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Ralph Merhi, CEO @ERP.ero

Practical insights for aviation suppliers, distributors, brokers, and manufacturers who refuse to settle for inefficiency. I believe in cutting through the noise—delivering real strategies to make things better. No fluff, no wasted time—just the knowledge, both business and personal, and tools to help you succeed. If you want my newsletter, drop your email below 👇 or feel free to look as much as you want.

When “Working” Starts Costing More Than It Should
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When “Working” Starts Costing More Than It Should

TL;DR Most systems don’t fail because they stop working. They fail because of everything required to keep them working. The real cost isn’t the system itself, it’s the accumulation of extra tools, manual effort, and hidden risk that builds over time. A few months ago, I wrote about ERP decision gridlock, why companies stay stuck, why decisions tend to sit at the top, and why inefficiencies get tolerated longer than they should be. Since then, I’ve had more conversations. Real ones. The kind...

PB Expo Day One: The Real Conversation Wasn’t Commerce. It Was AI. The Conversation Aviation Can’t Ignore Full article You walk onto the floor, and within the first few minutes you’re already shaking hands with people you haven’t seen in months. Customers, partners, old colleagues, competitors. Aviation is a surprisingly small world, and PB Expo is one of those events where that reality becomes very clear very quickly. Day one was exactly that. Miami Beach Convention Center Panel Great...

March 2026 How We Eliminated Manual Data Entry: Inside ERP.Aero’s AI-Driven RFQ Automation The aviation industry moves fast, but procurement often gets bogged down by manual data entry. Every minute your team spends typing out customer RFQs or cross-referencing vendor quotes is a minute lost on actually closing deals. We built ERP.Aero to solve this exact bottleneck. By integrating advanced machine learning and a proprietary mail parsing engine natively into our platform, we’re turning...

Real life conversation with someone most of you know

Hi, We just released a new episode of #SkyboundOps that goes beyond the usual “digital transformation” conversation. In this discussion, we sit down with Monica Badra, a leader who has lived transformation inside major aerospace organizations — not from a slide deck, but from the operational core. From delivering 30+ new products at Bombardier to leading multi-year profitability initiatives inside an MRO environment, this conversation is grounded in execution. We talk about the hard truth...

Change intake, change everything!

What two MRO polls revealed about repair delays I recently ran two simple LinkedIn polls focused on one question: What actually slows repairs down inside MRO operations? No pitch — just listening to operators across aviation. Story #1 The results were clear. The biggest challenge wasn’t execution, staffing, or even compliance.It was parts sourcing. And when we went deeper, the reasons weren’t vendor-related either. Approvals, inventory visibility, and cert uncertainty all tied almost equally...

Gratitude

This conversation stayed with me Hi all, I wanted to personally share this episode with you because it’s one of those conversations that didn’t end when we hit stop. I sat down with Kelly Carlson for #Skybound Ops — founder of Extrinsic Aviation — and what struck me immediately wasn’t a bold claim or a polished narrative. It was how grounded the thinking was. Her path into aviation didn’t start in the obvious places. It started in accounting, operations, systems, and process — the unglamorous...

Never about price.

The Objection Was Never About Price Why discount requests are really tests of risk, credibility, and execution TL;DR Discount requests are rarely about saving money. They’re about testing whether the value, scope, and execution actually hold together under pressure. Cheap upfront pricing doesn’t reduce cost. It relocates it into training gaps, compliance exposure, rework, and future invoices. Strong pricing isn’t stubbornness. It’s ownership of outcomes. There’s a misunderstanding I see over...

Happy New Year

Happy 2026 Happy New Year! As we close out 2025, I’m finding myself less interested in grand resolutions and more focused on gratitude for the work we’ve done together. This year wasn’t always easy for our industry, but it was real. Heading into 2026, our promise remains simple: to keep building a system that respects your reality and supports your growth. Wishing you and your teams a New Year filled with stability, clarity, and success. Let’s make this next chapter count. Happy New Year!...

Merry Christmas

Hi - This time of year has a way of slowing things down - even if only for a moment. And in that pause, I wanted to reach out with a simple message of appreciation. No matter how you celebrate (or don’t), the end of the year invites reflection. It’s a chance to look back at the effort it took to get here, the lessons learned along the way, and the people who played a part in the journey, sometimes quietly, sometimes profoundly. This year asked a lot from many of us. It required adaptability,...

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow!

What Hearing “No” Every Day Taught Me About Building the Hard (Right) Way TL;DR Leading ERP.Aero meant hearing “no” every day. Not big enough. Not old enough, yet. Over time, those no’s stopped being a verdict and became part of the process. Trust was earned through execution, not asking. Progress replaced permission and craft mattered more than optics. Yesterday was conviction without consensus. Today is proof catching up. Tomorrow is steady confidence built on real outcomes. The work did...