Aviation Intelligence Isn’t a Dashboard - Here’s What It Really Means

TL;DR

Most “aviation intelligence” today lives in dashboards, automated (conditional) functions, and lagging reports - fine for summaries, but useless when decisions need to be made in the moment. Most don’t need trivia after the fact. They need intelligence embedded directly into the flow of quoting, sourcing, repairs, and compliance.

Real intelligence doesn’t sit quietly in a BI tool. It shows up in real time - ranking RFQs, blocking expired certs, surfacing alternates, even revealing patterns hidden in customer accounts or your inventory’s history. For years, that kind of intelligence didn’t exist. Now it does.

What People Get Now

I can’t count how many times I’ve heard a supplier say, “We already have intelligence tools.” But when I sit down with their teams, the reality looks very different. Intelligence usually means a stack of reports that tell you what you already know, but days too late. Dashboards that refresh at midnight. KPIs that arrive after the quarter has closed.

I remember one operations manager telling me, “Our ERP spits out reports that confirm what we felt in our gut two days ago. That’s not helping us win quotes - it’s just documenting how we lost them.”

And so teams keep swiveling, email for RFQs, Dropbox for certs, spreadsheets for inventory. It’s a daily scramble just to piece together the truth. By the time the picture comes into focus, the buyer has already moved on.

Why Current “Intelligence” Fails

Here’s the blunt truth: most of it is rear-view. It tells you what already happened. But no one wins a deal looking backward.

The bigger issue? It’s disconnected. I’ve watched quoting teams burn half their day toggling between portals, inboxes, PDFs, and BI tools that nobody in ops even bothers opening. Instead of clarity, they’re drowning in noise.

Conversation after conversation, the story is retold perfectly: “We’re paying for three different tools and still retyping vendor quotes by hand.” Another supplier told me, “Our ‘intelligence’ module just gives us prettier charts. Nothing changes in the day-to-day.”

And that’s exactly it. If your “intelligence” shows up after the fact, it’s trivia.

What Real Intelligence Should Look Like

I’ve always believed intelligence shouldn’t live in a separate dashboard you check once a week. It should live right where decisions get made.

Picture this: the system itself telling your team which RFQ to quote first. Surfacing alternates the moment a part number is entered. Blocking an expired cert before a shipment gets packed. Flagging a buyer with a history of ghosting before you waste the time.

One customer summed it up better than I could: “For the first time, it feels like the system is coaching us while we work. It’s not another tool - it’s like having a second set of eyes at every step.”

That’s real intelligence. It doesn’t wait. It doesn’t sit quietly in a BI tool. It speaks up in the moment. and guiding you toward better decisions before mistakes even happen.

Did It Ever Exist?

For most of my career, the answer was no. Platforms were built for transactions, not intelligence. They could cut a PO, store a part number, or print an invoice. Anything beyond that? You had to bolt on more tools.

And the rest of us? We accepted it because there wasn’t another option. “We had to build our own reports,” one VP admitted to me. “The ERP could track activity, but it couldn’t tell us why we were losing quotes.”

I’ve seen companies spend hundreds of thousands layering on BI dashboards, compliance trackers, even custom-built scrapers just to get a picture of what was happening. But even with all that, we were on a treadmill, forever ruining, forever standing still. Intelligence stayed something you had to chase, not something that guided you.

What an Intelligent OS Would Be

If it really existed, it wouldn’t look like another reporting module. It would be built as an operating system, where intelligence isn’t an accessory - it’s the core.

You’d have RFQs, vendor replies, certs, and inventory unified in a single view. An intelligence layer that doesn’t just let you ask your data questions, but actually answers back. Something that coaches quoting, sourcing, repairs, and compliance in real time.

I’ll never forget how one customer described the shift: “It feels less like software and more like a co-pilot. It catches things before we miss them.”

That’s what an intelligent OS for aviation looks like. Not dashboards. Not endless add-ons. A layer that thinks with you.

Right When It Counts

The industry doesn’t need another buzzword. It needs intelligence that shows up at the speed of quoting, and when decisions are made, not days later.

Because the question isn’t whether we need intelligence. Everyone does. The real question is when it arrives. Too late, or right when it counts?

For years, we were told it didn’t exist. But I’ve seen the tide turn. Talk to your data, and yes - it should talk back.

That’s the future of aviation intelligence. That's the aviation quoting intelligent OS. And it’s already here.

I’ve spent years watching suppliers wrestle with silos - data chaos, disconnected tools, and dashboards that arrive too late. The shift we’ve been waiting for isn’t another add-on. It’s an intelligent operating layer that finally thinks with you. That’s what changes quoting from firefighting to foresight. And the real breakthrough is simple: your data should stop whispering after the fact, and it should talk back, right when it counts.

Originally published on LinkedIn.