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InsideBigData interviews BoldIQ CEO

InsideBigData Interview: Roei Ganzarski, President and CEO of BoldIQ by Daniel Gutierrez

 

I recently caught up with Roei Ganzarski, President and CEO of BoldIQ, to talk about the “smart cities” revolution taking place that’s powered by IoT technology. Roei is responsible for the overall growth and business of the company as well as day-to-day operations, engineering and development. Prior to joining BoldIQ, he was with the Boeing family of companies for thirteen years in continuously increasing roles of responsibility. His last role at Boeing was Chief Customer Officer for Boeing’s Flight Services division where he led all worldwide customer and market facing organizations and was responsible for revenue growth and customer service. His other experiences prior to Boeing include private investment banking, corporate finance, advertising, and the military. He is a graduate of Wharton’s Advanced Management Program, earned an MBA from the University of Washington, and a BA in Economics from The University of Haifa. Roei sits on the advisory boards of Zealyst and the Washington Technology Industry Association board; and is chairman of the global business advisory board at the University of Washington Foster School of Business.

insideBIGDATA: What is the biggest obstacle smart cities must overcome before becoming widespread by the projected year 2025?

Roei Ganzarski: Two obstacles:

  1. Interconnectivity between the various “smart” elements. Having smart cars operate separately from the smart grid, separately from smart homes, and separately from smart buildings may not add any smartness to the city. In fact, it could create more chaos and havoc. It is imperative that the various elements are intertwined.
  2. Competitive nature of firms and even government entities. The true smart city will be run in an efficient manner utilizing resources to the best of the city’s needs (i.e. its residents). To do this, companies will have to work together and so will government entities. Take transportation for example: if multiple companies each compete to be the ‘main’ means of “efficient transport” then you have by definition, over capacity in the city thus not efficient or smart. Moreover, if the city department of transport is not willing to relook at their transport ‘kingdom’ for the betterment of the city, that too drives inefficiency – not smart.

insideBIGDATA: What city will emerge as the first truly ‘smart’ city?

Roei Ganzarski: Singapore is an obvious leader. The government there controls everything and is not afraid to impose short term pain on companies or government units in return for long term gains like becoming a smart city. They have a high likelihood of “proving the point” of the value of having a smart city.

insideBIGDATA: How is the on-demand economy spurring this movement?

Roei Ganzarski: The On-Demand economy is driving the need for operations (be they for profit businesses or government organizations) to become demand driven. On-demand means a consumer or customer can get what they want, at the time and place they want it, and only have to ask for it when they are ready to ask and not before. While this is the customer facing aspect, the operator aspect (the organization that needs to provide the service or product) must be demand-driven in order to serve the on-demand need in an efficient manner that enables scale, growth, and self-sustainment. Being demand-driven means having the ability to utilize your resources at the highest level possible and do so in real time in a dynamic and ever changing environment. Note that this assumes organizations have finite resources to do their work. This must be viewed differently from the so-called ‘sharing economy’ where an operation will use someone else’s resources because they are so inefficient, they have spare time or capacity on their resources. The sharing-economy in fact thrives on the inefficiency of the current environment. The smart city will not have any sharing economy as part of it because the only resources being used will be done so efficiently to meet demand. There will be no ‘spare’ resources that are used to share.

insideBIGDATA: We see cities becoming smarter/more connected with on-demand transportation, food, shipping, etc. Which industries and services do you expect to see revolutionized next?

Roei Ganzarski: Healthcare!

insideBIGDATA: With 2025 just under a decade away, what are your predictions for the advancement of IoT/on-demand/smart cities in 2017?

Roei Ganzarski: The next few years will have a lot of IoT ‘things’ being created as individual products. A driverless car; a drone; a smart washing machine; a smart bbq; etc. However not enough work will be done on the integration of these in the next few years (since it is less ‘sexy’ and creates less news) and thus the adoption of these will be slower than what people anticipate.

Click to read the full interview online

Software Can Help Flight Schedulers with Complex Decision-Making

Software Can Help Flight Schedulers with Complex Decision-Making

Ensuring that flight schedules are optimized to customer needs, internal resources and operational and legal requirements, is one of the most challenging aspects of running any aviation operation – and that’s before factoring in dynamic, real-time disruptions or the desire for sustained profitability.

“The complexities and real-time dynamic nature of on-demand aviation operations are significant, and much more than many other industries we have seen,” said Roei Ganzarski, president and CEO of BoldIQ, which makes real-time schedule-optimization and disruption-recovery software. He will be presenting on this topic during a free, Jeppesen-sponsored webinar on Dec. 14.

“Creating a schedule that meets demand, satisfies all legal and physical constraints, and at the same time utilizes resources in the most efficient way while meeting internal needs, is a difficult problem, even if all of the key variables remain static, which of course they don’t,” he added.

As any flight department team member knows, many variables hardly ever remain static, and this usually presents the biggest challenges when adjusting plans on a day-to-day basis. While schedulers and dispatchers are incredibly capable, they’re also human. Simplifying the problems, such as factoring out a variable or two, to make them easier to solve, means sacrificing effectiveness and efficiency.

This is where software can help, said Ganzarski. Advancements in technology and complex algorithms can provide schedulers and other decision-makers with solutions on how to practically optimize operations – both initially and during disruptions. By understanding more about how best to combine human expertise and science to create a practical, optimized operation, aircraft operators can maximize their resources and gain a competitive advantage.

For an in-depth look at the science behind complex problem-solving and how software can help flight departments maximize their decision-making process, join NBAA and Ganzarski for the webinar titled “Decision Making in Complex Dynamic Environments: Experienced Human vs. Sophisticated Software.”

Click to read on the NBAA site and register for the webinar

BoldIQ CEO explores the future of smartcities with IoTHub

How we need to prepare for smart cities

Key sectors and challenges identified by IT executive. By Peter Gutierrez

Smart city technologies hold many promises for its citizens, and for one IT executive, the areas of transportation and healthcare are likely to have the most impact.

“Real-time operational optimisation of driverless transport modes will enable a move to more of a true on-demand transportation system that includes everything from single cars to buses to trains that are linked based on real-time demand,” said Roei Ganzarski, CEO of asset optimisation startup BoldIQ.

“Right now, you have significant overcapacity – taxis, Ubers, Lyfts, buses, paratransit, and trains. Live data coming in from IoT and from users will combine with rapid dynamic software to allow a holistic solution that is better for the user and the city as a whole, enabling more transport with fewer resources.”

He told IoT Hub that smart healthcare will further enable pre-emptive and proactive treatment of patients.

“It could be monitoring for someone with known issues such as a smarter pacemaker, diabetes, allergies; someone in a high risk category, such as a family history of stroke or heart issues; and everyday use without any specific risk,” he explained.

“Think of data streaming in real-time from these various wearables and implants combined with optimisation software that can schedule resources in real-time based on the data.

“A wearable could send data to a central analysis machine that determines there is an imminent risk of stroke or heart attack, and an automated central dispatch could then schedule an immediate movement of a doctor or nurse with the relevant equipment to that person, therefore shortening – if not eliminating – the time from incident to treatment.”

The barriers to a smart city utopia

Ganzarski conceded that there needed to be a shift in citizen mentality if these sorts of innovations are to be successful.

“Consumers need to understand that if they want the level of service, speed and proactive support regarding their lives, there will be certain privacies they need to give up,” he said.

“To get pre-emptive medical attention, the person needs to be willing to wear the ‘thing’ and have the data transmitted to the central analysis hub.

“The ability to share resources will also have to be a central theme. As long as anyone with cars is allowed to create a transport company in order to make money, there will be overcapacity.”

He said that if left unchecked, certain markets will become oversaturated to the point where no-one makes any money, because each successive entrant believes that can “do it better”.

“Look at taxi companies and ride sharing companies – both are competing for the same consumer with too many cars on the road.”

Solve today’s problems first

Ganzarski said that existing inefficiencies in asset utilisation have to be addressed, as smart city technologies won’t solve these fundamental issues.

“On one hand, there are industries with overcapacity of resources, like transportation. This creates waste at the resource level, operation level, and in society, causing traffic congestion, pollution, and so on,” he said.

“This man-made condition is because the operators in play do not run their operations efficiently, thus creating an attractive reason for others to enter the market.

“On the other hand, there are industries with resource shortages like pilots in aviation or nurses in healthcare. If there were to run their operations efficiently, then perhaps there would be no shortage and everyone gets their services when and where they’re required.”

Ganzarski said that a city’s leadership needs to decide what they want as their future, and setup the organisation, structure and policies to support it.

“For example, if a city wants to have smart transportation, they can’t say that and then at the same time allow multiple taxi companies, ride sharing companies and others to all operate within their city limits,” he explained.

“Either take it seriously, make the tough decisions and lead, or don’t pretend that becoming a smart city is the target.”

Click the read the online article

GeekWire shares BoldIQ CEO’s 3 principles for managing everyday work and life

Working Geek: BoldIQ CEO Roei Ganzarski’s 3 principles for managing everyday work and life by MONICA NICKELSBURG

As a father, president and CEO of BoldIQ, and a member of the UW Global Business Advisory and WTIA boards, Roei Ganzarski’s time is in high demand.

At BoldIQ, a Seattle software company that crunches real-time data to help organizations optimize business operations, Ganzarski focuses on five key areas. He works on defining BoldIQ’s long-term vision, business development, daily operations, scalability, and marketing.

How does Ganzarski define his role? “I create great headaches for my team,” he said.

Ganzarski practices “inbox-zero” religiously and makes family time a high priority. To keep it all in balance, he has developed three guiding principles.

He shared his tips with us for this installment of Working Geek, a regular GeekWire feature. Continue reading for his answers to our questionnaire.

Current Location: “Bellevue, WA. Right across the street from Crossroads Mall. Great food all around.”

Computer types: “Combination of desktop and laptops. We are windows based – all PCs. With our choice, we are supporting another local company, Microsoft. :)”

Mobile devices: “To each their own. I personally have a Samsung S7 Edge. Love it.”

Favorite apps, cloud services and software tools: “Glympse app (I use it every day to let my family know about my commute); Google News & Weather app (to keep up with the world); Starbucks app (to get my daily dose of caffeine); WhatsApp (Overall communications. There is nothing like it!); Paymo cloud service for time tracking on specific projects as needed; everything else is pretty standard.”

Describe your workspace. Why does it work for you? “L-shape desk with two monitors right on the corner (+ the laptop screen) and snug against two walls with windows. This provides me with great coverage of all my data on the three screens and opens up the floor space as opposed to having some sort of desk blocking the way and separating me from my team.”

Your best advice for managing everyday work and life? “I live my life and work with three guiding principles:

  • Always remember where you came from and where you are going
  • Only dead fish go with the flow
  • The light at the end of the tunnel could be a train

These three guidelines help me prepare, be proactive, and react to the various situations I find myself in, be it at home or work. And do it all with a passion!”

Your preferred social network? How do you use it for business/work? “My preferred social network is getting together with my friends for coffee or a great BBQ. And if I can’t see them in person I use WhatsApp to keep in touch. The rest (i.e. Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook) I use just for sharing work PR type things or posting that we are looking for new great team members to join.”

Current number of unanswered emails in your inbox? “At the end of each day = 0! I am very disciplined with my inbox. I use it as my to-do list. I either answer the mail, forward the mail if someone else needs to care for it, or I file it when done. Note that my initial answer may be an acknowledgment of the mail and I still have work to do on it, but it is at least initially answered. Discipline and my mobile phone are two things that help keep this intact. Also, a reason I like to come in early to the office to tend to the emails that came in the evening before and overnight.”

Number of appointments/meetings on your calendar this week? “15 and one of the days this week I am traveling to California for a customer meeting.”

How do you run meetings? “No phones or other distractions; one conversation at a time (no side conversations or whispering while someone is talking); everyone can voice their opinions openly with full transparency; everyone gets a voice but not everyone gets a vote.”

Everyday work uniform? “Full suit and tie…NOT. I have found that feeling comfortable allows me to do better work. Clothes, in fact, do not make the man. It is the person that makes clothes work. On any given day, you will find me in jeans, crocs canvas shoes (very comfortable) and a flannel shirt (or UW Husky hoodie).”

How do you make time for family? “I make time. Priority and discipline. It is easy if you decide to do it. It is your decision how to balance – make it, and live it. Don’t give yourself or others excuses. Your decision to miss a kid’s recital or game, your decision to take your kid to their sports practice, your decision to be home every evening for a family dinner. It is not right or wrong, but it is your decision. As the company leader, it is my role to enable my employees to maintain a healthy balance (which they have to be able to define for themselves) and I have to maintain one for myself and live it by example. Both during times of calm and during urgent hectic times.”

Best stress reliever? How do you unplug? “My kids. They make me laugh and they make me cry. But they always make everything else seem small and doable. Nothing like sitting around the dinner table with them and my wife and talking about their day.”

What are you listening to? “Right now…my employees talking about some feature they are working on…”

Daily reads? Favorite sites and newsletters? “I go through multiple elements of the Google News & Weather app. Easy and regularly updated. I also get various headline feeds from the industries we are in.”

Book on your nightstand (or e-reader)? “Sylvia Rafael: The Life and Death of a Mossad Spy

Night owl or early riser? What are your sleep patterns? “I am up at 6 a.m. Take my eldest daughter to her high school bus at 6:35 a.m. In the office by 7:20 a.m.”

Where do you get your best ideas? “Everyone and anyone who will share them. Customers, employees, friends, family. My ears are always open to good ideas that when applied to our company, our family, or my life, could be great.”

Whose work style would you want to learn more about or emulate? “There is no one person I would want to emulate. I try to learn from each leader I meet, be they a leader at work, home, their community, etc. And I try to see what things work for them and what don’t and why. I then try to apply to my own style as I grow.”

Click to read on GeekWire

BoldIQ quoted in Fleetowner’s “Trump, trucking, and the outlook for 2017”

By: Sean Kilcarr in Trucks at Work

Lots of change may be on the menu for trucking in 2017 as economic trends and federal policy efforts could make further alterations to the U.S. freight market – everything from canceling regulations to the adoption of new strategies for meeting customer demands.

“When you move 70% of the nation’s domestic freight there are few issues out there that we are not a part of either directly or indirectly,” Chris Spear, president and CEO of the American Trucking Associations (ATA) trade group, explained in a recent phone interview with me. “Tax reform, trade, and infrastructure: we have a role to play in all of those issues.”

For starters, he noted that the 10-year $1 trillion infrastructure proposal put on the table by President-elect Trump could be a big positive for the industry in a number of ways.

“Infrastructure is our industry’s lifeblood: We need good infrastructure and getting such a package passed is key right out of the gate,” Spear said. “At least as proposed, that package will likely be tied to tax reform.”

Sandeep Kar, global vice president for mobility at Frost & Sullivan, added that few industries will face the impact — whether net positive or negative — of a Trump presidency as strongly as trucking, which is a leading indicator of economic activity and typically feels the effects of economic swings and fluctuations well before many other industries or sectors.

“While the effect of Trump administration’s legislative actions will be experienced primarily by the U.S. commercial vehicle industry, global market participants and markets will have much to note and consider,” he noted in a recent report.

Roei Ganzarski, a former Boeing executive and now CEO BoldIQ, which provides optimization software for asset scheduling, added another economic twist to trucking’s outlook where the economy is concerned: the rise of “demand-driven” freight transportation service.

“Consumers or customers want to get what they want, at the time and place they want it, and only want to ask for it [delivery service] when they are ready to ask and not before,” he explained to me recently. “Thus the transportation operator must be ‘demand-driven’ in order to serve such on-demand needs in an efficient manner that enables scale, growth, and profitability.”

That “on-demand economy” is also shortening planning cycles and significantly shortening decision making time frames. “This means the need for intelligent, data driven, and real-time decision making is critical,” especially in trucking, Ganzarski said.

He added that this “demand-driven” view assumes that trucking companies and other freight service providers have finite resources to do their work.

“This must be viewed differently from the so-called ‘sharing economy’ where an operation will use someone else’s resources because they are so inefficient, they have spare time or capacity on their resources,” Ganzarski pointed out.

That will lead to more consolidation and even elimination of some transport companies that cannot adapt fast enough to the change, he said.

Click here to read the full story on Fleetowner.com

BoldIQ featured in Seattle Times

Bellevue startup BoldIQ gets Boeing boost for business-aviation tool

 

A small startup scores big with a deal in which it developed a business-aviation system that Boeing’s Jeppesen division offers to its customers.

BoldIQ, a growing Bellevue software company, scored a big deal this winter when Boeing debuted a business-aviation system that uses the small company’s technology.

Boeing’s Jeppesen division launched a new operating system that helps business-airplane companies keep their planes fully staffed and running on time. The cloud-based system, known as Jeppesen Operator, puts flight scheduling, crew management, trip planning, pricing and many other tasks into one place.

“Today in the current state, without a solution like this, what operators have to do is acquire and maintain and use multiple systems that are disparate from each other,” said Mike DiDonato, director of industry services at Jeppesen.

With Jeppesen Operator, a business airline would use BoldIQ’s scheduling software to allow them to plan for flight crews and planes. But the biggest draw is yet to come.

BoldIQ specializes in optimizing scheduling using an automated system that recognizes priorities and makes sure everything runs smoothly. It automatically readjusts personnel and jobs if a pilot calls in sick or a flight is grounded or something else pops up.

It can reschedule hundreds of factors in minutes.

That optimization functionality is being added to Jeppesen Operator and is expected to launch in early 2018.

The Bellevue company has 21 employees and is hiring six more, partly bolstered by the Boeing deal. The contract gives it an extra layer of credibility, BoldIQ CEO Roei Ganzarski said.

“It also helps with market access,” he said. “What we’re able to tap into, we could never do that on our own.”

BoldIQ makes scheduling software for aviation and ground-transportation companies, and is developing technology for the health-care industry.

The Operator software, which launched in November, now has six business-aviation company customers, and may branch into commercial airlines to help with cargo planning and other unscheduled areas.

Click here to read the full story online

BoldIQ and Veterans Day

Affordable code schools would help vets fill in-demand tech jobs.

Washington state has thousands of unemployed veterans and an estimated 20,000 unfilled technology jobs. Cost is the most prohibitive aspect for many veterans interested in learning to code.

Daniel Browning was a network administrator with six years of experience working under extremely challenging conditions. His experience, though, wasn’t enough to get him a job, even in tech talent-starved Seattle. That’s because Browning’s experience was in the U.S. Army, not the private sector.

Photo: Daniel Browning, a veteran who works at Bellevue startup BoldIQ, speaks during the Washington Technology Industry Association’s FullConTech conference. Browing is a Code Fellows graduate.

The unemployment rate for veterans in Washington state is 3.8 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. It’s slightly higher among veterans who served after Sept. 11, 2001, at 4.1 percent.

Meanwhile, Washington’s economy suffers as a result of an estimated 20,000 unfilled technology jobs that prevent promising companies from growing and succeeding.

The state’s thousands of unemployed veterans could help fill the need, and Washington coding schools – which train basic computer science skills in a matter of weeks or months, not years – could help prepare veterans for technology roles.

While that may sound like a simple solution, both the veterans and the code schools have encountered major challenges in making it happen.

Recruiters want Stanford grads

The military teaches many of the soft skills required in technology roles, including attention to detail and working on teams, and veterans can often easily transition into the jobs with some technical training. Plus, many have obtained the security clearances necessary for government projects in the technology industry.

The tech industry has started to take notice. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos earlier this year pledged to hire 25,000 veteran and military spouses at the company, including training 10,000 veterans and spouses for cloud computing roles. Microsoft and many other technology companies including EMC and SpaceX have initiatives for hiring veterans, too.

The trouble is – even with deliberate measures, such as veteran-only job fairs – the skills veterans learn often don’t satisfy the region’s technology recruiters. There can be a stigma against hiring candidates who didn’t graduate from one of a handful of four-year universities.

As demand for technology talent continues to grow, though, companies are having to consider candidates whose backgrounds look a little different than the traditional Stanford graduate.

Dozens of code schools have formed to respond to the industry’s insatiable demand for programmers. Seattle has at least 12 code schools. Nearly all of them have opened in the past five years.

“A lot of people are often overlooked for a job they can do,” said Sonny Tosco, a recent graduate of Bellevue-based Coding Dojo’s California program.

The son of Filipino immigrants, Tosco wanted to be in the military from the time he was 4 years old. He graduated from prestigious military academy West Point and served in the Army until 2012, when he moved home to Silicon Valley.

“I was having an existential crisis and questioning my purpose outside of the military,” he said. “So I decided to go all-in.”

Tosco founded a company called Limelight, a mobile app that allow users to see others on a map and ask for a photo of their location. The app was inspired by an experience he had in 2012 during the Arab Spring, when he wanted information from people on the ground. He spent two years on the project before giving up on it and enrolling in a coding school. He graduated in early November and already has another plan for a startup.

Veterans, he said, are ideal technology industry entrepreneurs and job candidates.

“From a young point in your career in the Army, you’re already bestowed responsibility, leading people and managing resources,” Tosco said. “I was 28 and chief of operations for a 300-member organization. It was like being CEO for deployment. I don’t often see people that young having responsibility in the corporate world.”

Coding schools can help veterans like Tosco supplement the job skills they learn in the military with fundamental computer science skills. But for many veterans interested in learning to code, cost is the most prohibitive aspect.

The G.I. Bill problem

When Army veteran John Shaff decided he wanted to use his military experience for a technology career, he didn’t want to go back to school for four years.

But the G.I. Bill – the government program that pays for veteran’s undergraduate education – wouldn’t cover his coding school tuition, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

“It was honestly very frustrating,” said Shaff, who deployed from Washington’s Joint Base Lewis-McChord to serve as a infantryman and later as an intelligence officer in Afghanistan.

The G.I. Bill covers the full cost of an undergraduate education at any public university or college in the U.S. and many private schools. It also covers non-college degree programs, including truck driving, HVAC repair, emergency medical training and beautician schools. Code schools, until very recently, were not included.

In August, Seattle-based Code Fellows, where Shaff eventually enrolled, became the first coding school in the state to receive approval for the government program.

“From the military perspective, you don’t want to spend an additional two to four years in school. These are adults who have lives and want to transition from their military experience as quickly as possible,” said Code Fellows CEO Dave Parker, whose father-in-law was also a West Point graduate.

What’s great about the Code Fellows programs, he said, is that veterans who want jobs get into the workforce much faster than they would it they went to a traditional school.

Code Fellows has a variety of programs, most of which take about 10 weeks to complete. The school has trained more than 650 students since it was founded in 2013 and has a placement rate of more than 95 percent with an average starting salary of $71,000.

Still, most coding schools aren’t yet able to accept the G.I. Bill and many veterans with technology ambitions, regardless of experience, might have to settle for lower-paying careers.

The Washington Technology Industry Association and other advocacy groups are trying to change that by getting skilled veterans in front of tech companies looking to hire. It’s already starting to work.

Browning, the former Army network administrator, graduated from Code Fellows earlier this year. Through a WTIA program, Browning was hired on at Bellevue startup BoldIQ and has become one of the growing company’s most promising employees.

If Browning could teach computer networking to a group of Afghani citizens in the midst of a war zone, BoldIQ CEO Roei Ganzarski said, the veteran would likely do well at the scheduling software company.

“What we found was (he has) tremendous skills, capability and passion for what (he is) doing,” Ganzarski said, “and (he has) been able to achieve even more than we would have expected from any hire, even a brand-name school.”

Click to read the full article in the PSBJ

AIN’s Matt Thurber covers Jeppesen Operator at NBAA

Jeppesen is tapping its many resources to create a new single-source software solution combining flight planning, trip planning, runway performance, weight-and-balance, crew scheduling and management and reporting. The new product is called Jeppesen Operator, it is available now and the company is demonstrating it here at NBAA 2016 (Booth 1596).

The Operator project started more than six years ago, when Mike McCready joined the company and took a look at all of Jeppesen’s varied products to try to figure out how they could be developed for the future. Jeppesen has offered flight planning for decades, having purchased Lockheed’s DataPlan service in 1989, and it also is in the international trip-planning business, in addition to publishing aeronautical data and, more recently, developing mobile apps to display that data.

This was a grand opportunity to write a small white paper,” McCready recalled. “I called it ‘flight department in a box.’ I looked at all the Jeppesen services and products and realized that Jeppesen could be in a position to bring a single-source solution [to the market]. It’s a platform to run a flight operation.”

To gauge industry interest and obtain feedback, Jeppesen formed a customer advisory board in 2011. “We started refining what the product should look like,” he said, “and what the software should do.”

The next step was to make sure there were enough internal resources to make the new product possible. Then, he said, “Over the years there was lot of work, and interviews. The customer advisory board gave us a lot of direction.” The board included Part 91 flight departments and Part 135 passenger and cargo operators.

Jeppesen’s international trip planning (ITP) team was key to a fundamental aspect of Operator: supporting schedulers and dispatchers who can do much of this work themselves, provided they are given the right tools. The software did need to be informed by the ITP team, but the software’s users should not be dependent on the team to set up and release flights for their operations.

We found a way of doing that through using flight planning,” said McCready. When creating a flight plan, all the requirements of the flight must be met, so Operator then creates a queries database and from that a checklist for the trip, he explained. The checklist outlines items that the user–perhaps a pilot in a small operation or a scheduler or dispatcher–must either obtain or check. For example, an international trip may require a navigation permit. Operator not only specifies this requirement, but also includes information that will help the user satisfy the requirement, such as contact information for securing the navigation permit.

Behind the scenes, however, the Jeppesen ITP team stands ready to assist. “We know it’s going to take people time to get comfortable with that, and we built in a concierge button,” McCready said. “We want to provide the expertise of the team that you have access to through software.” Jeppesen understands that some operators may fly infrequently to a complicated international destination such as China and need help, or a large charter operator may be busy and wants to offload some of this work. “We still have our ITP team there to support you,” he said. “We built that functionality into the system to make it do-it-yourself. But we’re not going to forget you.”

Jeppesen isn’t trying to replicate what other software providers have created for operations and trip-planning software, and one of the big differentiators is a tie-in with BoldIQ, the creator of the Astro platform and its Solver optimization engine. “We’ve worked with them and helped them refine Astro,” he said, “and we’re in the process of building in the optimization piece so we can provide the Solver module for our customers. It will still have a single user interface, but Astro and Solver run in the background.”

Solver helps operators optimize resources (aircraft, crew, etc.) to make the operation as efficient as possible and also to help recover when something unexpected happens, such as an AOG, sick pilot or other unplanned event. “It’s quite amazing,” McCready said, “and is saving customers 10 to 20 percent due to increased utilization.”

The BoldIQ features won’t be available in the initial release of Operator and should be available next year, but in any case, customers will be able to subscribe to Operator and all of its capabilities, or pay more for Operator plus the BoldIQ features. The runway performance, weight-and-balance and other Operator features are all Jeppesen-developed. Operator will also integrate with third-party programs such as Camp Systemsmaintenance tracking and financial systems.

While Operator is cloud-based and will run via a browser on any computer, Jeppesen is planning to tie apps such as Mobile Flitedeck together with Operator and develop other apps to enhance its performance. “It’s all about making sure we’re connected through the whole process,” he said. “How to bring flight planning, runway performance, weight-and-balance, and make those talk with the trip-planning database so it’s easy to use. You don’t have to be a six-year-trained international trip planner. You’ll be able to be trained and execute trip plans and fly around the world.”

Flying covers Jeppesen and BoldIQ solution

Jeppesen Launches New Operator Software

Program incorporates all levels of trip planning to make flight departments more efficient. By Pia Bergqvist

At the NBAA Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition in Orlando, Florida, Jeppesen introduced a new software product aimed to streamline the work of flight departments. Jeppesen teamed up with BoldIQ, experts in on-demand flight operations and optimization, to create Jeppesen Operator, which integrates the many levels that go into managing aircraft and crew in an on-demand flight department, such as aircraft maintenance, crew currency, flight planning, weight and balance, flight permits, and more.

Once trip planning begins, the software creates an all-inclusive checklist. The checklist allows multiple operators to work on the same trip plan, and since the software is cloud-based, a plan can be accessed from multiple locations by several operators, allowing a trip plan to be started in one location and finished in another if need be. Operator can be managed through a computer or mobile app.

Jeppesen Operator also combines with Jeppesen’s EFB app to allow flight departments to seamlessly push the trip information to the pilot. In the future, Operator will also connect to Garmin’s Pilot app.

The software allows the operator to pick and choose services offered by Jeppesen. Jeppesen’s concierge service, which is incorporated into the software, allows flight departments to pick and choose the services they are able to handle themselves and hand off more complex ones, such as international permits and handling arrangements, to the professionals at Jeppesen.

Pricing varies depending on the services selected and are paid per tail.

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Jeppesen [Powered by BoldIQ] Introduces Next Gen Jeppesen Operator

Jeppesen Introduces Next Generation Business Aviation Flight Department: Jeppesen Operator

Jeppesen Operator integrates cloud-based key functionality in a ‘do-it-yourself’ operations solution

From left to right: Kent Young and Mike Didonato (Jeppesen) and Roei Ganzarski (BoldIQ)

ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 31, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — NBAA CONVENTION & EXHIBITION — Jeppesen, a Boeing Company, in alliance with BoldIQ, Inc., today introduces Jeppesen Operator, a new online business aviation platform that integrates key business aviation functionality in a ‘one-stop shop’ self-service environment. Operator is available today for pilots and operations staff through the cloud with a modern interface, built on decades of knowledge and expertise.

Specifically, Operator integrates flight planning, runway performance, weight & balance, crew scheduling & management, aircraft scheduling, domestic and international trip planning and reporting (financial, maintenance and custom), customer account management, real time pricing and cost accounting capabilities. Operator ensures regulatory and business policy and procedure compliance, using multiple rules engines, including those unique to a customer’s operation, and provides a custom trip check list. The check list is automatically generated and provides insight into the complexity and requirements for each trip and determines if additional resources are needed. This process enhances situational awareness and assures the trip will be released for flight.

Operator combines Jeppesen’s 40-years of experience with flight planning and international trip planning with BoldIQ’s 10-plus years of aviation on-demand flight operations and optimization experience, into a single, united user platform. Operator improves data sharing, simplifies access and usability, and increases resource utilization, all backed by proven technology. Teaming with leading optimization and operations management software provider BoldIQ bolsters Operator capabilities through the seamless integration of scheduling, crew and fleet management, customer account management, real-time pricing and cost accounting, all driven by advanced optimization capabilities.

“The introduction of Jeppesen Operator represents the culmination of years of meticulous research and proven in-production software, understanding customer driven requirements and design work performed to create the next generation business aviation tool,” said Mike DiDonato, director, Industry Services, Jeppesen. “Integrating multiple resources into a single platform that is optimized by BoldIQ’s technology allows operators to improve collaboration, increase productivity and reduce errors, with total operational control. Plus, Jeppesen’s renowned global customer service team is available 24/7 to resolve any issues that customers may encounter.”

When using the “Concierge” service in association with Operator, a customer has the option to connect with Jeppesen’s International Trip Planning (ITP) global experts for assistance with traditional ITP tasks such as managing flight plans, permits, and handling arrangements, or to establish a line of credit, to eliminate operational financial concerns that could jeopardize a planned flight.

Operator will uniquely combine with leading mobile apps that are already in use by operators for navigation, electronic flight bag (EFB), and pilot operational interaction capabilities, further integrating planning and operations systems in an end-to-end digital management solution. Airport, FBO, and vendor data for Operator systems is generated by the Jeppesen Aviation Database, the most comprehensive in the aviation industry.

“The complexities and real-time dynamic nature of on-demand aviation operations are significant and much more than many other industries we have seen,” said Roei Ganzarski, president & CEO of BoldIQ. “The combination of sophisticated industry proven technologies with in-depth experience-based know-how are what make the Jeppesen solution so powerful and applicable.”

For further detail on the industry-leading navigation, operations, training and optimization solutions provided by Jeppesen, please visit www.jeppesen.com. For information about the business optimization capabilities offered by BoldIQ, see www.boldiq.com.

About Jeppesen: For more than 80 years, Jeppesen has made it possible for pilots and their passengers to safely and efficiently reach their destinations. Today, this pioneering spirit continues as Jeppesen delivers transformative information and optimization solutions to improve the efficiency of air operations around the globe. Jeppesen is a Boeing subsidiary and part of the Digital Aviation business unit within Boeing Commercial Aviation Services. Boeing offers the industry’s largest portfolio of support and services solutions, providing customers a competitive advantage by solving real operational problems, enabling better decisions, maximizing efficiency and improving environmental performance – intelligent information solutions across the entire aviation ecosystem.

About BoldIQ: BoldIQ provides software solutions enabling the real-time, dynamic scheduling of resources in complex business environments. BoldIQ’s software continuously provides ongoing plans and disruption recovery based on current demand, resources, rules and constraints, external factors, policies and regulations, so that companies can make intelligent decisions in real-time, all the time.

SOURCE Jeppesen