Aerotrax Technologies: Building Secure, Reliable, Actionable Digital Infrastructure for Aviation & Aerospace

Aerotrax Technologies is an enterprise software company focused on the development and commercialization of advanced products for the aviation and aerospace industry. The company is building a platform to digitally track the entire lifecycle of an aircraft, its parts, and components. Aerotrax's first product, MRO Service Management, enables the end-to-end management of the repair order lifecycle by enhancing key business processes to streamline communication and optimize data sharing between airline operators and maintenance, repair, and overhaul service providers. The company's software delivers customers significant productivity gains, cost savings, and new revenue opportunities with an unparalleled customer experience.

The Building Blocks for Mission-Critical Software

Aerotrax is on a mission to connect the aviation and aerospace industries' supply chain with secure, reliable, and actionable digital infrastructure. To execute this, the company aims to provide a suite of complementary solutions that traces the provenance of aircraft, parts, and components from cradle to grave and allow these assets to be transacted throughout their lifecycle.

From a Dorm Room to a Global Presence

Aerotrax started in a dorm room at Villanova University where the founding team submitted the business plan to R3's Global Pitch Competition in early 2019. The business plan combined with the pitch earned the team a place in R3's Entrepreneur in Residence program, where they registered the business and developed early prototypes. The prototype landed them in some key executive meetings with industry leaders and sparked a co-innovation project with Triumph Group. After 16 months of design and development sprints with strategic industry feedback, Aerotrax now has a product that is ready for the market globally.

Driving towards Excellence

David Bettenhausen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Aerotrax Technologies who has been instrumental to the success of the company since the very beginning. David was the Founder and President of the Villanova Blockchain & Artificial Intelligence Society, where he met Aerotrax's Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Phong Nguyen Dang, and then went on to secure the Entrepreneur in Residence opportunity at R3 together. Prior to launching Aerotrax, he spent time in various consulting engagements around network infrastructure design in telecom and digital transformation in insurance.

David has been featured in different magazines, articles, and podcasts sat on multiple panels, and was the speaker at various industry conferences for both blockchain and aviation events. He is also a contributing member of SAE's G-31 committee, focused on building standards around electronic transactions across aviation and aerospace.

Acting as a Cost-Efficient Platform to Connect Airline Maintenance

David mentions that Aerotrax brings simplified communication, collaboration, and data sharing to commercial airline supply chains. With the best-in-class security, scalability, and auditability, the company helps airline operators manage third-party MRO operations.

"Our team has been fortunate to work with some of the biggest names in the industry as launch partners to quantify the impact of our software. The platform saves 2-40 hours of administrative work per purchase order and reduces turnaround time by one to three days. The data analyzed across the platform has a profound impact on reducing aircraft on ground time" says David. With Aerotrax, Airlines can save 5-10% indirect maintenance costs and 15-25% at the end of lease redelivery fees.

Blockchain as an Enabling Technology

David asserts that the emergence of cloud computing has lowered the risk for building exciting, new projects across the world. Whether it is in AI, IoT, or blockchain, cloud computing has accelerated the time to value and decreased the cost to develop.

According to David, the team at Aerotrax sees blockchain as an enabling technology. Programmable governance, validation, and data integrity allow businesses to build powerful applications. He adds that with a distributed system of records powered by blockchain, companies can unlock more accurate predictions around maintenance events and gather automation opportunities across parties.

Differentiating in Highly Competitive Markets

The airline industry is a highly competitive market segment. Airliners look to differentiate on cost, convenience, and customer service. The nature of this industry drives the team's innovation strategy to exceed customer expectations across those three core tenants. David stated that the team continues to build elegant and valuable products with the support of industry partners, such as Triumph Group, and technology partners, such as AWS and R3, to provide customers with the best solutions to empower their People to accomplish work.

Turning Headwinds into Tailwinds

"In the beginning, the scope of a product was to track the entire historical lifecycle of every aircraft, part, and component. However, this would've required buy-in from over 10 stakeholders at the same time. It's hard enough to get one major organization to adopt a novel technology, but it's exponentially more difficult to get multiple to adopt at once. Even though the vision has remained the same, the team has changed its approach by breaking this all-in-one solution into a suite of solutions, where it could quickly win customers and own each interaction in the aircraft value chain" presumes David. The COVID-19 pandemic has delayed the go-to-market as well, but the company has turned those headwinds into tailwinds by focusing on product development and positioning the solution to help multiple partners and customers recover faster with more resilient operations infrastructure.

Opportunity Intersects with Preparation

Aerotrax was ranked as one of the top teams at R3's Global Pitch Competition in 2019. The team was up against the steep competition by standing as the only undergraduate team to make the final 12 war room pitch. This achievement was the starting point that ignited Aerotrax's journey mentions David.

The company is also recognized by AWS as a high-potential start-up. They joined the AWS Activate program and received six figures in cloud credits. Since then, they've been featured by Villanova University, R3, and AWS for the technology they're building at Aerotrax.

Accelerating Digitalization in Aviation and Aerospace

"There's going to be a massive push for digitalization in aviation and aerospace, which has been significantly accelerated by COVID-19 as the pandemic exposed the cracks in stakeholders' systems and operations" claims David. Paper-based processes will be replaced by digital solutions that will boost communication, data sharing, and collaboration among the industry players and this scenario shall perfectly align with the vision of the company as it continues to provide solutions beyond the servicing of an aircraft.