TL:DR If you build it.. we can help. Aviation Just Got a Web. Here's Why That Changes Everything. Every major industry has had a moment when a closed system opened up and let outsiders build on top of it. Apple did it with the App Store. Others did it with its platform layer. Stripe did it with payments infrastructure. In every case, the company didn't just ship a product. It shipped a foundation, and let an entire ecosystem grow out of it that the original company never could have built...
14 days ago • 5 min read
TL:DR It's about gratitude. The Best ERP Feedback Is Not About Software Every software company wants a testimonial. But the best feedback is not really about the software. It is about whether the system made the work easier. Whether the team felt supported. Whether customers had a smoother experience. Whether the business gained more visibility, more control, and more confidence as it grew. That is why this letter from Aircraft Parts Solutions means so much to me, and all of us here. Their...
19 days ago • 3 min read
TL:DR It's about execution. Last week I argued that the aviation aftermarket doesn't have an RFQ generation problem. It has an answer generation problem. The response was overwhelmingly focused on one idea: the market still struggles to connect demand with qualified answers quickly enough to matter. I agree. But I also believe that conversation stops one step too early. Because even a response layer is not the final destination. The industry has spent years improving how requests move through...
27 days ago • 7 min read
Ralph Merhi /CEO All, A quick note: several readers reported a formatting issue in the original email that made portions of the article difficult to read. I've corrected the issue and am resending the article below so everyone receives the intended version. https://erpaero.kit.com/posts/the-aviation-aftermarket-doesn-t-need-better-rfqs-it-needs-better-answers PS. Thank you to the few that squinted or clicked select all to read it yesterday. As much as I was embarrassed, I appreciated it....
about 1 month ago • 7 min read
Ralph Merhi /CEO TL:DR Speed and classification are not enough. /build. Part 1. The Industry Has Spent Years Optimizing Preparation The aviation software industry is entering a new phase. For years, the conversation centered around visibility, workflow management, and system adoption. Then the discussion shifted toward automation. Today it is increasingly focused on AI agents, procurement intelligence, sourcing automation, and autonomous workflows. Each step has represented real progress, and...
about 1 month ago • 7 min read
TL:DR How to get everyone to perform like your top 20%. We Have Spent Decades Optimizing People We spend millions of dollars and countless hours trying to improve how people perform. We hire. We onboard. We train. We create procedures. We establish approval chains. We document best practices. We build performance metrics. We invest in systems designed to help teams execute more effectively. The objective behind all of this effort is remarkably consistent across industries. Businesses want...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
Trustability Over Scalability There are two kinds of people who enter an industry. The first group spends years learning the rules. The second group spends years asking why the rules exist in the first place. The difference sounds subtle until you see it play out in real life. During a recent episode of SkyboundOps, I sat down with John Howe from Valerex Aviation, an aviation executive whose path into aerospace didn't begin in hangars, repair stations, or parts warehouses. Before aviation,...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
The Wall Every Aviation Operation Eventually Hits At some point, every aviation operation hits the same wall. You've got your ERP. Your repair tracking lives somewhere else. Your inventory visibility tool is a third vendor. Your RFQ routing is a spreadsheet that one person manages and nobody touches when they're on vacation. Your compliance documentation is emailed back and forth until someone screenshots it and drops it in a shared drive. You didn't build it this way on purpose. It just...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Everyone is talking about AI. Every software company has an AI roadmap. Every conference has AI panels. Every executive meeting eventually finds its way back to AI. In many ways, that's understandable. The technology is advancing quickly, and there are legitimate opportunities to improve productivity, automate repetitive work, and help people make better decisions. But the more conversations I have, the more I notice a recurring pattern. A company has a real operational problem. Quoting takes...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read