4 minute read
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 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
passed our first SOC 2 Type II audit. I am most proud of the fact that we were able to implement these items with minimal guidance and in our most recent audit, had no findings.
Aircraft IT: What have been your disappointments and what have you learned from them?
EM: One of my most disappointing memories was when we first launched our beta and brought it to multiple prospective customers. After speaking to them, none were very interested in our product. In fact, one customer gave us a list of over 120 things we would need to build for them to even consider us as a vendor. It was a huge gut punch. Proudly, our team regrouped and implemented almost all those requested features within six months. Consequently, that customer was sold on Aerros while other companies became intrigued with our beta too. None had seen a software company implement their feedback to such a degree while delivering it in such a timely manner.
Aircraft IT: In a sentence, how would you summarize what Aerostrat does for aircraft maintenance customers?
EM: Aerostrat offers a base planning solution that enables airlines or MROs to plan their entire maintenance program, at any level of detail, from aircraft delivery to exit.
Aircraft IT: What do you feel will be the next big thing in maintenance Aviation IT?
EM: At Aerostrat, we believe that the next big thing in maintenance aviation IT will be a deliberate move to more collaborative experiences. Outside of aviation software, we’ve seen major platforms aggressively pursue functionality that helps people work together effectively. Covid has accelerated this focus and really highlighted the necessity of being able to easily work with a team from anywhere in the world. Because of this, releasing seamless real-time collaborative planning is one of our core missions in 2022. We know this reduction in friction will greatly benefit our customers with large, potentially hybrid workforces. Users of aviation software have been exposed to the value of real-time collaboration in consumer software, and we’re working on unlocking that potential for the maintenance planning lifecycle.
Aircraft IT: What do you want your customers to say about Aerostrat
EM: I want our customers to say that we listen to feedback and deliver meaningful outcomes. It is essential that our customers know they are heard by incorporating their feedback into our product. It is why we meet with them regularly, design features with them, and let them test our features from initial release to stable functioning. Most importantly, it is also why we release updates monthly. It is gratifying that we can look at most buttons, functions, etc. in Aerros and know it was customer inspired.
Aircraft IT: Elliot Margul , thank you for your time.
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