Thursday I watch a lot of golf, and there's something the players who win majors have in common. They almost never lead after the first round. Go back and check it. Tiger, in his prime, was rarely the guy on top of the leaderboard Thursday night. Rory's the same way. Scheffler too. The names at the top after eighteen holes are usually not the names holding the trophy on Sunday. That's not an accident. The best players aren't trying to win the tournament on Thursday. They're trying to still be...
7 days ago • 6 min read
For decades, quality management in aviation parts distribution has meant the same thing: three-ring binders full of inspection forms, a filing cabinet of supplier surveys, a spreadsheet tracking corrective actions, and a mad scramble every time an auditor is due on-site. That approach worked, more or less, when the FAA first opened the door to voluntary industry accreditation in the 1990s. It works much less well today, when a single distributor might be managing hundreds of suppliers,...
9 days ago • 5 min read
TL:DR Most RFQ pages record what was requested. The RFQ workspace aviation needs should help teams understand whether the opportunity is real, what can actually be supplied, how it should be priced, and what could cause the quote to fail before it reaches the customer. The RFQ Page Aviation Should Have Built Years Ago Aviation companies don’t lose RFQs because their people can’t sell. They lose them because the information required to make a good decision is scattered across too many places,...
14 days ago • 11 min read
TL;DR: Aviation companies don’t need more disconnected tools. They need one operational foundation. ERP.Aero brings the core together, then lets companies build with it or build on it without losing the single source of truth. The Right ERP Shouldn’t Become Another System You Have to Work Around. For years, aviation companies have been told that the answer to every operational problem is another piece of software. You buy an ERP to manage the business. Then you buy an RFQ service because the...
15 days ago • 11 min read
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...
29 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...
about 1 month 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...
about 1 month 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 2 months 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 2 months ago • 7 min read