strategic priorities?

The BOD does not need to develop customer-centricity nearly as much as it needs to expect it and hold its executive accountable to develop and continually refine it.  Once they are in place, the data becomes useful to measure effectiveness, and then to drill down to where adjustment or refinement of strategy is needed.

And this brings us back to the narrative again. It’s tough to spin data when there is a specific outline and cadence of reporting to follow. I’ve been in more than one boardroom where an executive or functional manager’s long history of gaming the system to their advantage is exposed and no longer works. Thankfully, some learn to adjust and grow their ability to better lead the organization. Others do not and end up harming another organization elsewhere.  Either way, the organization becomes healthier.

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In our work, we’ve seen that achieving customer-centricity is an essential part of growth and needs to be integrated into the overall strategy. Customer-centricity requires organizations to strike a delicate balance between long-term strategic goals and short-term performance demands. This balance helps ensure sustainable growth while meeting immediate business needs. Boards play a pivotal role in guiding this alignment, helping leadership teams prioritize initiatives that deliver both immediate results and long-term value.

Mark, what do you recommend the BOD do to help enable the balance between the long-term strategic goals of customer-centricity with short-term financial performance?

There are two ways we might understand the word “balance,” and I prefer the second. The first is to think of it as alternating between short-term and long-term at appropriate times, trying to ensure that neither is neglected. The second is to expect both at the same time and at all times, never losing sight of either.

Let’s use the example of triage in a catastrophic medical situation. Triage is not just about quickly providing medical treatment at the moment (short-term). It is about saving lives and as many as possible (long-term). Neither is cast aside.

Having described this, I’d like to offer what I consider another method. In executive development, we want executives to think about long-term, mid or near-term, as well as short-term. And, we want to combine this with thinking about the top, middle, and bottom line. The complexities of these dynamics are always present so why not be aware of and respond to them ahead of time rather than constantly being surprised by their interactions and having to devote additional and scarce time and resources to play cleanup.

Many BOD members have served in C-level roles. Making the shift from a leadership role to a board member position presents unique challenges. One of my favorite sayings is ‘noses in and fingers out,’ which is attributed to Jim Brown. In his book, The Imperfect Board Member, he describes the ideal role of a board member—staying informed and aware of the company’s operations (‘noses in’) while not interfering with day-to-day management decisions (‘fingers out’).

Building on this idea, Mark, how have you found serving on a board different from running a company or serving in the C-Suite? How does the board’s perspective differ from that of C-Suite executives, especially when considering the strategic role of customer-centricity?

I like the metaphor as a way for C-Suite executives to begin learning that the roles are different than what they are doing in their working life.  And yet, there is a weakness in the analogy because the central point of reference is the executive suite rather than the boardroom.  When this happens, almost all of the agenda ties to the operations of the business, with the board feeling rather anemic because it is trying to keep its questions and comments elevated and not wanting to sound like a second-level executive.

The board needs to have its noses and fingers in the governance of the org, everything from its charter to its strategy, and all related policies. These set the stage for operations and how they will be measured and reported. The central point of reference for the board is governance. And its agenda should contain a number of governance matters in addition to any standard reporting deck from the executive.

This shift in perspective—from operational execution to strategic oversight—offers a unique opportunity for board members to champion initiatives that prioritize customer success. By staying focused on alignment and long-term business outcomes, boards can help ensure that customer-centric strategies remain at the forefront of organizational priorities.

To achieve this mission, board members must ask critical questions to ensure the company is on track with customer success initiatives and what we refer to as advantageous excellence. We have found that it’s very important for BODs to focus on assessing the organization’s ability to innovate, adapt, and align operations with customer needs.

Mark, as a board member, what kinds of questions do you typically ask related to strategy, data, operational excellence/processes, and performance management?

I’d love to have you unpack more of this, especially how customer success matches up with investor intention. There is a synchronicity here that every organization needs, or everyone (customer, employee, and investor) receives less than desired.

My response to this ties back to where we began, with strategy matched up with operational reporting in real-time.  When those are in place, my questions will follow a three-fold priority:

One other quick note to make is that a board meeting often operates under a tight time limit. That does not exempt my responsibility as a board member to ask important questions.  I’m on the board because of what someone felt was my unmatched point of view. I’m compensated to bring that and so I must. If I can’t do it at the board meeting, I can do it ahead of or following the meeting. 

Again, this is not about making statements and offering opinions, nearly as much as using my insights to bring good questions and expect robust answers.  It’s not about displaying whether I am knowledgeable at all. It is about the enterprise living into its expressed mission.

Thank you for sharing these three questions! Journalist Simon Caulkin is attributed to saying, “What gets measured gets managed—even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even- if it harms the purpose of the organization to do so.”

Mark, what do you recommend board members measure to determine the success of customer-centric initiatives, particularly when measuring against traditional KPIs like revenue growth or profit margins?

If we’ve done the work to identify who our customer is and how we meet a need or fulfill a desire, then we have items that should be showing up in our strategy, our plan, and our metrics.

An ongoing approach is for a board to have a finance committee and perhaps a separate executive compensation committee to make sure that organizational goals held by the board match up well with the operational goals given to key leaders. 

Staying on one of my favorite topics, performance management. What specific performance measures or KPIs do you feel are crucial when evaluating customer-centricity, particularly regarding customer loyalty, customer lifetime value, and retention rates?

How can leading versus lagging indicators, like referral rates and retention rates, help predict revenue and profit growth?”

I spent some time with a business owner of a growing enterprise this past week, where we were drilling down into this. We figured out his business drivers and how they become his lagging indicators of success (or not). We then unpacked them back to the leading indicators of whether enough has been done to continue driving business.  Another way to say this is that we moved in a progression of what produces a sale, followed by what the sales results were, then working all the way back to what continued activities are needed prior to any possible sale.

Each business is different in this regard. In this case, it was a leisure business.  If it is the manufacturing of a specific product, the offering of a counseling service, or the provision of medical care, the leading and lagging indicators surrounding the engine driving the business will be different.  And once again, we are brought back to mission/vision/values/strategy and operational metrics that tell the story in real-time, aren’t we?   

Yes, we are right back to mission, vision, values, and strategy! And that takes me back to the topic of customer-centricity as an organizational model. Customer-centricity is about how the leadership team makes decisions and runs the company.  We believe that integrating customer-centric practices is essential for long-term growth and profitability. Research from various organizations has found that customer-centricity directly drives increased customer lifetime value, retention rates, and referral rates—all critical for building sustainable, competitive advantages.

Mark, in your experience, what are the most effective ways BOD and C-Suites members can integrate a customer-centric approach into their overall business strategies? And how can BODs ensure customer success is treated as a priority?

Let me respond with a question.  What does the word “customer” mean here?

I think any stakeholder is a customer of the enterprise, either because an investment has been made or a purchase. Or, in the case of an employee, the selling of one’s time for a wage.  And in the case of a vendor, it is the provision of goods or services to the business for a price. If this stakeholder view is true then the answer becomes simple. Centering on the customer and centering on the mission become one and the same.

Investors, employees, vendors, and customers likely have individual agendas as they interact with the business.  If we are going to be customer-centric, we will need to engage in a lot of listening before speaking. And that listening metric would be one the board should expect to see. I would hope that listening shows up somewhere in those leading indicators.

Excellent point about listening! As an operational excellence expert, I imagine you agree that speed and adaptability are key to being customer-centric. This takes having the right systems, tools, and processes in place.

Mark, how can boards assess whether the necessary technology infrastructure and processes are in place to support customer-centricity?

Behind the technology are the people. Their desire to listen rather than to use technology as a substitute for their listening matters a great deal.  What we put into the development of the humans needs to lead the way. Then, technology can be chosen in support of the human capacity and speed things along. There is ample evidence that when we get it the other way around, technology leading the way, then humans reduce their capacities and support the technology rather than the customer.  As a board member, this is where I want to start.

As we wrap up, Mark, what advice would you give to C-Suite leaders who are trying to better align with their Board of Directors to ensure customer-centric strategies are fully supported and executed?

I would end where we started. Customer-centricity needs to be in the mission in order for it to be in the values and resulting strategy. Then it can become what we measure, report, analyze, and continuously improve.

I couldn’t agree more, customer-centricity needs to be the mission. Thank you, Mark, for your insights today. As we conclude, we invite our listeners to reflect on their own organizations. How can you leverage data and operational excellence to foster a customer-centric culture to drive growth and innovation? What changes might you need to make? For more insights and strategies for leading with change, visit VisionEdge Marketing’s website and explore our resources designed to help you grow and thrive.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.