Disrupting the Hangar: Tech, Data, and the Future of MRO with Aero Next Gen

In this episode of Open Skies, host Chris Glass welcomes Monica Badra, founder of Aero Next Gen, a trailblazing tech broker bringing digital transformation to the aviation maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) space. With a unique background in finance and deep hands-on experience in aerospace, Monica has become the go-to matchmaker connecting legacy aviation problems with next-gen tech solutions.

She shares how her company bridges the gap between overwhelmed MRO executives and tech providers—many of whom don’t even come from aviation. Monica explains how dirty data, siloed systems, and decades-old ERPs are holding companies back, and how automation, AI, and tools like co-pilot-style analytics are helping the industry catch up to the modern world.

This is a must-listen for MRO leaders, aviation execs, tech startups, and anyone wondering why it still takes 12 weeks to make a decision that should take 12 minutes.

Transcript

Chris Glass: 0:00

Whenever I hear of somebody having an Excel spreadsheet on top of their technology, you got to know it's not the right technology.

Monica Badra: 0:07

When you look at an MRO executive versus a tech guy, it's like speaking Chinese and Arabic to each other.

Chris Glass: 0:12

So you're really letting data make the decision.

Monica Badra: 0:16

Things like that should be easily applied within the work environment.

Chris Glass: 0:20

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Open Skies podcast. My name is Chris Glass. I am here with Monica Badra. Monica, welcome to the show.

Monica Badra: 0:28

Thank you so much, Chris. I'm super happy to be here.

Chris Glass: 0:30

Now, monica, you're the founder of Aero Next Gen. Why don't you tell me what your company does, so we can get to know you a little bit better?

Monica Badra: 0:36

Perfect. So Aero Next Gen, we are a digital solution brokerage in the aviation space and really the niche market we're after is the MRO, so maintenance facilities. So we basically solve pain points for the MRO sector and match them to existing solutions, whether that's service providers or technology to solve different pain points.

Chris Glass: 0:55

Now I think that is such a novel approach. In our pre-interviews we talked about how a lot of times companies buy the wrong technology, get stuck with it and, out of stubbornness or out of cost or out of just plain lack of inertia, just get stuck with the wrong tech for 10 years and it really hampers them.

Monica Badra: 1:22

Especially at the beginning, when they first start their company and they don't imagine how big they're going to scale. They start up with a smaller system and at the end even just a few weeks ago we're on site with the company. You ask them what are some of the pain points or the troubles. The way they walk you through the business is like we're doing this because our ERP doesn't allow us to do this, or we're creating an Excel spreadsheet because we can't do it within our system. So it's like as if their workflow is designed based on how their systems work.

Chris Glass: 1:51

Whenever I hear of somebody having an Excel spreadsheet on top of their technology, you got to know it's not the right technology.

Monica Badra: 2:01

Yeah, you're building another silo outside of your system that that should not be happening.

Chris Glass: 2:07

And we see that a lot of times where, where companies, like you said, are enslaved to, to the technology that they have, as opposed to that technology empowering them to to make better decisions and to not focus on on what the problem the tech is solving.

Monica Badra: 2:21

Their systems are supposed to work for them. They end up working for their systems problem the tech is solving their systems are supposed to work for them.

Chris Glass: 2:26

They end up working for their systems. Yeah, a hundred percent. So how did you get here? Right, cause this is a very novel approach, right. A lot of times there's people trying to sell tech to a certain sector, but to have this brokerage format where you're really matching up the client with the solution and having kind of rosters on both sides. Right, I've got clients, I've got solution providers and I'm going to fit their needs together. How did you land on this? What, in your background, brought you here?

Monica Badra: 2:54

So I studied finance had nothing to do with aviation. My goal was to basically trade on a beach. That's all I wanted to do in my life. And then I knew that I needed to gain a little bit of street cred while I was studying. So I joined a co-op program which led me to work at Bombardier and then at Bombardier I ended up being part of the transformation office in the business jet sector. In the aftermarket we were partnered with McKinsey, who was a consulting firm at the time. The mission was to double the EBIT of the business sector over a two-year transformation and through that process I got to learn every function of the business, from product sales, delivery, customer experience, the supply chain side, put my hands in HR, it, finance, and then, obviously, being at Bombardier, you learn the manufacturing side, the parts trading side, the service facilities. So it was a really great school for aviation and I was always the little kind of keen person that raised up my hand for any sort of challenge. So I started there, then later joined AJ Walters and I was leading strategy and business development to half a billion dollar parts trading business in the UK. Then they have their component repair facility here in Montreal, where I'm based.

Monica Badra: 4:06

So I was running strategy, business development and over the two-year transformation I started getting into the digital transformation phase. We followed a strategize optimize then digitize. So that's when we enable technology. After the data cleansing process, re-engineering of the business, and through that we started building technology that the ultimate end goal was to increase the component touch time and reduce any administrative burden on the technician. So through that process we were building applications that sat on top of their ERP. Then later down the road we ended up pausing the project.

Monica Badra: 4:39

But through that process I ended up creating a network within the technology side and from there I kind of noticed that there are a lot of very credible technology that exists, whether it's for aviation or industry agnostic, but a lot of them just don't know how to sell to the right pain point or match the right pain point within the aviation sector. And when you look at an MRO executive versus a tech guy, it's like speaking Chinese and Arabic to each other. So I kind of found my spot in between where I could translate the requirements back to the development teams but then also explain to the MRO how it fits in within their workflow, and then from there it kind of evolved into. I don't want to run a handful of projects, I can't scale my business that way, so I ended up just becoming a matchmaker. You have this problem, you come to me, you trust me as your advisor. This is the guy who could solve it for you, and that's it.

Monica Badra: 5:32

So swiping right and left and trying to figure out the right matches. The right way, the right way.

Chris Glass: 5:40

Now, well, that's a pretty novel approach. You said one thing to me in the pre-interview that I wanted to touch point is that it's your opinion and I don't want to put words in your mouth but not to build something yourself as an MRO that there's going to be somebody else who has done it and done it better. So can we talk about that for a second?

Monica Badra: 6:01

Yeah, I think. Well, there's multiple variables to it. First, a lot of the companies that I've dealt with who have not really been successful is when they bank on one customer and they build a product for that one customer. So that's always not really the best path to go down. There's no point in reinventing the wheel when there are companies that have really smart data, scientists, development capital to fund large projects and, whether they're solving it for aviation or not, that sort of technology exists somewhere. So instead of building from scratch, I really kind of shifted to the mindset of finding something that exists and if it's not in the aviation space, it's somewhere else and then creating a value proposition partnership with these technology providers to then service the aviation space. It's easier when parts of the technology exist and all you need to do is really add the aviation flavor to it.

Chris Glass: 6:59

Well, it's funny because a lot of times in the aviation space, funny because a lot of times in the aviation space, we view our challenges as unique and specific to our industry. Yet it's not unique, it's not specific, it's actually quite common across multiple different industries. So you had mentioned some of your clients on the other side, like the actual service providers aren't in aviation and you're matching them with aviation companies. So how did you go about finding your partners?

Monica Badra: 7:31

So first, across the last decade I've collected about 150 pain points that if I sit with anyone within the MRO space, it's 100% of the time they're going to agree that these are all the same pain points that they face, whether it's any function of the business on the product side, sales side, supply chain is a massive one that everyone keeps talking about.

Monica Badra: 7:51

Yeah, but they're always the same, like the recipe for disasters, always the same. And then on the service provider side, the way I find them is kind of unique. They see me to go going to a lot of trade shows and stuff like that. So I get connected very easily to a lot of service providers and I'm always very brutally honest. If they're actually solving something for my customer base, I will help them kind of grow their business or fill in the features that I know my customers are going to care about. But yeah, it's a little bit of a match of them kind of finding me or I go out to see what are some competitors or customers using. And it's a small industry, it's a small kind of network.

Chris Glass: 8:32

Yeah, when you start to go to the same shows, people find you.

Monica Badra: 8:37

Yeah, they find you, they know where you're going. Now I go to an event. It's all the same faces. At the end of the day it's a really kind of small community. So over time you kind of know what's happening. What's the new leadership structure? What roadmaps are they working on? Who has the funding to do these new interesting stuff? Who's comfortable being a legacy system and doesn't really care because they know that it's going to take them years before a customer decides to change system. So you kind of get that feel once you're in the game. But yeah, that's basically it.

Chris Glass: 9:09

So how many? How many companies are you working on the tech side? What's your roster look like? What's how? How many companies are you working on the tech side? What's your roster look like? How many companies are you partnered with?

Monica Badra: 9:19

Right now I have about 30 plus partnerships, and it varies from ERP providers. Sometimes it could be service providers that are experts in supply chain, for example, or companies that do nothing but data cleansing as a full-time sort of gig. There are also crazier technologies like RFID, asset tracking, pricing models, ai kind of coding systems. So it really varies. But typically a customer always starts with wanting data to be cleansed because they don't want to apply any sort of technology over dirty data, and then proper process re-engineering of the entirety of the business, and then later on it turns into automation of some kind of I call them monkey work. But yeah, I know you want to go into that.

Chris Glass: 10:04

Oh, I love the term right, because, uh, you know, in a previous life I was a data analyst, uh, and we had a spreadsheet, uh, in Excel. So we did report cards and I would take a large data set, I'd plunk it into a bunch of e-lookups and then I'd go for coffee for about an hour because my machine was bricked while Excel was trying to do all these computations and I'm like there's got to be more value to this than you know. There's got to be an easy way to do this. And then, of course, with technology, came the same report. That took me an hour. It would take half a second to run and would run automatically behind the scenes. But that monkey work can be very frustrating and very unrewarding and nobody really wants to do it.

Monica Badra: 10:50

And just on that exact example, I'm actually dealing with a customer, with the CFO directly, and he says I give my analysts a backpack and a bottle of water and I send them into the wilds when I ask them for any sort of financial question, and then I wait a week and then eventually he'll come back, you know, half exhausted or whatever, but he comes back. But it's so ridiculous that after all this time we still don't have right now we have co-pilot, all these things where you're speaking to your data and your data knows you better than you know yourself. So one of my biggest partners right now is actually a company that can tear through any sort of ERP system or whatever system of record that you have and you could actually start talking to your data.

Chris Glass: 11:36

Oh, wow.

Monica Badra: 11:37

Yeah, it creates what they call a universal business data model. So, for example, if Salesforce calls sales sales and then SAP calls sales revenue, the language model actually knows that these two things are the same, so you don't need someone doing the monkey work of, okay, this column and this raw table and this system is revenue, which is the same, as it's automated. There's things like that. That, yeah.

Chris Glass: 12:02

There's some analysts that I know that do listen to the show. That head just exploded when you said that. Because, because their work is really finding this table matching it. This table actually means this. This table actually means that to get everything kind of clean, if you will, and build that kind of data set that they could use. That's really cool. What other technologies are you seeing out there within your partnership? What's some of the more groundbreaking work that you see being done?

Monica Badra: 12:29

with a company that built a RFQ automation. So all of the what I call again monkey work of emails back and forth from the supplier to the customer talking about pricing and I want to get a price for this, blah, blah blah All of that is fully automated within the system, to the point where no one needs to answer the email. The email looks at what is the part number that they're looking for, goes through the ERP, finds under whatever condition the customer is looking for and prices it automatically. All of these things is just like AI red, that you don't need human intervention.

Monica Badra: 13:05

And a lot of these companies it's not that they have a large sales force that are doing this.

Monica Badra: 13:09

Sometimes they just say we don't even look at parts based in RLS anymore because we're an MRO, so we're focused on the repair work.

Monica Badra: 13:16

But there's money sitting on the floor when they're not selling some consumables, expendables that are already excess or surplus stock. So just simple things like that. Another one is on the procurement side as well vendors, the RFP process within the airline or manufacturing side, where most of the time they have to hire these large consulting companies to come and send out a hundred different Excel files, fill it in in the same format, receive it back then present it to their airline and then they have to select based on lead time, based on pricing, whatever quality compliance metrics. Okay, this is going to be the supplier that we reward this part number for. It's such a long and endless process and this company actually found a way to just dump all of the work that you need. It goes out to the thousands of different vendors that have that capability. They send in their information and it automatically just tears through it into the same format and you could filter for what's the best price, what's the best lead time, but it's like revolutionary.

Monica Badra: 14:18

Yeah, it's crazy.

Chris Glass: 14:20

That would change entire departments work. Yes, yes, oh, that's very cool. Now where are your partners located? Are they mostly Canadian companies? Are they worldwide? I know this industry, especially airlines, is hyper global, if you will, because everybody is used to moving everywhere. So where are your companies located?

Monica Badra: 14:40

They're global, most of them, I would say, montreal, just because of the startup world here. There are many that are here in Canada, but a lot of them are in the US. I've got even, obviously, of course, in India, in Vietnam. A lot of development companies are based there, so it's really a global network.

Chris Glass: 14:58

Now we've talked a little bit about the technology partners. Let's talk about the other side of it. So how do you go about identifying the problems that need to be fixed by technology for your partners on the MRO side?

Monica Badra: 15:12

I typically and I had again this conversation with someone today where I'm really not a salesperson, I could not sell you anything, but I just like to have a business conversation with another business person and when I sit with these executives and I just explain a bit of my background and personally I'm also looking to acquire a bunch of MROs, that's kind of part of the future roadmap. But eventually I'll just say things like so how many Excel spreadsheets do you receive on a weekly basis as a CFO or CEO of a company? 100% of the time somebody resonates with that and then we start there and then you backwards kind of engineer into what is the root cause of this problem, etc. But the typical part shortages, labor shortages it's always the same kind of issue. And when I show them the type of solutions that we've built for those specific issues, that's when they start getting interested and engage in the process.

Chris Glass: 16:04

Yeah, and then you can kind of work your way through that organization and find all the hidden issues that maybe aren't as prevalent at the beginning.

Monica Badra: 16:13

It's always there's like the top 10 big rocks for every function and they never change. It's always the same.

Chris Glass: 16:20

Give us a couple of those rocks. What are we turning over here without giving away your secret sauce to everybody else?

Monica Badra: 16:25

There's no secret sauce, I'll publish it for free. Just give you one. On the sales side, for example, this is a very known kind of project, but doing the 80-20 rule on your customers how many of your customers? You have 20 people in sales who are responding to RFQs on marketplaces. Meanwhile your top 10 customers are generating 90% of your business. Why are we not evolving into an account management structure, upselling those million dollar accounts, versus going after 500 other customers that are making you less than a thousand a year? So just simple kind of overview, starting with the analytics and then back into decision-making for the business.

Chris Glass: 17:08

So you're really letting data make the decision. You're really empowering data to come to the top.

Monica Badra: 17:14

Correct.

Chris Glass: 17:15

Right, it's funny because when you get to a lack of data scenario, people go with gut feeling and that tends to favor the incumbents, if you will. And you end up with that technology that might not fit for you.

Monica Badra: 17:30

Correct and simple things like as a component of a pair facility, do you have the ability to performance manage your staff? No, why? Because nobody tracks our labor technician labor, okay. So you're incapable of tracking actual hours. How do you put together your standard hours? Somebody just invented it 10 years ago. All these things that disable you from doing very basic stuff like just managing your staff.

Chris Glass: 17:56

Wow, that is staggering that that's still going on, but it makes sense. Yeah, how many customers do you see coming to you that are stuck with the wrong solution or maybe have been burned with a technological answer that wasn't correct and now they're a little gun shy? You know, because I know. When you get burned once by buying the wrong technology, you tend to think, OK, pen and paper is best, Excel is best. I'm going to go back to what has worked in the past.

Monica Badra: 18:25

That happens a lot. But my approach is really not like. I'm not fixated on selling tech. I'm more fixated on what is the pain point you're trying to solve, what is the end goal? And then if the means to get there is through a technology that exists, then that's fine. But if, for example, just data cleansing, I could bring you the old-fashioned way a team that's going to download all your data cleaning up, put it back into your ERP, or I could get you a tool that scrapes through your entire system and cleans it with AI, ML. So it's really the how is where the technology comes in. But my approach is more what is the pain point, what are we trying to solve, what is the end goal that you'd like? Okay, then work backwards from there and the how is where the technology comes in.

Chris Glass: 19:11

With the technology side, we've seen such an explosion with AI and machine learning. What are some of the biggest innovations that you've seen in your time with Arrow, next Gen? What's the breakthroughs that are happening right now that people need to know about?

Monica Badra: 19:26

First and foremost, I would say automation, again of monkey work, like robotic process automation, so just systems being able to tear through emails and auto quote, auto respond. Um, also on the data cleansing side, for example, you have dash one, dash twos. If you don't have pricing on a dash two, the system wouldn't know unless somebody goes and says, okay, well, this is the equivalent of the alternate part. So it's so. The AI is just identifying patterns of logic that should be applied to your data to not create some sort of roadblocks down the line Sales and operations planning, being able to identify what are the amounts of work coming into the shop and how do you backwards engineers into the purchase orders that need to be placed ahead of the lead time of suppliers. It's more just identifying patterns on how the business is running and then backwards engineered into decisions, whether that's on the inventory side, the manpower side, whatever that is to just make the operations more efficient.

Chris Glass: 20:27

Wow. Where do you see the industry going? I've always found airlines and airline adjacent companies tend to be so far behind the current technologies they're they're never living in this generation. How long do you think it'll take to catch up, Do you?

Monica Badra: 20:44

think we're going to catch up soon or no, not, I don't think soon.

Monica Badra: 20:49

Well, like in a sad, I would like to think 10 years, but unfortunately it's probably closer to maybe 50. Maybe simple things that we're trying to move on. I know that there's a huge push on predictive maintenance. Ge, skywise, airbus, all these guys are working on these sort of solutions. There's a push, but it's mostly from the big boys that kind of own the monopoly of these things and then it doesn't really get trickled down quickly enough to the third party, mros and those that are ultimately responsible for the turnaround time, the parts coming back to the aircraft and the aircraft returning into service. So there's still a large gap in collaboration and data sharing across the ecosystem gap in collaboration and data sharing across the ecosystem.

Monica Badra: 21:36

Where I would love it to go is anything that you use today that is an exceptional product, for example, chatgpt. Why is my technician still required to go through a CMM of 500 pages to figure out, okay, now that I repaired this part of the unit, what's the next step? Why can I just have a system where I could just chat to this thing and it tells me my technician cmm, chat, gbt, whatever model things like that that were used today as consumers in our in our day-to-day. That should be easily applied within um the work environment. Another example uber. This is maybe a crazier idea, but we all use uber for, whether it's for the eats or or um taxi. But why not have?

Monica Badra: 22:17

We know that, uh, labor shortage is a huge problem within the mro space. What if we had some sort of a flex time where you know the demand coming in into your mro and the technician is like technician uber, it's like I. I need this technician for this part on this day and his actual cost by the hour is reflective of his performance as one thing, but also in the demand that is needed on the market. That's another thing. That's Amazon. Why do we still have the need to have all these RFPs and all of that for vendors to connect to manufacturers and airlines? Why not have a platform where I know all of the MROs that do XYZ capabilities? It should auto-fulfill based on the proximity, the cost, the turnaround time and all the data. Again, going back to data, Right.

Monica Badra: 23:11

So yeah, that's where I would like it to be.

Chris Glass: 23:15

Don't think it's anywhere near or anytime soon, but yeah, simple things like that well, and I think of something as simple as electronic flight bags, right like pilots, were very similar to that they. They had their flight book, uh, their flight bags, and and they had that well-passed iPad technology and tablet technology, and it seemed to be like a good 10 years before that was adopted and accepted as safe and part of the industry. Yet, as a consumer, you made that decision right away. Like this is no longer. I'm no longer buying books, I have this. I'm no longer buying VHS, I can get it downloaded onto my tablet. So it's it's funny, what we accept in our private life that we're not accepting in our commercial life.

Chris Glass: 24:05

Yeah, Now walk me through. Walk me through a little bit more about the future of your business. So where are you going with Arrow Next Gen? What's the next steps for you?

Monica Badra: 24:14

Right now we're in the process of launching a ERP finder which is purpose-built for aviation. So it allows any sort of aviation professional to go run a quiz and they get a recommendation on the ERP that is purpose-built for their environment. So this is something that we're going to be launching right in and around MRO Americas in April. So that's one thing. I'm continuing to kind of find these really startup gems that are not very comfortable selling in the aviation space and I continue to kind of build out their portfolio or value proposition, that space for them. And then for me, on a personal side, I would really love to. I've been on the market looking for different acquisitions and in MRO parts trading sort of companies. So that's kind of side things that I'm working on as well.

Chris Glass: 25:00

Great, so growing it right out that ERP finder sounds a long time coming for the industry.

Monica Badra: 25:08

It's such a basic idea and that's one of the things that I learned in this industry Like just keep it simple. This is not a brain like it doesn't take a PhD to figure out how to use this thing, but it's just a simple product that already kind of makes the whole concept of looking for a new ERP a bit more efficient and what we're offering. But we're not at the point yet where we're eliminating the whole RFP process. Yeah, but we're not at the point yet where we're eliminating the whole RFP process yet.

Monica Badra: 25:36

But yeah, just super basic and people just love simple ideas like that.

Chris Glass: 25:41

You're really impressive from the fact that you seem to be very committed to disrupting an industry that needs to be disrupted. Are there a lot of people out there kind of taking this approach, or is this a Monica exclusive, if you will, where you're trying to fill a niche that nobody else has seen before? Is this something that's going on out there in the world, or is this something you're finding your own lane for?

Monica Badra: 26:11

I think in all of the customers I work with I kind of look for the moniker on the other side. Otherwise projects just go nowhere and I'm not interested in the idea of selling tech for the idea of selling tech. So there are a lot of disruptive mindsets in the industry. Unfortunately, I don't think large enterprise kind of the culture really allows for it. So I kind of feel like it's a bit of my mission to help people just move If they don't know where to start, if they have a great idea, if they want to sell something like my goal is just okay, let's do this together and just start moving. Let's start, let's go somewhere. But no, I think there's a lot of great like very intelligent people in the industry, very smart, very disruptive. It's just hard to move when you're kind of alone in it.

Chris Glass: 26:59

So yeah, and let's be honest, nobody's ever got fired for re-signing a contract or going with the company that they've always gone with. But taking that risk and moving towards one of the disruptors is a risk for somebody in the purchasing world or in the procurement world. So how do you manage kind of the bias towards the incumbent? If you will, even if the incumbent isn't working, even if the solution is not working, you still have people going. This is the way we do things here and I just want to get I just want to get my 10 years in and retire here and be fine, right.

Monica Badra: 27:38

That unfortunately happens a lot. And if there is no, that one disruptor on the other side who just doesn't care. Doesn't care if somebody's going to fire him for making the wrong choice, doesn't care, is not attached to the idea of of activity, but really wants to solve something. That's when things move. I could give you an example of. I was working in a company where we were setting up a new maintenance facility in the UK in the middle of Brexit and I got involved in this project. I'm looking through an email that came to me. I'm looking down there's 12 weeks worth of debates via email. How many power units do we need to set up in this facility? 12 weeks of just like, oh, no, this, or we don't know, we can't.

Monica Badra: 28:22

No one wants to make a decision because they're scared that eventually it's going to come back to them years from now. Of oh, we're a bit shorter. And then here, let's just be a little bit pessimistic plus two. Okay, guys, we just need eight. Let's just go, move, move, move. And there's not enough people that are empowered and that's also part of the leadership and the culture but people that are empowered to actually just put their foot down and move. So it starts at the top, and there's a lot of executives that I deal with that are just like crazier than I am and know how to move, and there's others that you know that they're just going to stay to the same stick, to the same system. They're banking on and three years from now, you know, leaving. They don't care.

Chris Glass: 29:05

Yeah, they're not. They're not about moving forward, yeah.

Monica Badra: 29:08

It's. It's easier to do things how we did them yesterday, and that's it.

Chris Glass: 29:14

So you're really trying to find the right partners on the right side. Right so, on the MRO side, you're looking for somebody who's willing to think outside of the box and willing to not take risks but to challenge the status quo, if you will.

Monica Badra: 29:28

I'm looking for someone who is fit up of how we did things yesterday, who doesn't have the intent of chasing title and just has the intention of solving something and is just fed up with the way things are operating today. And you could feel it in a meeting. There's always that one person in the background who's not speaking, but you know that this is the guy who's the most pissed about the situation and that's who you want to deal with.

Chris Glass: 29:54

I've been that guy in previous lives where you're like man, if I just had the right tool, the things we could do. You know, like one of the biggest issues, we talked about APU when we were off the record. That was one of the projects I was working on and at the airline I was with we couldn't automatically tell, unless we were on the plane and looking at the light, whether they turned the APU off or on. This frustrated me no end because there has to be a solution. This is a $120 million aircraft and you can't tell me when a switch is turned on or not. And it aided me. Why am I doing this manually? Why is this a manual thing? Why can't we track this in real time? And it turns out there are solutions out there. You just got to work and find them. But I've been that guy saying this badly needs to be disrupted.

Monica Badra: 30:42

This badly needs to change. I think my brain operates like as if I was a robot and I just think the more new things you do, the more new line of code you're accumulating in your brain and I just love the idea of of discovering or learning new skill sets. So anything that I do twice is I just look at it as a huge opportunity. Cost of that could have been time I would spend learn, learning something else. So that's kind of like the way I look at things and I don't think I'm an alien in the way that I I think and there are some people who care a lot about, you know, trying to eliminate the monkey work, operate at the right level and want to kind of scale a little bit. But yeah, that's, that's ultimately the mindset.

Chris Glass: 31:24

What advice do you have? I'll ask you two questions here about advice. So, in your experience, what advice do you have from somebody who is stuck at the Emerald world and and doesn't have the right technology? What's? What steps should they take to order to write the ship here?

Monica Badra: 31:43

Uh, call Arrow next time. Yes, besides bringing Monica. What steps I mean for you to be able to sell it to your management. Ultimately, someone is going to say I want to see an ROI. So how you building your own case is a step forward in creating the winning conditions for your management to actually encourage you and push a project forward. You and push a project forward. So I would say sit down and understand. How is this actually solving what for the business? Quantifying that, if you can.

Monica Badra: 32:17

I know that it's it's tough, it's a conceptual thing, but still, and if you have some sort of credibility internally, even if you don't have title, and if people are willing to keep you, like if you are a high performer, then they're going to do anything that they can to keep you. Presenting your case is really kind of a step forward. And then you start, you know, understanding what exists on the market. So you guys build it internally and blah, blah, blah.

Chris Glass: 32:44

Now, on the flip side of that, I'm a tech startup or a smaller tech company and I'm thinking about getting into the aviation space, or I want to get my name call Aero Next Gen. But what? What advice do you have for them with if they're listening, what? What steps can they take to really break through? Cause it seems like there's so much noise in this space that it's hard to get your voice heard.

Monica Badra: 33:08

The one thing that works is doesn't matter how much money you're going to make off of the first customer, get yourself a beta customer to prove yourself. Have a proof of concept, a use case where you have a logo within the space, and that is miles of credibility ahead. Right? So that's like 100%. Something I recommend to all of them is I will bring you a customer, you're going to give him a 99% discount, but you're going to use that and copy paste that across the entire market. So being not kind of fixated on pricing and all of that, being able to give it away just to get your foot in the door is one avenue, but then also using subject matter experts to your advantage. Again, nobody wants to be sold to. I was on the other side as the MRO vetting different technology partners. The minute I smelled sales, I'm like you're wasting my time. You want someone who can speak your language. So I would also recommend yes, you need salespeople, but you also need subject matter experts People want to talk to business people.

Chris Glass: 34:17

Well, that's some excellent advice. We're almost out of time here. This has been a fantastic conversation. Monica, why don't you tell us where we can find you, where we can find some information about you? Give us your website, give us your email, so anybody listening who is in one of the positions that we talked about today can find you and track you down.

Monica Badra: 34:39

Awesome, okay, so of course my website, aeronextgencom. You could catch me on email, monica, at aeronextgencom. I could give my phone number. Should I be giving my phone number here, you?

Chris Glass: 34:50

can definitely give me your number if you'd like.

Monica Badra: 34:54

All my information is on the website and you can go on there on my LinkedIn. You'll 100% see me at a trade show. So yeah, anytime you see me, just come walk up to me, throw the pain points at me and I will find you a match.

Chris Glass: 35:06

What's the next trade show you're going to?

Monica Badra: 35:07

be at MRO Americas. Mro Americas, yes, excellent. Amaro Americas, amaro Americas.

Chris Glass: 35:10

Yes, excellent, so we'll look for you in April. Monica, thank you so much for being on Open.

Monica Badra: 35:14

Skies today. This was awesome. Thank you, Chris.

Chris Glass: 35:17

And thank you for joining us again here on Open Skies. We'll be back with some more episodes coming soon, later on this year. Thank you.