February 20, 2025 • 49 mins
Discover how a simple idea transformed the aviation industry through the eyes of our special guest, Eric Ball, the visionary CTO and co-founder of EBIS. From his early days transitioning from a tech background to mastering the aviation sector, Eric shares the fascinating journey of EBIS, a pioneering software that revolutionized ground support equipment. Join us as we uncover how this innovative tool evolved to captivate major airlines like Southwest, navigating through challenges and growth opportunities to become a cornerstone in the aviation world.
Explore the unexpected pathways that led to the evolution of ground support technology with insights from Eric Ball, along with contributions from Santo Schnatchu, Rick, and Crystal. Dive into the narrative of EBIS’s acquisition by Tron Air and how it sparked new innovations in maintenance software. Learn about the strategic melding of AI and human expertise and its impact on operational efficiency, as well as the hands-on empowerment of technicians who are at the heart of aviation maintenance.
Get ready to be inspired by stories of effective maintenance optimization with advanced tools like EVA software, and discover how data-driven decisions are transforming asset management. We offer a compelling look at how telemetry data and customer feedback are shaping future developments in ground support operations. Explore how AI is redefining technician efficiency, bridging communication gaps, and reducing operational costs. This episode is packed with insights into the cutting-edge technology propelling the aviation industry forward.
Looking for reliable and flexible ground support equipment leasing solutions? Look no further than Xcēd! As your trusted partner, Xcēd specializes in tailored operating leases for ground handlers and airlines, offering top-notch equipment and flexible terms to suit your needs. Whether you're seeking the latest electric GSE or traditional equipment, Xcēd has you covered with competitive rates and exceptional customer service. Keep your operations running smoothly and efficiently with Xcēd. Visit xcedgse.com today and soar to new heights with Xcēd Ground Support Equipment Leasing!
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Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:00):
Music,
Matthew Weitzel (00:07):
celebrating 10 years of trailblazing in ground
support Xcēd marks a decade asyour leading partner in ground
support equipment leasing at theforefront of both short term and
long term leasing solutions.
Xcēd adapts to your uniqueoperational needs, whether
you're ramping up for peakseason or planning for long term
growth, we provide the rightequipment to keep your
(00:27):
operations running smoothly.
This anniversary, we renew ourdedication to empowering your
ground operations withefficiency and innovation. With
Xcēd, you're equipped forsuccess today and prepare for
the challenges of tomorrow.
Exceed driving excellence on theground year after year. Explore
more at exceed gse.comthis is Brad Compton. This is
(00:56):
Luke brown. This is JeffBarrett. This is Tessa Vaasen,
and you're listening to the GSEpodcast. All right. Well,
welcome to the GSE Podcast. I'mMatt Weitzel, and I'm here with
a group today from from EBIS. SoI have sun thush nachu, the
general manager for EBIS. I'vegot Eric ball, he is the CTO and
(01:19):
co founder of EBIS and CrystalWittig, the customer success
manager in Rick Agnor, thedirector of customer impact. How
is everyone doing today? Doinggreat, awesome. Well, I really
appreciate you all coming on.
(01:39):
EBIS has for me, at least. I'veknown about you guys for a very
long time. I've been in theindustry for 17 years, and ever
since I've started, I've heardof EBIS. It's a very, very well
known software out there andground sport equipment, and
that's the reason you all are onhere today to kind of talk about
that. And what I would like todo is start out by having Eric
(02:02):
kind of walk us through how thisproduct kind of came to be.
Eric, would you mind doing thatfor us? Yeah,
Eric Baal (02:08):
not a problem. Matt, yeah. So originally, it started
in 1999 I knew a guy down thestreet. I was 16 at the time.
All right? I knew him since Iwas 16, and then he had called
me up during my freshman year ofspring break, and he said, Hey,
I bought a repair station. Like,what does that mean, right? So
then we, I come home over springbreak and basically start
(02:30):
following around the technicianson the shop floor, right? So
basically, he had needed workdone on his aircraft. Couldn't
get work done because everythingwas full, so he bought a repair
station. And then, which, youknow, of course, that's what
anybody does, right? So then,yeah, we started following the
technicians around. And I had noidea about aviation other than
(02:51):
being an airplane, and, youknow, been up a couple times in
this private plane. He had abeach craft at the time. And,
you know, start following thetechnicians around,
understanding what the problemsare. And then everybody was
writing everything down onpaper, right? So it was just
this really weird process to me,from coming from a computer
background. And then startedmaking notes, doing things for
(03:11):
him to like, you know, capturetechnician time, how you add
parts to an aircraft, startaccounting for things. And then,
you know, we kept working on itkind of got some traction. And
people like, Hey, this is good.
You guys should sell this. Like,huh? Guess maybe, maybe we
should. So, you know, we kind ofworked on it. Worked on it over
the summer, came back home, wesold our first one to a guy at
Walt magnet up in Petaluma,California, older guy, great
(03:35):
guy. He'd come back down pick meup on his airplane. We'd go back
up there work on it over theweekend. So really learned a lot
from, like, the the wholeprocess right from the shop
floor up. So that was, that was,it was really cool to, like, be
a part of that. And then we, wesold our second one to a place
in Salt Lake City, millionaireat the time. And now it already
(03:58):
we started getting, like, thedifferences, right? You have
like, smaller aircraft. You havejets now you're working on, so
you start understanding, like,the little fragments of the
market. So we kind of continuedon that path for the next, like,
three or four years, and thenwe're at a trade show in about
2004 I remember Rick from fromSouthwest, he walks by, and I
just, I'll never forget thismoment, because, you know, we're
(04:20):
this with two guys. It's Michaeland me. We're in this booth, and
it's like, there's nodecorations in the background.
It's like, the most ghetto boothyou'll ever see. And then, you
know, Southwest Airlines walksby, and they're like, What do
you guys do? Like, you guys aretoo big for us. Just keep
walking. He's like, no, no.
Like, what do you guys do? So wego through showing the demo of
what we're doing on the aviationside at this point. So this is
(04:42):
like more for mros at thispoint. He's like, Hey, we're
actually looking for somethingexactly like this. Let's talk
more. So we, you know, we talk alittle more. He ends up bringing
his whole team out to Reno atthe time. And then that was
really kind of scary, actually,because it's like this big
group. It's like the wholeleadership team. Or the whole
ground support division ofSouthwest. And then, you know,
(05:03):
they had told us that they hadgone around the country looking
at all sorts of differentproducts, UPS, FedEx, whatever
it was, and there's nothing outthere, you know, here's like,
we've got this solution thatpotentially can work for them.
And we're two guys, like, allright? This is kind of crazy,
right? So then we go through theprocess of, like, No, this is
exactly what we want. We justneed to build it more for, like,
prevent. More for like,preventive maintenance schedules
(05:24):
for equipment versus foraircraft. And obviously, scale
was different, because it wasn'tjust like a one size shop of six
or 10 aircraft. It was 20,000assets. It was hundreds of
users. They had a small teammanaging all their users and
their accounts, right? It's justdifferent, different problems,
but overall, the core conceptwas the same of what we were
(05:47):
doing. So yeah, we built it forSouthwest, took it to market. We
grew over time, and we got othercommercial airlines in that
process, and then we startedadding ground handlers. So is
this already that it was justsaying back to, like, how it was
aircraft, and it was, you know,maybe just jets, and then it was
helicopters, and it was repairstations, then on the on the
(06:09):
ground support side, it was,well, okay, like, Southwest has
their own equipment. Otherpeople have, sometimes their own
equipment. Sometimes they workon other people's equipment. So
all these kind of differentfactors came into it. But no, it
was, it was really exciting tobe able to grow the product out.
So we kept doing that until,well, continue to do that. And
(06:29):
in 2017 we were approached byTron air. So it was Michael and
me the whole time, which wasabsolutely crazy. I don't think
I'd ever do do that again. Yeah,I bet. So then, you know, we got
acquired, and Tron air was agreat fit. In a lot of ways.
They really let us, theyunderstood our vision of what,
like I wanted to do, so theyreally kind of let me have that
(06:50):
ability, still with the product.
And then we grew the team outand, like the first thing, so
Rick was still at Southwest atthe time, and then I said, Well,
Rick's got to come aboard likewe want. I want Rick on on the
other side of it this time. LikeI loved having Rick at
Southwest. He would send medrink coupons or something
occasionally, or whatever itwas, but, you know, it was great
to see him on on the other sideand be part of it, because he
(07:13):
really was a critical part ofthe whole process. And we had so
many ideas we got just from himbeing out on the field and on
the ramp, and he would just tellme about what was going on,
like, Well, why don't we dothis? Right? We would just kind
of be solutioning without evensolution, not even knowing about
it, right? It just kind oforganically happened over time.
Yeah, and then yeah. So then,you know, got acquired. We
(07:34):
brought and started growing theteam out, which was exciting for
me to just obviously have have ateam around us. We added a
couple more people here orthere, and now we're up to 18,
which is crazy to go from Yeah,from two
Matthew Weitzel (07:49):
to 18, yeah.
So, Eric, when did you startcoding? When you were like,
eight?
Eric Baal (07:55):
No, no, yeah. I was like 14 or 15. I was always into
graphic design. Originallystarted a wrestling newsletter
back in the day. I liked WWF,you know, so, yeah, you know,
Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior,all that back in the day. No, it
was, it was fun. I startedgetting into the graphic design,
and I'd make these newslettersevery week. I was fifth grade at
(08:17):
the time. I got more interestedin the not necessarily content,
but I just changed layout everyweek. So I always liked, kind of
the the UI portion, and justlike how visually you read
things and how you understandthings. So I think that was,
that's kind of where I started,and then programming at Pascal
in high school yearbook. And Ijust kind of all over the place,
(08:38):
right? I never really thoughtI'd be a developer. From a
programming standpoint, it'slike, yeah, maybe, like, do
special effects for movies,right? I always thought that was
cool,
Matthew Weitzel (08:48):
yeah? But instead, you ended up in ground
support equipment. So, you know,I think it's a win for you.
Eric Baal (08:55):
You never know where you're gonna end up, right?
Exactly.
Matthew Weitzel (08:58):
I love it.
That's a great story. That isjust, yeah, you were telling the
story, and I kind of got, like,this Marty McFly vibe, you know
what? I mean? Like, you hangingout with an older guy and in
this workshop, I mean, youdidn't create anything like the
flex capacitor, but you got EBISout of it, yeah? No,
Eric Baal (09:15):
exactly. I mean, I guess we defied gravity a couple
times up in an airplane, Michaelwould go up there, and he'd take
his little kid, and we justlike, he'd dive it down in a way
that his kid would just like,float to the top in the back. So
oh
Matthew Weitzel (09:26):
my gosh, we got, well, yeah, he sounds like
quite a pilot there. That's,that's amazing story. That's
such a, such a cool story, andcool beginning of of EBIS. And I
appreciate you sharing thatstory with us. And, yeah, so
let's talk about what's going ontoday at EBIS, and kind of how,
(09:47):
you know, how things havechanged over there Since being
acquired by Tron air. And thenwhat kind of like, what the
features are. Let's kind of likedeep dive into explaining
exactly what this product doesfor. On support equipment, and
whoever wants to take that on,you know, let's go. Yeah,
Santosh Nachu (10:05):
I'll, hey, this is Santosh NAU I'll go ahead and
set the stage here, but really,let the experts talk here with
Rick and crystal. But yeah, asEric mentioned, I mean,
phenomenal product. You know,I'm relatively new to the
aviation industry. Just joinedthe team about crazy, but it'll
be about three years inSeptember here. But you know,
(10:26):
really was drawn by the story,Matt. I mean, as you recognized,
I mean, heard that story fromEric, and met the team, and just
thought we had something reallyspecial here. And furthermore,
is like you're doing somethingright if you're getting
Southwest Airlines as part ofyour basic customers, and then
the other great brands thatwe've added since then, and
(10:47):
great companies that continue tobe partners with us. And so as
we started to dive into thisdeeper and the biggest
realization that I had, whichobviously Eric and Rick already
knew about, but just someonecoming in had to learn this is
that it was really built, asEric said from the shop floor
(11:07):
up. And I think it's importantto recognize that ultimately
what we do is maintenancesoftware. The ultimate outcome
here is maintenance andmaintenance in the world of AI,
I think it's going to be a whilebefore AI is going to take over
what a technician does right?
And truly, what we have at theend of this is a craftsman or a
(11:27):
craftswoman, and really what weare doing is enabling them to do
their job effectively. And thenthere's a whole organization
behind that, at the companylevel, various different
stakeholders that rely on thatdata that is being input by
these technicians. And so ifyou're not able to bridge that
(11:48):
gap and seamlessly allow them tobring all that information in,
you really can't make decisions.
And so that was a key insight, Ithink, for us, and recognizing
that ultimately, EBIS is just anenabler. We're a tool, just like
any other tool in their toolbox.
And so if you can really get outof the way and let them do what
they can effectively, and that'sthat's always a constant battle,
(12:10):
I wouldn't say that we'reperfect at it, but what we have
is a commitment to continue todo that, and the realization
that once you capture that data,then you can do some amazing
things with it, especially whenyou add expertise to that. And
that's really where our team'sgrown and bringing on someone
like crystal with the experiencethat she's had on the other side
(12:31):
of it, and obviously Rick a bigpart of that coming over just
that knowledge, that experienceof not only how to use the tool,
but how to use the tool toactually make progress and to
achieve a certain outcome, andthat was a key part. And so
really, what we have is not justthe product, but the product
coupled with expertise and thatpartnership so that we can
(12:53):
continue to help these greatoperations excel at what they
do.
Matthew Weitzel (12:59):
Yeah, and let's dive into that. Let's start with
Rick, just because Rick was wasbrought up in the original
conversation, and he came overfrom the southwest. So Rick, why
don't you kind of tell me aboutwhat you found so special about
this product, and then why youdecided to go ahead and join the
team. Great question.
Rick Agnor (13:17):
Well, we knew we wanted to develop a world class
maintenance organization, and wedidn't have the visibility to do
it. We knew we needed a tool tobe able to pull this off. And I
got to tell you, we were soexcited when we ran into Eric in
the booth there in Vegas, and itwas just like it was a fantastic
product. All it needed was someGSE logo, and we were off to the
(13:38):
races. But I think it was morethan that. I think it was a more
of a partnership where Eric wasable to really help us design
out a lot of our failures, a lotof our problems, by being able
to give us that visibility,everything from productivity to
parts kits to what assets costto maintain, how to optimize
schedules, how to optimize partsordering. There was just so many
(14:01):
aspects of it that really justfell into place. And we worked
close for about 14 years, andit's pretty much weekly, I would
describe maybe a problem we'rehaving, you know, doing ramp
walks, going out and actuallychecking equipment and verifying
it was being maintained properlyby a contractor, and he just
come up with different ideas.
Well, why don't I give you atool you can do ramp walks, and
(14:23):
you can have multiple people andiPads, and so there was always
the solution aspect of it, Ithought was just fantastic. And
I think the more, the more wepeel back the layers, the easier
it got. And I think one of thethe main challenges that we
threw his way was, how do wemanage, you know, 100 city
operation with just a handful ofleaders? So he really put things
(14:45):
in perspective, where you couldhave a small group of leaders,
and you could run a huge fleet,and you could do it
consistently, and you couldstandardize that process, and
you could replicate it, and thenyou could see where you were,
where you're. Men was notperforming optimally, and you
could see why. You could look atthese KPIs and really see, you
know, if your cost went up andyour unscheduled maintenance
(15:08):
started going up, chances werepretty good your maintenance
wasn't being performed. And itkind of highlighted where we
needed to go visit. And sureenough, as soon as we landed, we
could start lifting hoods andpulling dipsticks and see that
it wasn't being maintained, itwas being pencil whipped. So,
you know, as we started usingthose KPIs, we really knew what
was going on, and so it reallyhelped us optimize. Do you
Matthew Weitzel (15:32):
have a specific story about how you all were
able to see a trend in like, onepiece of ground support
equipment where there was, likea constant failure, and you
would have never recognized itand kept ordering that same part
or whatever. But because ofEBIS, you were able to kind of
figure out really quickly aboutwhat was going on within your
(15:54):
operation. Absolutely
Rick Agnor (15:55):
1000s of those stories, but I'll give you one,
one example. This was the MXfour bag tug, you know? That was
manufactured by, oh, I do knowthat one, yeah. So we started
seeing this trend that nosteering and no brakes are on a
$20 million aircraft. That'salways a good thing, right? No
steering, no brakes. So it camedown to a set of brushes on a
(16:16):
motor that controlled both thesteering and the hydraulics for
the steering and the brakes. Andit was an inspection that was
being missed, and we could seethat, you know, the brush was
the cause of failure. And weimplemented a an inspection
process to design that out. Andyou could really just trend that
(16:36):
out. This trend happened, youknow, we we spotted it in one
location, but it was somethingthat was happening everywhere,
and as we peeled peeled it back,we just needed to put a set of
eyes on it, do an inspection andchange the brushes out. So when
we first saw it, Eric helped medefine it. It was about a
$70,000 problem in one location,and as we looked at it, it was
(16:57):
those $11 fix as you startunderstanding that, you know,
you want to maintain brakes andsteering around aircraft, that's
kind of an important thing, butthose were kind of examples
that, you know, we were able toget that information, that
transparency. So
Matthew Weitzel (17:12):
yeah, think about how many, yeah, how much
money was saved in the long run,even though you're paying for
the EVA software, just becauseyou were able to figure that out
so quickly,
Rick Agnor (17:23):
absolutely. Yeah, that data is so critical to make
those good business decisions.
Matthew Weitzel (17:27):
Yeah, I remember that actually, I was at
tug during that time. I believeso, yeah, bringing back some
stories here, you
Rick Agnor (17:34):
know the, I think one other important lesson that
we saw is, you know, you can,you can keep a piece of
equipment forever. It's just howmuch money do you want to throw
at it? You can fix anything, butthere's a there's a point when
you should retire it, when it'suseful life is done. And so
we're really able to identifythose assets as well,
Matthew Weitzel (17:52):
you know? Yeah.
So EBIS will tell you somethinglike that absolutely.
Rick Agnor (17:56):
You we have an equipment cost analyzer which
will show us both the parts andlabor, and you can see that
based on the age of theequipment. You can see it spike.
So as you start looking atthings, you know, you could, you
could have a brand new fleet ofcatering trucks that run cost
you about 10 grand a year, butyou could look at a group of
catering trucks that might be 20years old, and they're costing
(18:17):
you three times that much. Youknow, doesn't make sense to keep
it. So as you start doing thefleet planning, it really helps
you optimize the fleet. And thenyou can start standardizing if
you're going to bring in, let'ssay you've, you know, this new
fleet cost you 10 grand a year,and it's going to cost you 110
man hours to maintain that ifyou add 20 trucks, you know what
(18:38):
to budget for additional laborat additional parts. So now you
can really do some fleetplanning on what your future is
coming your way. And you canreally optimize budgets. And I
think we got really good atoptimizing budgets by having
this data, and we knew when toreplace, and we could really
look at the assets that were thedogs of GSE, so to speak, what
(18:58):
we'd get the biggest bang forour buck by retiring it. So we
had that hit list, and I thinkthat was really great. When
you're when you're dealing withcapex budgets, you really want
to get the biggest bang for yourbuck. So there was just so many
examples like that, just throughthe through the 14 years we
worked together when as as I wasa customer, and Eric was the
developer and the co founder,and CTO, kind of did it all, so
(19:22):
he really helped us optimizethat with our team. So yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (19:25):
for sure. Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks for
sharing those stories. I'd liketo get to Crystal now and kind
of talk about how you ended upat EBIS and what you found so
interesting about the product.
Krystle Wittig (19:37):
Yeah. So I was also a customer of EBIS before I
joined the team, and really Iwas in a position that I met
Rick and Eric, I think, in about2019 and at the time, as the
customer, we were looking for asolution that was really in user
friendly. We had already beenthrough several different
systems prior, but reallychanged. Putting the product of
(20:02):
EBIS. I had seen it before, butI needed to sell it to my
leaders, so we brought Rick inand his counterpart at the time,
and really put him through theringer. We joke about it now,
but really put him through theringer with about eight pages of
questions that I just wanted tomake sure that the leadership
really understood that EBIS wasthe right fit. And through that
(20:22):
process, as we got to know eachother in 2021 it was known, and
Eric actually called me andsaid, Hey, give me a call. We
want to talk, and the rest ishistory. So I've been with the
company for about two and ahalf, three, close to three
years. Oh,
Matthew Weitzel (20:38):
wow, congratulations. Yeah, thank
you. How's it going over there?
What? What are y'all working on?
Krystle Wittig (20:43):
Yeah, so for me, I spend a lot of time with the
existing customers that we have,and also, you know, talking to
future customers as well, butreally just making sure that
we're listening, and also reallypartnering with them to make
sure that they're being heard.
We understand if there is aproblem and how ebis can
solution that problem, andreally just going through
different process changes andprocess flows and really just
(21:05):
helping them get the best bangfor their buck out of the
product.
Matthew Weitzel (21:11):
So there's still a lot of like product
development going on based onthe feedback from the customers.
Yeah,
Krystle Wittig (21:16):
always. We're always taking feedback.
Everything that we do and everychange that we make is really
from customers feedback andreally listening to them. And
some of the stuff that we doisn't necessarily them telling
us this is what we want. It'sjust listening and saying, Hey,
I think we have an idea for you.
Matthew Weitzel (21:33):
Yeah, that's so key is getting the customer
feedback for sure. Yeah, andEric
Eric Baal (21:38):
can kind of talk on it too, a little bit. Yeah, no,
we're continuous developmentover here, right? So I always
like to tell the story aboutwhen we, you know, got acquired,
start building up the dev team,then they, they're like, Oh,
this is great, but what are wegoing to do when this is done?
And I'm like, that's cute, guys.
That's, that's really, it'sjust, no, it's always, it's
continuous, right? And we'realways, you're always smarter
(21:59):
than you previous werehopefully, hopefully smarter,
and then, no, it's always justlike trying to improve. And, you
know, we get people become moresophisticated, right? Like,
dashboards are a bigger dealthan they used to be 15 years
ago, no one, no one even knewwhat a bar chart was versus a
line chart. Now, it's like, wewant all sorts of these kind of
charts, and we want them on ourphones, and we want them to be
(22:19):
able to access them fromanywhere we are. So it's just as
technology, technology haschanged. We we obviously have
evolved as well. And I mean, andwe've rewritten the product.
We're more mobile friendly. Weuse the same framework that
Facebook was developed on from afront end standpoint. So I mean,
we're about as modern as theycome.
Matthew Weitzel (22:41):
Yeah, it sounds like it, yeah. And so tell me
about, like we talk a lot inthis podcast about telematics.
How are you all integrating withtelematics? I'll
Santosh Nachu (22:52):
take that one.
Yeah. I mean, I think Telemetryis the talk of this town, right,
always, and it's brilliant. Andfrom our perspective, it's
another data source, right? Justas we were talking about
earlier, technicians are a keydata source, but so is
telemetry. But it's not enoughby itself. And so our take on
this is we're very agnostic. Wewill work with anybody in terms
(23:15):
of telemetry vendors. Andobviously the other trend in the
market is OEMs, as they'reputting out new product has
their own telemetry built intothe devices or into the assets.
And so for us, our take on it isingest that data source, because
it actually will really help youmake decisions. I'll actually
(23:35):
give you a story, a littleexample here. One of the
beautiful things about EBIS isjust with the, you know, that
longevity that we've had in theplay the marketplace, we have
tremendous amounts of data. Youknow, all the stories that
Rick's been telling you aboutthis particular brand, these
parts were failing. Then wechange it to this part and it,
you know, things got better.
(23:58):
Well, that data is there, andthat data tells a beautiful
story. And so we were actuallyexperimenting with, can we
predict part failure? Can welook at a certain asset type,
look at the usage hours on thatasset, how many times you know,
and what was the time betweenunscheduled failure and when
that happened, what parts werereplaced? We have all that data,
(24:21):
and we started to build a modelto see if you can predict which
parts may fail based on usage.
And so one of the data sourcesthere is obviously a technician
putting in information about howlong that asset was in play. And
you know, one of the things thatwe learned is you can have a lot
of dirty data there, right? Soyou're you have a whole bunch of
users typing in information. Weput some validation around that
(24:45):
input, but ultimately, nothingbeats the telemetry being
involved in that process andfeeding us that data. Then we
have some level of fidelityaround that information, and now
you can actually normalize. Theusage of that asset over some
clean data that you can trustand that, I think that's the
role telemetry plays. But Ithink it, by itself, I would
(25:07):
say, is not fully helping youget to the outcomes that you're
trying to achieve, the storiesthat Rick shared. How are you
going to make decisions aboutwhich asset to retire and which
one to continue to invest in.
You know, how do we change pmcycles, etc? You have to be able
to also capture the techniciangenerated data of how long have
(25:31):
I used or how long does it takefor me to fix that? What parts
are we incorporating and tyingthat in with the telemetry is,
is where I think it's the HolyGrail in a lot of ways. Oh,
Matthew Weitzel (25:42):
yeah, I completely agree. I wonder if,
do you ever see where you'relooking at a preventative
maintenance schedule on a unit,you know, and then specifically,
like, let's say that themanufacturer says at 1500 hours,
this needs to be changed. Areyou all seeing like trends where
you know more than thepreventative maintenance
(26:04):
schedule that the manufactureris giving out.
Rick Agnor (26:08):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think a couple things
with you know, we've got thecapability to take that
telemetry data and do meterbased maintenance, not just
calendar based. And as westarted optimizing that, you
could start dialing in yourvehicles to do the maintenance
schedule. Let's say 250 hours.
If you're dealing with some ofthe IATA rules, you might have
to do it every 250 hours orevery 90 days, whichever comes
(26:28):
first, and we can do both. Solet's say we have a unit set at
250 hours, if it doesn't hitthat but at 90 days, it'll
automatically trigger thatpreventive maintenance. So we
could really capture both, andyou can really standardize.
Instead of just doing it everythree months with various hours
on the unit, you can startdialing into 250 hours or 500
hours and be very specific. Andthat way you can really
(26:51):
standardize that maintenancebased on the actual utilization.
The other thing is, you'll see alot of units that you know, if
the meter breaks and it quitsworking, that fallback will also
trigger that event at yourfallback date, whether it's 90
days or 120 days, they'llautomatically generate it. And
you'll also get that for unitsthat aren't being utilized. So
maybe you have an air start thatonly has four hours on it,
(27:13):
you're still going to get thatunit pop up in 90 days. So you
really have the best of bothworlds. And I think telemetry
really dials that in, yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (27:22):
for sure. And then talk to me about like parts
and parts management and partsordering. Is your system capable
of telling you when to orderparts and then actually ordering
those parts? Or what does thatlook like? Yeah.
Rick Agnor (27:35):
So we have, we have supply chain integration. We we
build parts kits for those unitsso the techs don't have to
figure out what parts they needevery time the schedule comes
due, they can just push a buttonthat says, Add forecasted parts,
and it puts those filters ontheir work order. But we also
work with the vendors that we'repurchasing those parts, and
they'll get a forecasted list inadvance so they know what your
(27:56):
demand is going to be in thenext 30 days, 90 days, et
cetera. So they can be workingyour forecast report, and as you
request it, you've got those.
And then we have integrations sowe can order directly with both
Napa and sage and do directorder. So I think it really
streamlines the orderingprocess. And then we'll also map
and catalog the parts that wereused on that specific asset, so
(28:16):
the next time you need it, it'sgoing to be there. So,
Matthew Weitzel (28:21):
man, that's incredible. I mean, you got to
think about it, the amount ofman hours that that would take,
and you could actually cut downon your employee cost just by
having that system. It seemslike,
Rick Agnor (28:33):
yeah, we've, we've seen groups where you have a 10
man crew that started with theycould do about 2000 work orders,
and we've taken them to 40061000 that same group. And the
only thing we changed was thestreamlining the parts ordering,
so you can really have a bigimpact on productivity by really
helping them organize whatthey're going to need for future
(28:53):
demand. Yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (28:54):
yeah. And then talk to me about warranty. So I
imagine that you know, it'lltell you whether this, this tugs
under warranty still, and thendoes it help? Like, create
something to send to thecompany, you know, send to the
to the OEM. Or, like, how doesall that work? I guess
Rick Agnor (29:11):
it does. So as soon as if you can set up a unit with
the warranty date and a dropdate, so anything that fails on
that unit within the terms,let's say it's a two years,
it'll automatically generate awarranty claim for that item.
And what we do is we make iteasy to batch those and send
them to the OEMs, so you can runan export for those specific
units, and you could send thosewarranty claims directly. It's
(29:33):
gonna have all the criticalinformation make model serial,
as well as the hours on it, theparts that failed and how much
money you spent on labor,whether you fixed it or if you
had the OEM come and fix it. Butthat makes it easy to file that
claim and really understand howyour vehicles are performing,
brand A against brand B. And youcan also see how well your OEMs
pay their warranties as well ifthey if they're slow paying you,
(29:56):
you know, but it really helpsduring the capex process to
really. Understand how wellthose vehicles perform. You know
the cost, but you can also seewarranty failures. So when they
tell you this is the best unit,you could really look at it and
see, does it fit, and is itreally the best unit? You'll
have all the data. So if youhave high, slow pay, you
certainly want to take thatconsideration in if you're
(30:18):
spending millions in capex,
Matthew Weitzel (30:21):
yeah, definitely seems like it'll help
you decide which OEMs aretreating you the best and kind
of help you make decisionsmoving forward on your fleet.
For sure, absolutely. All right,so what else do we have? Like,
what am I missing here? Whatelse does this system do that I
haven't asked you about yet?
Yeah,
Santosh Nachu (30:41):
I think, you know, I think it's, it's pretty
just once again, given the trackrecord we've had and just a
sense of partnership with ourcustomers, we've been able to,
you know, slowly and organicallybuild all these capabilities,
but I think just even more sothan the product, which think we
continue to put work into, andwe're continuing to invest in, I
(31:03):
think there's also the wholetotal experience, right? Given
the changes that our customersface on a regular basis, the
dynamic market out there,especially with COVID and all
the things that it created interms of operational challenges.
You know, we recognize that, youknow, as we're in these long
(31:25):
term partnerships, it's toreally help our customers
navigate, you know, the seachange that they face. And
certainly we are one part of it.
But by no means do we solveeverything, but we certainly
play a critical role in helpingthem direct their attention and
resources in the right space.
And what we recognize is you canbuild some beautiful dashboards.
(31:46):
We can try to really build somepredictive models, etc. Still
work to be done there. However,you need to also be able to
translate that and help actuallyimplement that change. And I
think there's, there's stillthat element of it. It's, you
can highlight insights, but howdo you turn insights into
action? And that requires alevel of understanding of what
(32:07):
the customers are going through,being up to speed with that and
being able to bring some of thatcapability to bear. And so I
think that's a key part of alsoour strategy, and that's why you
have our customer impact teamthat Rick is leading up, and
then you have crystal as part ofthat team, as our customer
success manager, workingdirectly with these key clients
(32:29):
of ours and really helping themnavigate that. Yeah, and
Matthew Weitzel (32:32):
I think it's also it's important to state
that I think our industry isdifferent than other industries,
and the fact that this was bornout of the GSE industry, and you
all have really stuck to GSE.
Now, I know you do have youryour separate business, but it's
still in aviation, right? And Ithink it's important to point
(32:53):
out that this is specific toground support equipment. You
understand the OEMs, youunderstand the customers and
what their needs are. And it'sbuilt, you know, purpose built
for GSE.
Krystle Wittig (33:05):
Yeah, I agree. I would say that it's a tight knit
community across the OEMs, theairlines, the ground handlers
and ourselves, and we all knoweach other somehow, some way.
And I would just say it's areally tight knit community and
everybody truly cares?
Matthew Weitzel (33:21):
Yep, I would completely agree with that. So
I'm going to ask Eric a questionhere. So Eric, where do you see
you all moving towards? Is theresomething you're working on,
like, future state that you'dlike to like to see EBIS moving
towards? Or, like, what do youhave upcoming that we should all
get excited about? Well, I
Eric Baal (33:40):
mean, there's always much, much on the backlog,
right? No, but we're working on,like, more dashboards, more more
analytics. I think we'restarting to play with AI, right,
like seeing where that can fitinto it to really, kind of help
make things easier. I mean, youknow, a lot of it's
experimenting, right? And it'stalking to customers and
understanding what they need.
You know, more advancednotifications, right? That's
(34:02):
something that we're working on,parts catalogs, working from an
industry standpoint, to reallygo at it. From the OEM
standpoint, of, like, what isthe standardized parts list that
each you know, that a bag tughas, or, like, a specific model,
and then, because that reallygoes across all of our
customers. So it's easier froman ordering standpoint, you
(34:22):
know, coming up with juststandard parts catalog, like the
PDF manuals for that, the photosof the parts for the
technicians, making it easierfor them to identify. These are
all things that, you know, we'vebeen working on for I mean, Rick
and I worked on this back in atSouthwest, like when he was
there, right, going through thewhole supply chain system. And
it's, you know, it's alwaysevolving. Now it's back to
(34:44):
really trying to have thatstandardized list for for our
customers. So, yeah, a lot, alot of things in the works,
ultimately,
Matthew Weitzel (34:53):
where do you see AI playing a role in this?
Eric Baal (34:56):
Yeah, I mean, we'll, we'll see, right? It could go in
a lot of different ways. Yes,on, on that, yeah.
Santosh Nachu (35:02):
I mean, look like I said, I think AI is going to
completely change themaintenance game in terms of
actually fixing GSE assets andplanes anytime soon. Never, say,
Never, right. However, I thinkit goes back to our our thesis
here. Our thesis is techniciansare key to any of these
operations, the more we can helpthem do what they are really
(35:26):
good at, which is fixing things,and, you know, working on their
craft. And if we can kind ofblend into the background, then
that's what is our vision andwhat are what we need to
achieve. And I think AI has agreat role to play in that,
because we believe that in themarket, we're the most
intuitive. And I'm sure everysoftware company you talk to
(35:48):
says that, but the proof's onthe pudding in terms of how
technicians actually use ourproduct and enjoy it, and the
amount of people that will comearound when we go through to
some of these user sessions, etcetera. But there's more to do
there, and I think AI is goingto be a key role, we believe, to
streamline that further. How dowe remove more steps for that
(36:11):
technician to be able to put inthe right information each time
without it being burdensome, andthen that resulting in better
results and outcomes for thebusiness. And so that's kind of
our, our take on it,
Matthew Weitzel (36:24):
yeah, for sure.
And so, all right, we're to thepoint of the podcast where I ask
for a GSE story, and since wehave a panel of people in the
room there who wants to tell agood GSE story, have to go with
the Rick first. Rick does havethe most years in GSE, so he
doesn't seem like the rightchoice.
Rick Agnor (36:47):
Drawing a Blank, right now,
Matthew Weitzel (36:50):
that's all right. Take your time. So this
is something I'd like to do andall the podcasts, because, you
know, it seems like we all have,like, a really good story. Now,
we did hear the the good storyabout the MX four. So maybe this
is an Eric question, becausehe's been in the industry for
quite a long time as well.
Eric Baal (37:09):
Oh, man, all that.
Rick's got all the storiesnormally, you know. So
Matthew Weitzel (37:14):
tell me about a great customer success,
Krystle Wittig (37:17):
yeah, so I can share one from last year. So we
actually onboarded a customerlast year in May, May 1 last
year, and they really werefacing a challenge. They didn't
have all the visibility thatthey were looking for. And we
one of the contingents wasservice, service request, or
(37:38):
taking the line on the ground,handling, the ground handlers
and reporting into the GSE teamon what if a piece of equipment
failed, and they really just hadkind of like a broken process in
that. And so when we implementedwe also implemented with the
contingency of this feature. Soit really was exciting that not
(37:59):
only were we bringing in a newcustomer, but we are also
helping bridge the gap betweenthe ground ops and the GSD team
and bringing them together. Oh,
Matthew Weitzel (38:09):
that's awesome.
See, that's a great story andand a great customer success
story, and I appreciate yousharing that. So let's, let's
kind of just go, I'd like to runthrough just kind of all the
features of of EBIS, because Idon't feel like we've done a
really like, we've kind of likejumped around to all the
features. But if somebody wantto kind of give me a rundown of
(38:30):
just all the features that youoffer within your program, kind
of like a live demo, withoutanybody being able to see it.
Because I think what, what'sgoing to end up happening is,
is, you know, it sounds like tome, from from talking to you
all, there's so much costsavings that can happen with
this product that it'll easilypay for itself over and over and
(38:51):
over again. And I think oncepeople listen to this, they're
going to be very interested inthe product. And what I'd like
to do is just kind of somebodygive me a rundown of all the
features that are involved. Noneof there's a ton of features,
and you may not be able to getto all of them, but just kind of
like a high level of what, likea user could expect from your
product.
Rick Agnor (39:11):
Okay, yeah, great.
I'll take you through that. So Ithink it really starts off with
the equipment. You know, you canload in your fleet, you can have
all the information about yourfleet. You can set the
schedules, the maintenanceschedules. You have all the
history, the parts that are tiedto that, all the work orders.
And then as you start goingthrough, you can set up your
vendors, your locations, yourstock rooms, your inventory
within master parts. As you getinto the parts, you have the
(39:35):
ability to kind of set things ata specific warranty. You can
track course. You can track itthrough POS and orders.
Obviously, we have the warrantyclaims portion, where it makes
it easy to file warranty claimsand recover money that's due to
you based on the contract yousigned with the OEM. And then
what's what's really great aboutthe development that Eric and
(39:56):
his team have done is reallygive you the ability to. You
leverage media, media for theparts. You can access
illustrated parts list manuals.
You could actually take picturesof a specific issue. And then
you have the ability to push outtechnical service bulletins as
they come out from the OEM. Youcan really deliver those TSBs
specifically to that asset, nomatter where it's located. And
(40:20):
you could do all of those unitsat one time through that
technical service bulletin, justdo a quick push. And you can
also see in trend, if there werecritical TSBs, where they're at
in that process. Are they 20%complete? Are they 10% complete,
and which cities haven'tcompleted them? You know? So you
really have that ability to seeend to end that workflow. But I
(40:42):
think one of the bigger piecesis really understanding
productivity. How many peopleyou need to do that job, how
productive they are, what aresome of the roadblocks? Is it
and not being able to get theirparts on time, not be able to
get the asset, you can reallystart peeling it back and
understanding what's working andwhat's not. The other thing we
work on is the PMI efficiency,where it really gets into how
(41:03):
good are you doing yourmaintenance, and what's failing
within two weeks after it leavesyour shop, what's your average
days to failure? What's youraverage cost on that unit?
What's your warranty cost onthat unit? So as you start
understanding how well thevehicle performs, let's say your
average time to failure is 90days, but your maintenance
schedule set at 120 you're nevergoing to get ahead of that
(41:25):
maintenance failure. Youactually have to understand when
it's failing on average, andthen optimize your schedule.
Whether you're doing that basedon hours or you're doing it
based on days. It doesn'tmatter. You just need to be
ahead of it. So I think as youstart understanding kind of
where those pain points are, youknow when it fails, and how to
get ahead of that and design outthat failure, I think, is what's
(41:46):
what's so nice about EBIS, itactually tells you what's
failing. You can make a change,and then you can actually see
the needles move, and you canactually see, or is that unit
having less failures, lesslabor, less parts, and you can
really start optimizing thoseschedules. So I think it's a
it's a great enterprise assetmanagement system with the
really good productivity, partsflow, warranty flow, being able
(42:10):
to track course, and it's easyto use, I think, is probably
the, the nicest aspect of it.
You can train a technician inabout 45 minutes. You can do it
on any device, whether it'sAndroid or iOS, Mac, desktop. It
doesn't matter what you'rerunning it on. So I think you're
seeing a lot of mobile hardwaregoing out. We're seeing a lot of
the iPads. 10 inch iPads is kindof the hardware of choice. So
(42:34):
you really kind of have a mobileworkforce now with those same
capabilities.
Matthew Weitzel (42:40):
That's kind of Yeah. That show yeah. That's
incredible. I mean, it justyeah, like I said before, before
I asked you the question. Itjust seems like you could find
so many ways to save money anddefinitely easily get the cost
back of whatever EBIS is, justjust in warranty claims alone,
it almost feels like Yeah. Imean, it's, it's really, it's
(43:03):
really great. So, so Iappreciate that. And then, do we
have any closing remarks,anything that I've missed and we
haven't talked about?
Santosh Nachu (43:11):
Yeah, I think in closing, I mean, we're, I would
say this, and I think ingeneral, there's plenty of
solutions out there, absolutely.
And there's, you know,enterprise asset management. Put
it in Google, and I'm sureyou'll have a list. But I think
a key part of this isunderstanding that it's the
tool, the data, and evenunderstanding, you know, the
(43:34):
nuances of it, right? Like, oneof the things that we often talk
about is when you buy, buy kindof a one size fit all solution.
You have just a whole bunch ofuser defined fields that you
have to go define. And so ifyou've never really set up a
system trying to achieve some ofthese outcomes that are your,
you know, our customers aretrying to achieve, you can spend
a lot of time setting up thewrong data for really, you know,
(43:56):
years, and then you're dealingwith that dirty data, because
actually quite unusable. And soI think our focus in this arena
and for these specific use casesunder the umbrella enterprise
asset management, but given thatwe're able to really set up the
system for that sole purpose orobjectives within, within GSE,
(44:20):
and so I think, you know,that's, that's probably my
biggest message is it's easy tojust look at individual
elements, you know, we can talkabout feature sheets and just
kind of like we did the rundownhere of all the capabilities and
modules. But I think you have tolook at it holistically and
understand, you know, what doesit take to actually get started
(44:40):
on a system that's robust andthen being able to track the
data that you should be trackingso that you can get to those
metrics that Rick talked about,ultimately, how do you set all
of that up, and then how do youleverage that to actually take
action in your operation? Ithink that's really the. Uh,
these discrete parts that cometogether quite beautifully. And
(45:02):
I think that's, that's reallywhat, you know, we want to share
with with your audience,
Matthew Weitzel (45:08):
yeah. And again, it's just, you know,
being specific to GSE definitelyhelps. Because, I mean, the
worst thing in the world is youfields, you know, I think we all
know that. So nobody wants tosee that on their screen. They
want it all done for them. Andwith the amount of years that
that Eric has put into thisproduct, I doubt that there's a
(45:28):
lot of those user defined fieldsthat that any kind of ground
support equipment person wouldhave to put in there. Oh
Eric Baal (45:34):
yeah, no, no, we've we've got all the fields, trust
me on that. You got all thefields?
Matthew Weitzel (45:38):
Yeah, yeah.
You've been asked for thembefore, this would not be a new
request. So, so that's awesome.
Well, I just really appreciateyou guys coming on today, and
just, it's great to learn aboutthis product, and kind of diving
a little bit deeper into intoEBIS, and just seeing what you
guys have to offer. And then howshould, like, if you know, if
(46:02):
anyone's interested, how shouldthey go about getting, like, a
demo of the software and talkingto you guys?
Santosh Nachu (46:07):
Yeah, first of all, thank you so much for
having us on. You know, I'vebeen, I've been consuming your
content here as I try to learnmyself. And so really appreciate
what you do and bringing on someof the great guests that you
have. So really, be really happyto be part of this as well.
Yeah, absolutely. You'rewelcome. And yeah, in order to
(46:30):
answer your question as to whereyou can find us the best places
to get on ww.ebiscloud.com, andyou'll have a good sense for
exactly what we offer, and get ahold of us. And you can ask for
a demo request right there. Butyou know, we're approachable. We
are happy to share my email,Rick's email, Crystal's email,
(46:50):
Eric's email, and you can reachus directly. So we're happy to
and you can anybody's more thanwelcome to connect with me on
LinkedIn. I'm sure with thepronunciation of the day. I
could spell it out as well.
We'll put that in. Yeah, Iwasn't gonna
Matthew Weitzel (47:06):
go. I wasn't gonna go down that route again.
But so are you all gonna be atany upcoming conferences or
expos that people can see youat?
Santosh Nachu (47:14):
Yeah, great question. Yeah. We'll be at GSE
Expo in Lisbon here coming up inSeptember, I believe. So it's
always a great show. It's gonnabe a big show. Yes, very big
show. Oh, and then, actually,we'll, in June, before that,
I'll be there at GHI with one ofmy other colleagues, Ken
Mulhall, so we'll be going andtalking to a few customers there
(47:35):
as well, in Toronto. So Oh,
Matthew Weitzel (47:36):
great. We can meet in person. I will be, I
will be at the GHI Americasconference as well. And we're
gonna do, we're gonna do a panelup there about electrification.
See y'all to come and join thatpanel and check that out. And
yeah, so look forward to seeingyou there. And again, I just
appreciate you all coming ontoday and definitely reach out
(48:00):
to the team at EBIS if you'reinterested in learning more, but
I think that'll that'll wrap itup for this episode of the GSE
podcast. Thank you all. Thankyou. Thank you. Thank you for
tuning in to this episode of theGSE podcast. We hope you found
it informative and engaging. Ifthis episode resonated with you,
(48:22):
please share it with yourcolleagues and peers in the
ground support equipmentcommunity. Your support is
invaluable to us. We'dappreciate it if you could take
a moment to rate and review ourpodcast. Your feedback not only
encourages us, but also helpsexpand our reach within the GSE
community. Keep an eye out formore episodes as we continue to
explore the dynamic world ofground operations, bringing you
(48:44):
the latest trends, insights andstories from the industry, thank
you for listening to the GSEpodcast until We meet again,
stay grounded and keep pushingforward.
Unknown (49:02):
You
Music,
Matthew Weitzel (00:07):
celebrating 10 years of trailblazing in ground
support Xcēd marks a decade asyour leading partner in ground
support equipment leasing at theforefront of both short term and
long term leasing solutions.
Xcēd adapts to your uniqueoperational needs, whether
you're ramping up for peakseason or planning for long term
growth, we provide the rightequipment to keep your
(00:27):
operations running smoothly.
This anniversary, we renew ourdedication to empowering your
ground operations withefficiency and innovation. With
Xcēd, you're equipped forsuccess today and prepare for
the challenges of tomorrow.
Exceed driving excellence on theground year after year. Explore
more at exceed gse.comthis is Brad Compton. This is
(00:56):
Luke brown. This is JeffBarrett. This is Tessa Vaasen,
and you're listening to the GSEpodcast. All right. Well,
welcome to the GSE Podcast. I'mMatt Weitzel, and I'm here with
a group today from from EBIS. SoI have sun thush nachu, the
general manager for EBIS. I'vegot Eric ball, he is the CTO and
(01:19):
co founder of EBIS and CrystalWittig, the customer success
manager in Rick Agnor, thedirector of customer impact. How
is everyone doing today? Doinggreat, awesome. Well, I really
appreciate you all coming on.
(01:39):
EBIS has for me, at least. I'veknown about you guys for a very
long time. I've been in theindustry for 17 years, and ever
since I've started, I've heardof EBIS. It's a very, very well
known software out there andground sport equipment, and
that's the reason you all are onhere today to kind of talk about
that. And what I would like todo is start out by having Eric
(02:02):
kind of walk us through how thisproduct kind of came to be.
Eric, would you mind doing thatfor us? Yeah,
Eric Baal (02:08):
not a problem. Matt, yeah. So originally, it started
in 1999 I knew a guy down thestreet. I was 16 at the time.
All right? I knew him since Iwas 16, and then he had called
me up during my freshman year ofspring break, and he said, Hey,
I bought a repair station. Like,what does that mean, right? So
then we, I come home over springbreak and basically start
(02:30):
following around the technicianson the shop floor, right? So
basically, he had needed workdone on his aircraft. Couldn't
get work done because everythingwas full, so he bought a repair
station. And then, which, youknow, of course, that's what
anybody does, right? So then,yeah, we started following the
technicians around. And I had noidea about aviation other than
(02:51):
being an airplane, and, youknow, been up a couple times in
this private plane. He had abeach craft at the time. And,
you know, start following thetechnicians around,
understanding what the problemsare. And then everybody was
writing everything down onpaper, right? So it was just
this really weird process to me,from coming from a computer
background. And then startedmaking notes, doing things for
(03:11):
him to like, you know, capturetechnician time, how you add
parts to an aircraft, startaccounting for things. And then,
you know, we kept working on itkind of got some traction. And
people like, Hey, this is good.
You guys should sell this. Like,huh? Guess maybe, maybe we
should. So, you know, we kind ofworked on it. Worked on it over
the summer, came back home, wesold our first one to a guy at
Walt magnet up in Petaluma,California, older guy, great
(03:35):
guy. He'd come back down pick meup on his airplane. We'd go back
up there work on it over theweekend. So really learned a lot
from, like, the the wholeprocess right from the shop
floor up. So that was, that was,it was really cool to, like, be
a part of that. And then we, wesold our second one to a place
in Salt Lake City, millionaireat the time. And now it already
(03:58):
we started getting, like, thedifferences, right? You have
like, smaller aircraft. You havejets now you're working on, so
you start understanding, like,the little fragments of the
market. So we kind of continuedon that path for the next, like,
three or four years, and thenwe're at a trade show in about
2004 I remember Rick from fromSouthwest, he walks by, and I
just, I'll never forget thismoment, because, you know, we're
(04:20):
this with two guys. It's Michaeland me. We're in this booth, and
it's like, there's nodecorations in the background.
It's like, the most ghetto boothyou'll ever see. And then, you
know, Southwest Airlines walksby, and they're like, What do
you guys do? Like, you guys aretoo big for us. Just keep
walking. He's like, no, no.
Like, what do you guys do? So wego through showing the demo of
what we're doing on the aviationside at this point. So this is
(04:42):
like more for mros at thispoint. He's like, Hey, we're
actually looking for somethingexactly like this. Let's talk
more. So we, you know, we talk alittle more. He ends up bringing
his whole team out to Reno atthe time. And then that was
really kind of scary, actually,because it's like this big
group. It's like the wholeleadership team. Or the whole
ground support division ofSouthwest. And then, you know,
(05:03):
they had told us that they hadgone around the country looking
at all sorts of differentproducts, UPS, FedEx, whatever
it was, and there's nothing outthere, you know, here's like,
we've got this solution thatpotentially can work for them.
And we're two guys, like, allright? This is kind of crazy,
right? So then we go through theprocess of, like, No, this is
exactly what we want. We justneed to build it more for, like,
prevent. More for like,preventive maintenance schedules
(05:24):
for equipment versus foraircraft. And obviously, scale
was different, because it wasn'tjust like a one size shop of six
or 10 aircraft. It was 20,000assets. It was hundreds of
users. They had a small teammanaging all their users and
their accounts, right? It's justdifferent, different problems,
but overall, the core conceptwas the same of what we were
(05:47):
doing. So yeah, we built it forSouthwest, took it to market. We
grew over time, and we got othercommercial airlines in that
process, and then we startedadding ground handlers. So is
this already that it was justsaying back to, like, how it was
aircraft, and it was, you know,maybe just jets, and then it was
helicopters, and it was repairstations, then on the on the
(06:09):
ground support side, it was,well, okay, like, Southwest has
their own equipment. Otherpeople have, sometimes their own
equipment. Sometimes they workon other people's equipment. So
all these kind of differentfactors came into it. But no, it
was, it was really exciting tobe able to grow the product out.
So we kept doing that until,well, continue to do that. And
(06:29):
in 2017 we were approached byTron air. So it was Michael and
me the whole time, which wasabsolutely crazy. I don't think
I'd ever do do that again. Yeah,I bet. So then, you know, we got
acquired, and Tron air was agreat fit. In a lot of ways.
They really let us, theyunderstood our vision of what,
like I wanted to do, so theyreally kind of let me have that
(06:50):
ability, still with the product.
And then we grew the team outand, like the first thing, so
Rick was still at Southwest atthe time, and then I said, Well,
Rick's got to come aboard likewe want. I want Rick on on the
other side of it this time. LikeI loved having Rick at
Southwest. He would send medrink coupons or something
occasionally, or whatever itwas, but, you know, it was great
to see him on on the other sideand be part of it, because he
(07:13):
really was a critical part ofthe whole process. And we had so
many ideas we got just from himbeing out on the field and on
the ramp, and he would just tellme about what was going on,
like, Well, why don't we dothis? Right? We would just kind
of be solutioning without evensolution, not even knowing about
it, right? It just kind oforganically happened over time.
Yeah, and then yeah. So then,you know, got acquired. We
(07:34):
brought and started growing theteam out, which was exciting for
me to just obviously have have ateam around us. We added a
couple more people here orthere, and now we're up to 18,
which is crazy to go from Yeah,from two
Matthew Weitzel (07:49):
to 18, yeah.
So, Eric, when did you startcoding? When you were like,
eight?
Eric Baal (07:55):
No, no, yeah. I was like 14 or 15. I was always into
graphic design. Originallystarted a wrestling newsletter
back in the day. I liked WWF,you know, so, yeah, you know,
Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior,all that back in the day. No, it
was, it was fun. I startedgetting into the graphic design,
and I'd make these newslettersevery week. I was fifth grade at
(08:17):
the time. I got more interestedin the not necessarily content,
but I just changed layout everyweek. So I always liked, kind of
the the UI portion, and justlike how visually you read
things and how you understandthings. So I think that was,
that's kind of where I started,and then programming at Pascal
in high school yearbook. And Ijust kind of all over the place,
(08:38):
right? I never really thoughtI'd be a developer. From a
programming standpoint, it'slike, yeah, maybe, like, do
special effects for movies,right? I always thought that was
cool,
Matthew Weitzel (08:48):
yeah? But instead, you ended up in ground
support equipment. So, you know,I think it's a win for you.
Eric Baal (08:55):
You never know where you're gonna end up, right?
Exactly.
Matthew Weitzel (08:58):
I love it.
That's a great story. That isjust, yeah, you were telling the
story, and I kind of got, like,this Marty McFly vibe, you know
what? I mean? Like, you hangingout with an older guy and in
this workshop, I mean, youdidn't create anything like the
flex capacitor, but you got EBISout of it, yeah? No,
Eric Baal (09:15):
exactly. I mean, I guess we defied gravity a couple
times up in an airplane, Michaelwould go up there, and he'd take
his little kid, and we justlike, he'd dive it down in a way
that his kid would just like,float to the top in the back. So
oh
Matthew Weitzel (09:26):
my gosh, we got, well, yeah, he sounds like
quite a pilot there. That's,that's amazing story. That's
such a, such a cool story, andcool beginning of of EBIS. And I
appreciate you sharing thatstory with us. And, yeah, so
let's talk about what's going ontoday at EBIS, and kind of how,
(09:47):
you know, how things havechanged over there Since being
acquired by Tron air. And thenwhat kind of like, what the
features are. Let's kind of likedeep dive into explaining
exactly what this product doesfor. On support equipment, and
whoever wants to take that on,you know, let's go. Yeah,
Santosh Nachu (10:05):
I'll, hey, this is Santosh NAU I'll go ahead and
set the stage here, but really,let the experts talk here with
Rick and crystal. But yeah, asEric mentioned, I mean,
phenomenal product. You know,I'm relatively new to the
aviation industry. Just joinedthe team about crazy, but it'll
be about three years inSeptember here. But you know,
(10:26):
really was drawn by the story,Matt. I mean, as you recognized,
I mean, heard that story fromEric, and met the team, and just
thought we had something reallyspecial here. And furthermore,
is like you're doing somethingright if you're getting
Southwest Airlines as part ofyour basic customers, and then
the other great brands thatwe've added since then, and
(10:47):
great companies that continue tobe partners with us. And so as
we started to dive into thisdeeper and the biggest
realization that I had, whichobviously Eric and Rick already
knew about, but just someonecoming in had to learn this is
that it was really built, asEric said from the shop floor
(11:07):
up. And I think it's importantto recognize that ultimately
what we do is maintenancesoftware. The ultimate outcome
here is maintenance andmaintenance in the world of AI,
I think it's going to be a whilebefore AI is going to take over
what a technician does right?
And truly, what we have at theend of this is a craftsman or a
(11:27):
craftswoman, and really what weare doing is enabling them to do
their job effectively. And thenthere's a whole organization
behind that, at the companylevel, various different
stakeholders that rely on thatdata that is being input by
these technicians. And so ifyou're not able to bridge that
(11:48):
gap and seamlessly allow them tobring all that information in,
you really can't make decisions.
And so that was a key insight, Ithink, for us, and recognizing
that ultimately, EBIS is just anenabler. We're a tool, just like
any other tool in their toolbox.
And so if you can really get outof the way and let them do what
they can effectively, and that'sthat's always a constant battle,
(12:10):
I wouldn't say that we'reperfect at it, but what we have
is a commitment to continue todo that, and the realization
that once you capture that data,then you can do some amazing
things with it, especially whenyou add expertise to that. And
that's really where our team'sgrown and bringing on someone
like crystal with the experiencethat she's had on the other side
(12:31):
of it, and obviously Rick a bigpart of that coming over just
that knowledge, that experienceof not only how to use the tool,
but how to use the tool toactually make progress and to
achieve a certain outcome, andthat was a key part. And so
really, what we have is not justthe product, but the product
coupled with expertise and thatpartnership so that we can
(12:53):
continue to help these greatoperations excel at what they
do.
Matthew Weitzel (12:59):
Yeah, and let's dive into that. Let's start with
Rick, just because Rick was wasbrought up in the original
conversation, and he came overfrom the southwest. So Rick, why
don't you kind of tell me aboutwhat you found so special about
this product, and then why youdecided to go ahead and join the
team. Great question.
Rick Agnor (13:17):
Well, we knew we wanted to develop a world class
maintenance organization, and wedidn't have the visibility to do
it. We knew we needed a tool tobe able to pull this off. And I
got to tell you, we were soexcited when we ran into Eric in
the booth there in Vegas, and itwas just like it was a fantastic
product. All it needed was someGSE logo, and we were off to the
(13:38):
races. But I think it was morethan that. I think it was a more
of a partnership where Eric wasable to really help us design
out a lot of our failures, a lotof our problems, by being able
to give us that visibility,everything from productivity to
parts kits to what assets costto maintain, how to optimize
schedules, how to optimize partsordering. There was just so many
(14:01):
aspects of it that really justfell into place. And we worked
close for about 14 years, andit's pretty much weekly, I would
describe maybe a problem we'rehaving, you know, doing ramp
walks, going out and actuallychecking equipment and verifying
it was being maintained properlyby a contractor, and he just
come up with different ideas.
Well, why don't I give you atool you can do ramp walks, and
(14:23):
you can have multiple people andiPads, and so there was always
the solution aspect of it, Ithought was just fantastic. And
I think the more, the more wepeel back the layers, the easier
it got. And I think one of thethe main challenges that we
threw his way was, how do wemanage, you know, 100 city
operation with just a handful ofleaders? So he really put things
(14:45):
in perspective, where you couldhave a small group of leaders,
and you could run a huge fleet,and you could do it
consistently, and you couldstandardize that process, and
you could replicate it, and thenyou could see where you were,
where you're. Men was notperforming optimally, and you
could see why. You could look atthese KPIs and really see, you
know, if your cost went up andyour unscheduled maintenance
(15:08):
started going up, chances werepretty good your maintenance
wasn't being performed. And itkind of highlighted where we
needed to go visit. And sureenough, as soon as we landed, we
could start lifting hoods andpulling dipsticks and see that
it wasn't being maintained, itwas being pencil whipped. So,
you know, as we started usingthose KPIs, we really knew what
was going on, and so it reallyhelped us optimize. Do you
Matthew Weitzel (15:32):
have a specific story about how you all were
able to see a trend in like, onepiece of ground support
equipment where there was, likea constant failure, and you
would have never recognized itand kept ordering that same part
or whatever. But because ofEBIS, you were able to kind of
figure out really quickly aboutwhat was going on within your
(15:54):
operation. Absolutely
Rick Agnor (15:55):
1000s of those stories, but I'll give you one,
one example. This was the MXfour bag tug, you know? That was
manufactured by, oh, I do knowthat one, yeah. So we started
seeing this trend that nosteering and no brakes are on a
$20 million aircraft. That'salways a good thing, right? No
steering, no brakes. So it camedown to a set of brushes on a
(16:16):
motor that controlled both thesteering and the hydraulics for
the steering and the brakes. Andit was an inspection that was
being missed, and we could seethat, you know, the brush was
the cause of failure. And weimplemented a an inspection
process to design that out. Andyou could really just trend that
(16:36):
out. This trend happened, youknow, we we spotted it in one
location, but it was somethingthat was happening everywhere,
and as we peeled peeled it back,we just needed to put a set of
eyes on it, do an inspection andchange the brushes out. So when
we first saw it, Eric helped medefine it. It was about a
$70,000 problem in one location,and as we looked at it, it was
(16:57):
those $11 fix as you startunderstanding that, you know,
you want to maintain brakes andsteering around aircraft, that's
kind of an important thing, butthose were kind of examples
that, you know, we were able toget that information, that
transparency. So
Matthew Weitzel (17:12):
yeah, think about how many, yeah, how much
money was saved in the long run,even though you're paying for
the EVA software, just becauseyou were able to figure that out
so quickly,
Rick Agnor (17:23):
absolutely. Yeah, that data is so critical to make
those good business decisions.
Matthew Weitzel (17:27):
Yeah, I remember that actually, I was at
tug during that time. I believeso, yeah, bringing back some
stories here, you
Rick Agnor (17:34):
know the, I think one other important lesson that
we saw is, you know, you can,you can keep a piece of
equipment forever. It's just howmuch money do you want to throw
at it? You can fix anything, butthere's a there's a point when
you should retire it, when it'suseful life is done. And so
we're really able to identifythose assets as well,
Matthew Weitzel (17:52):
you know? Yeah.
So EBIS will tell you somethinglike that absolutely.
Rick Agnor (17:56):
You we have an equipment cost analyzer which
will show us both the parts andlabor, and you can see that
based on the age of theequipment. You can see it spike.
So as you start looking atthings, you know, you could, you
could have a brand new fleet ofcatering trucks that run cost
you about 10 grand a year, butyou could look at a group of
catering trucks that might be 20years old, and they're costing
(18:17):
you three times that much. Youknow, doesn't make sense to keep
it. So as you start doing thefleet planning, it really helps
you optimize the fleet. And thenyou can start standardizing if
you're going to bring in, let'ssay you've, you know, this new
fleet cost you 10 grand a year,and it's going to cost you 110
man hours to maintain that ifyou add 20 trucks, you know what
(18:38):
to budget for additional laborat additional parts. So now you
can really do some fleetplanning on what your future is
coming your way. And you canreally optimize budgets. And I
think we got really good atoptimizing budgets by having
this data, and we knew when toreplace, and we could really
look at the assets that were thedogs of GSE, so to speak, what
(18:58):
we'd get the biggest bang forour buck by retiring it. So we
had that hit list, and I thinkthat was really great. When
you're when you're dealing withcapex budgets, you really want
to get the biggest bang for yourbuck. So there was just so many
examples like that, just throughthe through the 14 years we
worked together when as as I wasa customer, and Eric was the
developer and the co founder,and CTO, kind of did it all, so
(19:22):
he really helped us optimizethat with our team. So yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (19:25):
for sure. Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks for
sharing those stories. I'd liketo get to Crystal now and kind
of talk about how you ended upat EBIS and what you found so
interesting about the product.
Krystle Wittig (19:37):
Yeah. So I was also a customer of EBIS before I
joined the team, and really Iwas in a position that I met
Rick and Eric, I think, in about2019 and at the time, as the
customer, we were looking for asolution that was really in user
friendly. We had already beenthrough several different
systems prior, but reallychanged. Putting the product of
(20:02):
EBIS. I had seen it before, butI needed to sell it to my
leaders, so we brought Rick inand his counterpart at the time,
and really put him through theringer. We joke about it now,
but really put him through theringer with about eight pages of
questions that I just wanted tomake sure that the leadership
really understood that EBIS wasthe right fit. And through that
(20:22):
process, as we got to know eachother in 2021 it was known, and
Eric actually called me andsaid, Hey, give me a call. We
want to talk, and the rest ishistory. So I've been with the
company for about two and ahalf, three, close to three
years. Oh,
Matthew Weitzel (20:38):
wow, congratulations. Yeah, thank
you. How's it going over there?
What? What are y'all working on?
Krystle Wittig (20:43):
Yeah, so for me, I spend a lot of time with the
existing customers that we have,and also, you know, talking to
future customers as well, butreally just making sure that
we're listening, and also reallypartnering with them to make
sure that they're being heard.
We understand if there is aproblem and how ebis can
solution that problem, andreally just going through
different process changes andprocess flows and really just
(21:05):
helping them get the best bangfor their buck out of the
product.
Matthew Weitzel (21:11):
So there's still a lot of like product
development going on based onthe feedback from the customers.
Yeah,
Krystle Wittig (21:16):
always. We're always taking feedback.
Everything that we do and everychange that we make is really
from customers feedback andreally listening to them. And
some of the stuff that we doisn't necessarily them telling
us this is what we want. It'sjust listening and saying, Hey,
I think we have an idea for you.
Matthew Weitzel (21:33):
Yeah, that's so key is getting the customer
feedback for sure. Yeah, andEric
Eric Baal (21:38):
can kind of talk on it too, a little bit. Yeah, no,
we're continuous developmentover here, right? So I always
like to tell the story aboutwhen we, you know, got acquired,
start building up the dev team,then they, they're like, Oh,
this is great, but what are wegoing to do when this is done?
And I'm like, that's cute, guys.
That's, that's really, it'sjust, no, it's always, it's
continuous, right? And we'realways, you're always smarter
(21:59):
than you previous werehopefully, hopefully smarter,
and then, no, it's always justlike trying to improve. And, you
know, we get people become moresophisticated, right? Like,
dashboards are a bigger dealthan they used to be 15 years
ago, no one, no one even knewwhat a bar chart was versus a
line chart. Now, it's like, wewant all sorts of these kind of
charts, and we want them on ourphones, and we want them to be
(22:19):
able to access them fromanywhere we are. So it's just as
technology, technology haschanged. We we obviously have
evolved as well. And I mean, andwe've rewritten the product.
We're more mobile friendly. Weuse the same framework that
Facebook was developed on from afront end standpoint. So I mean,
we're about as modern as theycome.
Matthew Weitzel (22:41):
Yeah, it sounds like it, yeah. And so tell me
about, like we talk a lot inthis podcast about telematics.
How are you all integrating withtelematics? I'll
Santosh Nachu (22:52):
take that one.
Yeah. I mean, I think Telemetryis the talk of this town, right,
always, and it's brilliant. Andfrom our perspective, it's
another data source, right? Justas we were talking about
earlier, technicians are a keydata source, but so is
telemetry. But it's not enoughby itself. And so our take on
this is we're very agnostic. Wewill work with anybody in terms
(23:15):
of telemetry vendors. Andobviously the other trend in the
market is OEMs, as they'reputting out new product has
their own telemetry built intothe devices or into the assets.
And so for us, our take on it isingest that data source, because
it actually will really help youmake decisions. I'll actually
(23:35):
give you a story, a littleexample here. One of the
beautiful things about EBIS isjust with the, you know, that
longevity that we've had in theplay the marketplace, we have
tremendous amounts of data. Youknow, all the stories that
Rick's been telling you aboutthis particular brand, these
parts were failing. Then wechange it to this part and it,
you know, things got better.
(23:58):
Well, that data is there, andthat data tells a beautiful
story. And so we were actuallyexperimenting with, can we
predict part failure? Can welook at a certain asset type,
look at the usage hours on thatasset, how many times you know,
and what was the time betweenunscheduled failure and when
that happened, what parts werereplaced? We have all that data,
(24:21):
and we started to build a modelto see if you can predict which
parts may fail based on usage.
And so one of the data sourcesthere is obviously a technician
putting in information about howlong that asset was in play. And
you know, one of the things thatwe learned is you can have a lot
of dirty data there, right? Soyou're you have a whole bunch of
users typing in information. Weput some validation around that
(24:45):
input, but ultimately, nothingbeats the telemetry being
involved in that process andfeeding us that data. Then we
have some level of fidelityaround that information, and now
you can actually normalize. Theusage of that asset over some
clean data that you can trustand that, I think that's the
role telemetry plays. But Ithink it, by itself, I would
(25:07):
say, is not fully helping youget to the outcomes that you're
trying to achieve, the storiesthat Rick shared. How are you
going to make decisions aboutwhich asset to retire and which
one to continue to invest in.
You know, how do we change pmcycles, etc? You have to be able
to also capture the techniciangenerated data of how long have
(25:31):
I used or how long does it takefor me to fix that? What parts
are we incorporating and tyingthat in with the telemetry is,
is where I think it's the HolyGrail in a lot of ways. Oh,
Matthew Weitzel (25:42):
yeah, I completely agree. I wonder if,
do you ever see where you'relooking at a preventative
maintenance schedule on a unit,you know, and then specifically,
like, let's say that themanufacturer says at 1500 hours,
this needs to be changed. Areyou all seeing like trends where
you know more than thepreventative maintenance
(26:04):
schedule that the manufactureris giving out.
Rick Agnor (26:08):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think a couple things
with you know, we've got thecapability to take that
telemetry data and do meterbased maintenance, not just
calendar based. And as westarted optimizing that, you
could start dialing in yourvehicles to do the maintenance
schedule. Let's say 250 hours.
If you're dealing with some ofthe IATA rules, you might have
to do it every 250 hours orevery 90 days, whichever comes
(26:28):
first, and we can do both. Solet's say we have a unit set at
250 hours, if it doesn't hitthat but at 90 days, it'll
automatically trigger thatpreventive maintenance. So we
could really capture both, andyou can really standardize.
Instead of just doing it everythree months with various hours
on the unit, you can startdialing into 250 hours or 500
hours and be very specific. Andthat way you can really
(26:51):
standardize that maintenancebased on the actual utilization.
The other thing is, you'll see alot of units that you know, if
the meter breaks and it quitsworking, that fallback will also
trigger that event at yourfallback date, whether it's 90
days or 120 days, they'llautomatically generate it. And
you'll also get that for unitsthat aren't being utilized. So
maybe you have an air start thatonly has four hours on it,
(27:13):
you're still going to get thatunit pop up in 90 days. So you
really have the best of bothworlds. And I think telemetry
really dials that in, yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (27:22):
for sure. And then talk to me about like parts
and parts management and partsordering. Is your system capable
of telling you when to orderparts and then actually ordering
those parts? Or what does thatlook like? Yeah.
Rick Agnor (27:35):
So we have, we have supply chain integration. We we
build parts kits for those unitsso the techs don't have to
figure out what parts they needevery time the schedule comes
due, they can just push a buttonthat says, Add forecasted parts,
and it puts those filters ontheir work order. But we also
work with the vendors that we'repurchasing those parts, and
they'll get a forecasted list inadvance so they know what your
(27:56):
demand is going to be in thenext 30 days, 90 days, et
cetera. So they can be workingyour forecast report, and as you
request it, you've got those.
And then we have integrations sowe can order directly with both
Napa and sage and do directorder. So I think it really
streamlines the orderingprocess. And then we'll also map
and catalog the parts that wereused on that specific asset, so
(28:16):
the next time you need it, it'sgoing to be there. So,
Matthew Weitzel (28:21):
man, that's incredible. I mean, you got to
think about it, the amount ofman hours that that would take,
and you could actually cut downon your employee cost just by
having that system. It seemslike,
Rick Agnor (28:33):
yeah, we've, we've seen groups where you have a 10
man crew that started with theycould do about 2000 work orders,
and we've taken them to 40061000 that same group. And the
only thing we changed was thestreamlining the parts ordering,
so you can really have a bigimpact on productivity by really
helping them organize whatthey're going to need for future
(28:53):
demand. Yeah,
Matthew Weitzel (28:54):
yeah. And then talk to me about warranty. So I
imagine that you know, it'lltell you whether this, this tugs
under warranty still, and thendoes it help? Like, create
something to send to thecompany, you know, send to the
to the OEM. Or, like, how doesall that work? I guess
Rick Agnor (29:11):
it does. So as soon as if you can set up a unit with
the warranty date and a dropdate, so anything that fails on
that unit within the terms,let's say it's a two years,
it'll automatically generate awarranty claim for that item.
And what we do is we make iteasy to batch those and send
them to the OEMs, so you can runan export for those specific
units, and you could send thosewarranty claims directly. It's
(29:33):
gonna have all the criticalinformation make model serial,
as well as the hours on it, theparts that failed and how much
money you spent on labor,whether you fixed it or if you
had the OEM come and fix it. Butthat makes it easy to file that
claim and really understand howyour vehicles are performing,
brand A against brand B. And youcan also see how well your OEMs
pay their warranties as well ifthey if they're slow paying you,
(29:56):
you know, but it really helpsduring the capex process to
really. Understand how wellthose vehicles perform. You know
the cost, but you can also seewarranty failures. So when they
tell you this is the best unit,you could really look at it and
see, does it fit, and is itreally the best unit? You'll
have all the data. So if youhave high, slow pay, you
certainly want to take thatconsideration in if you're
(30:18):
spending millions in capex,
Matthew Weitzel (30:21):
yeah, definitely seems like it'll help
you decide which OEMs aretreating you the best and kind
of help you make decisionsmoving forward on your fleet.
For sure, absolutely. All right,so what else do we have? Like,
what am I missing here? Whatelse does this system do that I
haven't asked you about yet?
Yeah,
Santosh Nachu (30:41):
I think, you know, I think it's, it's pretty
just once again, given the trackrecord we've had and just a
sense of partnership with ourcustomers, we've been able to,
you know, slowly and organicallybuild all these capabilities,
but I think just even more sothan the product, which think we
continue to put work into, andwe're continuing to invest in, I
(31:03):
think there's also the wholetotal experience, right? Given
the changes that our customersface on a regular basis, the
dynamic market out there,especially with COVID and all
the things that it created interms of operational challenges.
You know, we recognize that, youknow, as we're in these long
(31:25):
term partnerships, it's toreally help our customers
navigate, you know, the seachange that they face. And
certainly we are one part of it.
But by no means do we solveeverything, but we certainly
play a critical role in helpingthem direct their attention and
resources in the right space.
And what we recognize is you canbuild some beautiful dashboards.
(31:46):
We can try to really build somepredictive models, etc. Still
work to be done there. However,you need to also be able to
translate that and help actuallyimplement that change. And I
think there's, there's stillthat element of it. It's, you
can highlight insights, but howdo you turn insights into
action? And that requires alevel of understanding of what
(32:07):
the customers are going through,being up to speed with that and
being able to bring some of thatcapability to bear. And so I
think that's a key part of alsoour strategy, and that's why you
have our customer impact teamthat Rick is leading up, and
then you have crystal as part ofthat team, as our customer
success manager, workingdirectly with these key clients
(32:29):
of ours and really helping themnavigate that. Yeah, and
Matthew Weitzel (32:32):
I think it's also it's important to state
that I think our industry isdifferent than other industries,
and the fact that this was bornout of the GSE industry, and you
all have really stuck to GSE.
Now, I know you do have youryour separate business, but it's
still in aviation, right? And Ithink it's important to point
(32:53):
out that this is specific toground support equipment. You
understand the OEMs, youunderstand the customers and
what their needs are. And it'sbuilt, you know, purpose built
for GSE.
Krystle Wittig (33:05):
Yeah, I agree. I would say that it's a tight knit
community across the OEMs, theairlines, the ground handlers
and ourselves, and we all knoweach other somehow, some way.
And I would just say it's areally tight knit community and
everybody truly cares?
Matthew Weitzel (33:21):
Yep, I would completely agree with that. So
I'm going to ask Eric a questionhere. So Eric, where do you see
you all moving towards? Is theresomething you're working on,
like, future state that you'dlike to like to see EBIS moving
towards? Or, like, what do youhave upcoming that we should all
get excited about? Well, I
Eric Baal (33:40):
mean, there's always much, much on the backlog,
right? No, but we're working on,like, more dashboards, more more
analytics. I think we'restarting to play with AI, right,
like seeing where that can fitinto it to really, kind of help
make things easier. I mean, youknow, a lot of it's
experimenting, right? And it'stalking to customers and
understanding what they need.
You know, more advancednotifications, right? That's
(34:02):
something that we're working on,parts catalogs, working from an
industry standpoint, to reallygo at it. From the OEM
standpoint, of, like, what isthe standardized parts list that
each you know, that a bag tughas, or, like, a specific model,
and then, because that reallygoes across all of our
customers. So it's easier froman ordering standpoint, you
(34:22):
know, coming up with juststandard parts catalog, like the
PDF manuals for that, the photosof the parts for the
technicians, making it easierfor them to identify. These are
all things that, you know, we'vebeen working on for I mean, Rick
and I worked on this back in atSouthwest, like when he was
there, right, going through thewhole supply chain system. And
it's, you know, it's alwaysevolving. Now it's back to
(34:44):
really trying to have thatstandardized list for for our
customers. So, yeah, a lot, alot of things in the works,
ultimately,
Matthew Weitzel (34:53):
where do you see AI playing a role in this?
Eric Baal (34:56):
Yeah, I mean, we'll, we'll see, right? It could go in
a lot of different ways. Yes,on, on that, yeah.
Santosh Nachu (35:02):
I mean, look like I said, I think AI is going to
completely change themaintenance game in terms of
actually fixing GSE assets andplanes anytime soon. Never, say,
Never, right. However, I thinkit goes back to our our thesis
here. Our thesis is techniciansare key to any of these
operations, the more we can helpthem do what they are really
(35:26):
good at, which is fixing things,and, you know, working on their
craft. And if we can kind ofblend into the background, then
that's what is our vision andwhat are what we need to
achieve. And I think AI has agreat role to play in that,
because we believe that in themarket, we're the most
intuitive. And I'm sure everysoftware company you talk to
(35:48):
says that, but the proof's onthe pudding in terms of how
technicians actually use ourproduct and enjoy it, and the
amount of people that will comearound when we go through to
some of these user sessions, etcetera. But there's more to do
there, and I think AI is goingto be a key role, we believe, to
streamline that further. How dowe remove more steps for that
(36:11):
technician to be able to put inthe right information each time
without it being burdensome, andthen that resulting in better
results and outcomes for thebusiness. And so that's kind of
our, our take on it,
Matthew Weitzel (36:24):
yeah, for sure.
And so, all right, we're to thepoint of the podcast where I ask
for a GSE story, and since wehave a panel of people in the
room there who wants to tell agood GSE story, have to go with
the Rick first. Rick does havethe most years in GSE, so he
doesn't seem like the rightchoice.
Rick Agnor (36:47):
Drawing a Blank, right now,
Matthew Weitzel (36:50):
that's all right. Take your time. So this
is something I'd like to do andall the podcasts, because, you
know, it seems like we all have,like, a really good story. Now,
we did hear the the good storyabout the MX four. So maybe this
is an Eric question, becausehe's been in the industry for
quite a long time as well.
Eric Baal (37:09):
Oh, man, all that.
Rick's got all the storiesnormally, you know. So
Matthew Weitzel (37:14):
tell me about a great customer success,
Krystle Wittig (37:17):
yeah, so I can share one from last year. So we
actually onboarded a customerlast year in May, May 1 last
year, and they really werefacing a challenge. They didn't
have all the visibility thatthey were looking for. And we
one of the contingents wasservice, service request, or
(37:38):
taking the line on the ground,handling, the ground handlers
and reporting into the GSE teamon what if a piece of equipment
failed, and they really just hadkind of like a broken process in
that. And so when we implementedwe also implemented with the
contingency of this feature. Soit really was exciting that not
(37:59):
only were we bringing in a newcustomer, but we are also
helping bridge the gap betweenthe ground ops and the GSD team
and bringing them together. Oh,
Matthew Weitzel (38:09):
that's awesome.
See, that's a great story andand a great customer success
story, and I appreciate yousharing that. So let's, let's
kind of just go, I'd like to runthrough just kind of all the
features of of EBIS, because Idon't feel like we've done a
really like, we've kind of likejumped around to all the
features. But if somebody wantto kind of give me a rundown of
(38:30):
just all the features that youoffer within your program, kind
of like a live demo, withoutanybody being able to see it.
Because I think what, what'sgoing to end up happening is,
is, you know, it sounds like tome, from from talking to you
all, there's so much costsavings that can happen with
this product that it'll easilypay for itself over and over and
(38:51):
over again. And I think oncepeople listen to this, they're
going to be very interested inthe product. And what I'd like
to do is just kind of somebodygive me a rundown of all the
features that are involved. Noneof there's a ton of features,
and you may not be able to getto all of them, but just kind of
like a high level of what, likea user could expect from your
product.
Rick Agnor (39:11):
Okay, yeah, great.
I'll take you through that. So Ithink it really starts off with
the equipment. You know, you canload in your fleet, you can have
all the information about yourfleet. You can set the
schedules, the maintenanceschedules. You have all the
history, the parts that are tiedto that, all the work orders.
And then as you start goingthrough, you can set up your
vendors, your locations, yourstock rooms, your inventory
within master parts. As you getinto the parts, you have the
(39:35):
ability to kind of set things ata specific warranty. You can
track course. You can track itthrough POS and orders.
Obviously, we have the warrantyclaims portion, where it makes
it easy to file warranty claimsand recover money that's due to
you based on the contract yousigned with the OEM. And then
what's what's really great aboutthe development that Eric and
(39:56):
his team have done is reallygive you the ability to. You
leverage media, media for theparts. You can access
illustrated parts list manuals.
You could actually take picturesof a specific issue. And then
you have the ability to push outtechnical service bulletins as
they come out from the OEM. Youcan really deliver those TSBs
specifically to that asset, nomatter where it's located. And
(40:20):
you could do all of those unitsat one time through that
technical service bulletin, justdo a quick push. And you can
also see in trend, if there werecritical TSBs, where they're at
in that process. Are they 20%complete? Are they 10% complete,
and which cities haven'tcompleted them? You know? So you
really have that ability to seeend to end that workflow. But I
(40:42):
think one of the bigger piecesis really understanding
productivity. How many peopleyou need to do that job, how
productive they are, what aresome of the roadblocks? Is it
and not being able to get theirparts on time, not be able to
get the asset, you can reallystart peeling it back and
understanding what's working andwhat's not. The other thing we
work on is the PMI efficiency,where it really gets into how
(41:03):
good are you doing yourmaintenance, and what's failing
within two weeks after it leavesyour shop, what's your average
days to failure? What's youraverage cost on that unit?
What's your warranty cost onthat unit? So as you start
understanding how well thevehicle performs, let's say your
average time to failure is 90days, but your maintenance
schedule set at 120 you're nevergoing to get ahead of that
(41:25):
maintenance failure. Youactually have to understand when
it's failing on average, andthen optimize your schedule.
Whether you're doing that basedon hours or you're doing it
based on days. It doesn'tmatter. You just need to be
ahead of it. So I think as youstart understanding kind of
where those pain points are, youknow when it fails, and how to
get ahead of that and design outthat failure, I think, is what's
(41:46):
what's so nice about EBIS, itactually tells you what's
failing. You can make a change,and then you can actually see
the needles move, and you canactually see, or is that unit
having less failures, lesslabor, less parts, and you can
really start optimizing thoseschedules. So I think it's a
it's a great enterprise assetmanagement system with the
really good productivity, partsflow, warranty flow, being able
(42:10):
to track course, and it's easyto use, I think, is probably
the, the nicest aspect of it.
You can train a technician inabout 45 minutes. You can do it
on any device, whether it'sAndroid or iOS, Mac, desktop. It
doesn't matter what you'rerunning it on. So I think you're
seeing a lot of mobile hardwaregoing out. We're seeing a lot of
the iPads. 10 inch iPads is kindof the hardware of choice. So
(42:34):
you really kind of have a mobileworkforce now with those same
capabilities.
Matthew Weitzel (42:40):
That's kind of Yeah. That show yeah. That's
incredible. I mean, it justyeah, like I said before, before
I asked you the question. Itjust seems like you could find
so many ways to save money anddefinitely easily get the cost
back of whatever EBIS is, justjust in warranty claims alone,
it almost feels like Yeah. Imean, it's, it's really, it's
(43:03):
really great. So, so Iappreciate that. And then, do we
have any closing remarks,anything that I've missed and we
haven't talked about?
Santosh Nachu (43:11):
Yeah, I think in closing, I mean, we're, I would
say this, and I think ingeneral, there's plenty of
solutions out there, absolutely.
And there's, you know,enterprise asset management. Put
it in Google, and I'm sureyou'll have a list. But I think
a key part of this isunderstanding that it's the
tool, the data, and evenunderstanding, you know, the
(43:34):
nuances of it, right? Like, oneof the things that we often talk
about is when you buy, buy kindof a one size fit all solution.
You have just a whole bunch ofuser defined fields that you
have to go define. And so ifyou've never really set up a
system trying to achieve some ofthese outcomes that are your,
you know, our customers aretrying to achieve, you can spend
a lot of time setting up thewrong data for really, you know,
(43:56):
years, and then you're dealingwith that dirty data, because
actually quite unusable. And soI think our focus in this arena
and for these specific use casesunder the umbrella enterprise
asset management, but given thatwe're able to really set up the
system for that sole purpose orobjectives within, within GSE,
(44:20):
and so I think, you know,that's, that's probably my
biggest message is it's easy tojust look at individual
elements, you know, we can talkabout feature sheets and just
kind of like we did the rundownhere of all the capabilities and
modules. But I think you have tolook at it holistically and
understand, you know, what doesit take to actually get started
(44:40):
on a system that's robust andthen being able to track the
data that you should be trackingso that you can get to those
metrics that Rick talked about,ultimately, how do you set all
of that up, and then how do youleverage that to actually take
action in your operation? Ithink that's really the. Uh,
these discrete parts that cometogether quite beautifully. And
(45:02):
I think that's, that's reallywhat, you know, we want to share
with with your audience,
Matthew Weitzel (45:08):
yeah. And again, it's just, you know,
being specific to GSE definitelyhelps. Because, I mean, the
worst thing in the world is youfields, you know, I think we all
know that. So nobody wants tosee that on their screen. They
want it all done for them. Andwith the amount of years that
that Eric has put into thisproduct, I doubt that there's a
(45:28):
lot of those user defined fieldsthat that any kind of ground
support equipment person wouldhave to put in there. Oh
Eric Baal (45:34):
yeah, no, no, we've we've got all the fields, trust
me on that. You got all thefields?
Matthew Weitzel (45:38):
Yeah, yeah.
You've been asked for thembefore, this would not be a new
request. So, so that's awesome.
Well, I just really appreciateyou guys coming on today, and
just, it's great to learn aboutthis product, and kind of diving
a little bit deeper into intoEBIS, and just seeing what you
guys have to offer. And then howshould, like, if you know, if
(46:02):
anyone's interested, how shouldthey go about getting, like, a
demo of the software and talkingto you guys?
Santosh Nachu (46:07):
Yeah, first of all, thank you so much for
having us on. You know, I'vebeen, I've been consuming your
content here as I try to learnmyself. And so really appreciate
what you do and bringing on someof the great guests that you
have. So really, be really happyto be part of this as well.
Yeah, absolutely. You'rewelcome. And yeah, in order to
(46:30):
answer your question as to whereyou can find us the best places
to get on ww.ebiscloud.com, andyou'll have a good sense for
exactly what we offer, and get ahold of us. And you can ask for
a demo request right there. Butyou know, we're approachable. We
are happy to share my email,Rick's email, Crystal's email,
(46:50):
Eric's email, and you can reachus directly. So we're happy to
and you can anybody's more thanwelcome to connect with me on
LinkedIn. I'm sure with thepronunciation of the day. I
could spell it out as well.
We'll put that in. Yeah, Iwasn't gonna
Matthew Weitzel (47:06):
go. I wasn't gonna go down that route again.
But so are you all gonna be atany upcoming conferences or
expos that people can see youat?
Santosh Nachu (47:14):
Yeah, great question. Yeah. We'll be at GSE
Expo in Lisbon here coming up inSeptember, I believe. So it's
always a great show. It's gonnabe a big show. Yes, very big
show. Oh, and then, actually,we'll, in June, before that,
I'll be there at GHI with one ofmy other colleagues, Ken
Mulhall, so we'll be going andtalking to a few customers there
(47:35):
as well, in Toronto. So Oh,
Matthew Weitzel (47:36):
great. We can meet in person. I will be, I
will be at the GHI Americasconference as well. And we're
gonna do, we're gonna do a panelup there about electrification.
See y'all to come and join thatpanel and check that out. And
yeah, so look forward to seeingyou there. And again, I just
appreciate you all coming ontoday and definitely reach out
(48:00):
to the team at EBIS if you'reinterested in learning more, but
I think that'll that'll wrap itup for this episode of the GSE
podcast. Thank you all. Thankyou. Thank you. Thank you for
tuning in to this episode of theGSE podcast. We hope you found
it informative and engaging. Ifthis episode resonated with you,
(48:22):
please share it with yourcolleagues and peers in the
ground support equipmentcommunity. Your support is
invaluable to us. We'dappreciate it if you could take
a moment to rate and review ourpodcast. Your feedback not only
encourages us, but also helpsexpand our reach within the GSE
community. Keep an eye out formore episodes as we continue to
explore the dynamic world ofground operations, bringing you
(48:44):
the latest trends, insights andstories from the industry, thank
you for listening to the GSEpodcast until We meet again,
stay grounded and keep pushingforward.
Unknown (49:02):
You
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