AvQuotes.com uses the Internet to match people seeking maintenance with more than 50 maintenance facilities. It’s a simple, logical idea that apparently never occurred to anyone before Sheldon Early and his wife went to lunch one afternoon. “Six years ago I was at Stevens Aviation as vice president of business development,” Early, AvQuotes president, told AIN. “I had a sales staff out trying to quote maintenance jobs all the time, but they faced a problem when calling on a flight department: everyone was out flying. It was very frustrating.
“I was sitting in my office looking at a map of the U.S. thinking about hiring independent sales reps in specific geographic regions. As I was mulling over the idea of paying them a referral fee for any leads they generate, my wife called and suggested we meet for lunch,” he recounted. “Over lunch I told her about my idea and she simply asked, ‘Why don’t you do it on the Internet instead?’ It didn’t take long to come up with the idea for AvQuotes.”
Early said he asked Stevens Aviation management if they would have any interest in it to be sure he wouldn’t be stepping on their toes. They gave him their blessing, he left the company and then started AvQuotes. “Stevens was one of the first MROs to sign up,” Early said.
“From the beginning the plan was to keep it very simple,” he explained. “An operator goes to the Web site, fills out a form, such as an RVSM installation quote, and that’s it.” Once the bid request is entered, the system sends out descriptive information to more than 50 maintenance providers (see box at left), giving them the opportunity to purchase the request for $100.
This year AvQuotes has already received 180 aircraft maintenance or refurbishment solicitations. The percentages remain fairly consistent: 80 percent are jets and 20 percent are turboprops. The breakdown also remains fairly constant. Maintenance requests run at about 21 percent, avionics at 41 percent, exterior work at 14 percent, interior at 8 percent and a combination of work accounts for about 16 percent. The company has received more than 1,150 quote inquiries since its inception in January 2000, and about half result in signed contracts. Beginning in January, a total of 14 of the service providers began offering RVSM solutions on 44 different aircraft types.
In addition to saving the operator money by receiving competitive bids, AvQuotes is a time saver. According to Early, the average time required to solicit and receive a quote is three to four weeks using more conventional methods. Statistically, AvQuotes eliminates about a week from the process, not to mention the time spent placing telephone calls.
“We spent a lot of our time working with the various MRO salesmen in the beginning to get them to review the offerings,” Early said. “With more than 50 providers we feel comfortable that the owners will get two to three responses. Now we spend more of our time presenting the service to aircraft owners.”
The company hired Christa Rice as director of sales and marketing late last year. “Christa grew up in aviation. She has more than 10 years of experience, from customer service to being a captain on a Learjet,” Early said. “She’s very familiar with the industry.”
Early said it surprises him how many big corporations don’t use the service to get multiple quotes on big-ticket items such as paint jobs, interiors, engine overhauls, avionics mods and RVSM. “I understand why they might be less inclined to shop around for routine maintenance because that’s a very personal relationship between the operator and a shop,” he said. “But you’d think operators would be flocking to us for big-ticket, rarely done work for multiple quotes to keep their costs down. We’re working on spreading the word, and that’s where Christa will be helpful.”
Any owner/operator of a turbine aircraft can use the free system. The only obligation is to tell AvQuotes if you finally award a contract to someone contacted through their service. The reason is that when a service provider purchases the request it receives the aircraft owner’s contact information via e-mail. At that point AvQuotes is no longer involved in the process.
“It’s just a check-and-balance system,” Early said. “The MROs are very good about letting us know if they get a contract, but we like to hear from our users about how they liked the service, if it was timely and if they were successful in finding an MRO they liked. They’re never obligated to accept any offer.”
In addition to the $100 from each MRO that chooses to buy a request, AvQuotes gets a flat $750 fee from any MRO that is awarded a contract as a result of a lead, regardless of how substantial the quote may be. “My intent was to make this very affordable for the MRO to get qualified leads and to keep it low enough so aircraft owners don’t feel there’s going to be a huge fee tacked onto their bid to cover it,” Early said.
Another issue that troubled Early was dissimilar bid formats. “I saw the frustration that operators had when getting quotes from different MROs,” he said. “It was like comparing apples to oranges. My long-term goal is to format AvQuotes so every MRO will give the same information in the same format. I think operators should be able to easily compare quotes to be able to make an informed decision.”
Early said another goal is to establish and coordinate bidder’s conferences for major jobs. He would like to have a customer position the aircraft at a specific location, day and time, and then send out the information to all the MROs so they have an opportunity to see the aircraft up close and get a copy of the requirements. “This sort of thing works really well for higher-level projects,” he said. “If you’re talking about an $800,000 project, for instance, MROs are going to send somebody to take a look and make a bid.”
The next scheduled refinement to AvQuotes will be integrating it with existing maintenance-tracking systems. “The idea is that when an aircraft’s ‘do list’ comes up with a maintenance item, the software will give the operator an option to automatically list it with AvQuotes for a bid,” he said. “We hope to be integrated with the first maintenance-tracking system during the third quarter of this year.”
