Tip of the Week: Make Your FBO Data Driven

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By John L. Enticknap and Ron R. Jackson
Aviation Business Strategies Group

Just as pilots rely on the instrument panel to keep up and stay ahead of potential problems, FBOs should rely on data-driven dashboards to do the same thing.

Operational and financial data fed on a regular basis to the FBO operator is an essential element of running a successful business. They’re a quick snapshot you scan to make sure the engine of your company is running smoothly.

Setting up a dashboard is similar to a pilot setting up waypoints. You preselect the data you want to see and have it delivered to your desktop on a daily basis.

Here are some suggested data points to set up on your dashboard:

Line Service Business

  • Review your previous day’s retail fuel sales.
  • Contract Fuel Sales.
  • Airline Fuel Uplift.
  • Month-to-Date retail fuel sales.
  • MTD Contract Fuel Sales.
  • MTD Airline Fuel Uplift.
  • Budget retail fuel sales, contract and airline fuel sales.
  • Number of Customer Contacts Yesterday.

Maintenance Business

  • Mechanic Hours Billed yesterday.
  • Mechanic hours of vacation, paid leave.
  • Mechanic hours paid.
  • Yesterday Mechanic Productivity.
  • Month-to-Date Productivity.
  • Budget Productivity.
  • Parts Sales Dollars.
  • Budget Parts Sales.
  • Support Staff hours paid.
  • Number of Customer Contacts.
  •  Number of annuals/100 hr./inspections bid.

Flight Operations

  • Flight Instructor hours billed yesterday.
  • Flight Instructors hours paid.
  • Flight Instructor Productivity.
  • Charter hours billed.
  • Charter hours available.
  • Charter Productivity.
  • Customer Contact - Flight Instruction.
  • Sale Contacts for Charter.

You’ll notice we are getting sales data, labor data and marketing data. After cost of sales, labor is your biggest expense. Labor hours must be reviewed and managed to assure you maximize productivity.

Also, you must keep track of your marketing activity. This is something you should touch on daily, focusing on both retention of existing customers and obtaining new customers. We know this is stating the obvious, but if you don’t grow, you go out of business. Every year there can be as much as a 30 percent churn in turnover of base customers and regular transient customers.

In setting up your dashboard data requirements, make the adjustments with your accounting personnel as well as department managers to collect this data.

If you are uncertain as to how to set up a dashboard properly as well as the interpretation of the data, we suggest you attend an NATA FBO Success Seminar. The next seminar is scheduled for March 9-10 in Las Vegas. At these seminars we suggest a number of simple strategies and tactics to assist you with data management.