At Hiab, IT and Business drive change together

There’s no mistaking it: Hannu Rissanen is a happy man. Hiab’s Vice President of Information Management says that never before in his 30-year career has he seen IT experts so highly recognized as change enablers as they are at Hiab today.

“From IT’s perspective, this is a hugely motivating time in Hiab’s history. There’s a real sense of relief as we continue our journey as an independent company. We now have the freedom and agility to make decisions and build capabilities designed solely for Hiab.”

Hiab was listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange on 1 April 2025, following Cargotec’s name change. In the transition phase before that, it was challenging to fully advance basic IT capabilities, and Hiab accumulated technical debt and a backlog of updates.

“We kicked off our IT transformation well in advance last year. Our first step was to shape a target vision for IT infrastructure and application architecture: what capabilities we wanted to include, and how the IT assets inherited from Cargotec – in some cases oversized for Hiab – could be renewed and tailored to be just the right fit to support our development and growth goals,” Hannu Rissanen explains.

Hiab’s IT transformation has since progressed smoothly. The company has already refined its IT operating model and carried out major upgrades in both infrastructure and cybersecurity.

“We’ve got an incredibly strong spirit of getting things done. Our people are highly skilled and committed, and everyone recognizes the significant potential for greater efficiency that is still untapped,” Hannu Rissanen points out.

“Hiab’s employees, together with Lean Six Sigma methods, are at the core of our strategy. We are all working together towards our strategic goal of profitable growth.”

Many companies claim that their IT strategy is aligned with their business strategy, but in reality, IT often remains more of a support function than a growth engine. At Hiab, Information Management works in constant, close collaboration with the business to advance Hiab’s strategic goals.

“We are working hand in hand to define which capabilities and processes we want to enhance and harmonize across our company. At the same time, we are identifying the investments these changes demand in terms of data, technology, applications, and people,” Hannu Rissanen says.

“Our growth is driven by our Business Excellence mindset, which is a real asset in all our development work. It steers us towards a future where our business is scalable and transparent, productivity rises, and efforts to improve operational efficiency generate recurring success stories.”

Automated capabilities and data-driven processes support Hiab’s three E culture

Founded more than 80 years ago, Hiab’s pioneering approach to problem-solving has shaped the development of the entire load handling industry.

“Innovation has always been our bread and butter. In almost all of our product families, we’re either leading the market or right up there at the top – and for decades, we’ve been investing heavily in automation and robotics to keep our equipment ahead of the curve. Now, we’re harnessing that same pioneering spirit into transforming our internal capabilities,” Hannu Rissanen says.

“Data-driven business process development is one of our strategic priorities. It’s been fascinating teaming up with business to build a process and data organization, and start renewing our work processes,” he mentions.

The transformation journey is guided by Hiab’s long-standing HR culture: Employees First, Customers Next.

Three big Es – Easiness, Empowerment and Excellence – are at the heart of this culture. They capture Hiab’s goal of giving employees the means to do their best work, trusting them to make the right decisions, and motivating everyone to improve continuously.

“Automated capabilities play an important role in supporting our three big Es. We want to make daily life easier for our people, with fewer transactions and less manual effort,” Hannu Rissanen envisions.

“Process development, automation, and smarter use of data help us make work easier for our employees and also create more value for our customers with new capabilities at the customer interface – for example better predictive maintenance and timely spare parts sales. These measures directly support our strategy.”

When IT and business join forces, it inspires partners as well

Hiab is collaborating with various partners on its renewal journey. Hiab’s long-term partner Vivicta has, for example, delivered a proof of concept to help Hiab explore the potential of process mining in business development.

“We conducted a large-scale exercise with Vivicta, mapping our order handling processes from start to finish,” Hannu Rissanen describes.

“We came away with a clear picture of our order handling processes in all their variations – and pinpointed the key areas where we want to see efficiency improvements. At the same time, we gained a deeper understanding of what process mining may offer us moving forward.”

Process automation architect Kiarash Ghazizadeh specializes in business value consulting. He talks about collaborating with Hiab with great enthusiasm.

“When we were working on the proof of concept Hannu mentioned, we had a clear view of both Hiab’s IT transformation strategy and its overarching business ambitions. This led us to carry out the proof of concept with a broader scope than usual, simultaneously focusing on Hiab’s order handling processes and data management,” Kiarash Ghazizadeh says.

“We identified development needs and major automation potential in Hiab’s order handling processes and revealed what higher-level data management capabilities should be developed in parallel,” Kiarash Ghazizadeh explains.

Vivicta’s Head of Business Automation and Integration, Mikko Karjalainen, also praises Hiab’s outstanding drive.

“When an over 80-year-old renowned industry pioneer gains independence, their approach to renewal is remarkably smart. They ask themselves how solutions should be built if they were starting from scratch – and then define their ambitions for change on that basis. Hiab’s readiness to renew, the shared determination of IT and business, and management’s recognition of IT as an enabler of change make our work particularly rewarding as well,” Mikko Karjalainen underlines.

“Obviously, Hiab isn’t our only client with exceptionally well-aligned IT and business strategies; but it certainly exemplifies a model approach to digitalization,” Mikko Karjalainen concludes.

Discover how Vivicta supports its clients in data-driven business development.