Why Software Giants are not a Solution to Legacy ERP for Aircraft Distributions and MROs

Trident Aerospace and Electronics (TAE) was established in 2018 by industry veterans with over 30 years of experience. They maintain a simple philosophy: to supply necessary quality components to their customers. Specializing in hard-to-find and obsolete parts, TAE’s sales team has the experience and resources to fulfill requests that other suppliers cannot. Their talent, expertise, and core values have facilitated rapid growth – TAE is one of the fastest growing companies in the aerospace industry.

Recently, our team had the pleasure of interviewing Mary Pellegrino, President of TAE, following their successful migration from NetSuite to ERP.aero. To begin, I asked Mary to tell us about TAE and her views on how ERP solutions can be helpful for business:

We strive to be a one-stop shop for our customers, and we do not stop until all parts on the RFQ are quoted, regardless of whether they are obsolete, old, or hard to find. Our team consists of experienced and dedicated sales and purchasing professionals, but to fulfill our promise we need adequate tools like cloud-based ERP software to perform at our best.

Historically, ERP software in the aerospace distribution industry was heavily dominated by Quantum and Pentagon, whose software entails high implementation costs and challenges with maintenance, ownership, customization, and scaling over time.

Most of our team comes from small to mid-sized companies in Aerospace Distribution and has experience using Quantum, Pentagon, and the like. So, when starting TAE, we signed with NetSuite – a cloud-based, customizable ERP/CRM system by software giant Oracle.

In their search for an ERP solution, Mary told us they were looking for a provider that would be able to customize for a diversified business like theirs:

NetSuite promised flexibility, adaptability, and easy customization. However, to configure even simple features was cost prohibitive. During the implementation, we became discouraged by the customer support, which was often unavailable and stunted our ability to operate. We knew we were in a bad spot and had to do something. We needed to get an ERP system up and running that would allow us to run our business effectively. So, we searched for an alternative solution, which – thankfully – brought us to ERP.aero.

With twelve months still left on their contract with NetSuite, TAE made the decision to switch to ERP.aero and stop using NetSuite altogether. Why?

It was painful to come to terms with the fact that we were actually better off switching solutions and paying for both through the remainder of our NetSuite contract. But there was no way we could continue compromising our ability to run and scale our business due to the serious issues we were having with NetSuite.

While NetSuite may be a successful solution for some large companies, it’s not unusual for small to mid-sized companies to experience what has been coined “the NetSuite nightmare.” NetSuite has been designed for businesses generally, and though it is extremely flexible and customizable, those customizations cost enormous amounts of time and money if a business wishes to receive the attention from Oracle necessary to get the ERP solution they want.

Alternatively, ERP.aero was developed specifically for businesses in aviation, and our team has decades of experience working in aerospace as well as computer science and mathematics. Many of our team members come from a background working at companies where they had experienced ERP problems with incumbent ERP systems accepted by the industry (like the problems experienced by TAE with NetSuite). These are precisely the issues that brought us together to build a better solution – one that would eliminate the ERP nightmares of our past and support small to mid-sized companies in our industry with top-of-the-line ERP that uses the best technologies available.

I asked Mary if she could describe her experience so far with ERP.aero after the migration:

I could not be happier with our decision to switch to ERP.aero. The software is clearly thought-through and offers a purposeful solution that covers all our operations, manages customer relationships, integrates with catalogs and other software we use, and even utilizes AI for meaningful business intelligence. The team listened to our needs and made the implementation and onboarding feel easy, adjusting the software to accommodate our diversified products. This is a company that cares about the success of the businesses they serve.

To conclude, I asked Mary to share her takeaways going through the COVID-19 pandemic, industry crisis, and shutdowns:

The business is changing, for sure… The pandemic and shutdowns led us to depend less on a physical office location and instead work remotely. We also saw a lot of organizational change, which meant that the ability to scale quickly was crucial. Finally, it has become more important than ever before for businesses to know their customers, using customer tracking, leads, and predictive analytics to make smart business decisions during massive supply chain delays and challenges. Obviously, all these issues can be largely solved with a highly scalable and customizable ERP platform that’s backed by a team interested and willing to support their customers. These are the reasons we chose ERP.aero over NetSuite.

I thanked Mary for her time and for sharing TAE’s story. Not only does their story illuminate common problems in our industry with ERP giants, but it also helps us to learn how we can help TAE and others get exactly what they want from their ERP. We are glad to have been able to show TAE that implementing and using an ERP system can be a positive experience with beneficial outcomes. We know that TAE is growing quickly, and we’re looking forward to continuing our work together as we scale the software to keep pace with their growth. And it’s great to know that our software and our team are providing the kind of solution we set out to provide.

We want to hear what you think: please share your thoughts in the ERP.aero community at https://community.erp.aero.