AIRCRAFT MRO: VENDOR JOB CARD
VENDOR JOB CARD: AEROSTRAT
Elliot Margul, Chief Executive Officer of Aerostrat explains how listening to customers and acting on their inputs has made Aerostrat a preferred partner for customer airlines Elliot is responsible for the corporate strategy, sales, and product at Aerostrat. He founded the business with Frankie Angai and Cody Morris (Directors of Engineering) and works with them to formulate Aerostrat’s corporate strategy. He holds a business degree from University of Washington and worked at Alaska Airlines prior to founding Aerostrat. Aircraft IT: Your name, your job title, and the name of the business? Elliot Margul: Elliot Margul, CEO, Aerostrat Aircraft IT: How did Aerostrat get started? EM: When I was an employee at Alaska Airlines, I observed a significant gap in the tools available to the planning team. I began discussing the idea with friends, who eventually introduced me to our other cofounders, Cody and Frankie. After some discussion, we created Aerostrat build Aerros, our base planning solution. After spending a year designing and developing our product, we signed our first customer. Aerostrat currently has eleven customers with more soon to sign Aircraft IT: What is the guiding business principle that drives Aerostrat? EM: Our team works closely with and understands our customers and their specific needs. This is one
of our biggest differentiators as a company. While solving our customer’s problems, we actively keep them involved in many aspects at Aerostrat. Our goal is that their ideas and feedback make their way into our software and business processes. This ensures that our product seamlessly integrates into our customers’ processes, and our business processes align with our customers’ expectations. We want our customers to feel like we are part of their team and vice versa. Aircraft IT: What has Aerostrat’s greatest business achievement been to date, and why? EM: With great pride, I can say we have made many achievements in recent years. One that I would like to highlight, because it genuinely exemplifies who we are as a company, is the implementation of our IT compliance certifications and attestations (SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2013). Before implementing these standards, we had many organizational AIRCRAFT IT MRO • SPRING 2022 • 58
standards in place. However, we did not understand the framework as none of us had a compliance background. Like we do with customer problems, we spent time reading, listening, and understanding the necessary requirements. Within a matter of months and with minimal outside assistance, our team implemented and passed our first ISO audit. We repeated the process several years later when we
“Within a matter of months and with minimal outside assistance, our team implemented and passed our first ISO audit. We repeated the process several years later when we passed our first SOC 2 Type II audit.”
