Novus Aviation Capital Deploys LeaseWorks’ Aeris ASSET to Streamline Portfolio Management

Novus Aviation Capital (“Novus”) leverages Leaseworks’ asset software solution, Aeris ASSETTM, to support the day-to-day management of its leasing platform’s global operations.

Established in 1994, Novus Aviation Capital is an independent, full-service aircraft leasing and financing platform with 30 assets under management and four office locations across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

The Need

As an agile and innovative team, Novus was in search of having one true source of asset data available 24/7 across its commercial, contracts and technical departments. They needed a solution that could easily be customized without needing to rely on a software solution provider.

Novus sought out a solution that would be relatively simple and intuitive and would allow ongoing customizations with a flexible framework and responsive client support.

Novus opted to collaborate with LeaseWorks to utilize Aeris ASSET to leverage its wide-ranging asset management functions to:

• Better manage asset and lease data
• Automate Business Intelligence reporting
• Customize Tech Spec and Lease Summary dashboards
• Integrate enhancements via quarterly product releases
• Integrate seamlessly with Aeris MATCH to feed data from deals to lease management and vice-versa, providing real-time access to information for decision-making

The Solution

With the ease of use and extensive capabilities of Aeris ASSET, Novus has instantly benefited from many of the customizations, such as:

• Customize Tech Spec and Lease Summary dashboards for use by Technical
• Generate on-demand reports for management
• Automate the flow of asset and lease information from Deal Management into Lease Management, eliminating redundant data entry
• Integrate ongoing software improvements via quarterly product releases

LeaseWorks Advances Novus Aviation Capital’s Digital Transformation

Dubai Lessor Utilizes LeaseWorks’ Software Solutions to Streamline Finance, Technical, Contracts & Commercial Operations

MARRAKECH, Morocco – September 20, 2022 – LeaseWorks®, a leading provider of cloud- based solutions and services to the aviation industry, announced during the ISTAT EMEA conference that Novus Aviation Capital (“Novus”) deployed the company’s Aeris ASSET™ software to support the day-to-day management of the Dubai-based lessor’s global leasing operations.

With a focus on enhancing the leasing platform’s agility and innovation, the Novus team sought out asset management software that would be fully customizable, providing finance, technical, contracts and marketing departments with one true source of information about their aircraft.

“We are thrilled to expand our relationship with Novus and enhance the platform’s competitive advantage by providing a single source of truth for managing, trading and marketing assets,” says Haseem Vazhayil, CEO, LeaseWorks.

The Novus team leverages Aeris ASSET’s robust capabilities to:Customize Tech Spec and Lease Summary dashboards for use by TechnicalGenerate on-demand reports for managementAutomate the flow of asset and lease information from Deal Management into Lease Management, eliminating redundant data entryIntegrate ongoing software improvements via quarterly product releases

Mamoun Kuzbari, Novus’ Chief Commercial Officer, explains that owing to the ease of use and wide-ranging functions of Aeris ASSET, “our team was able to accelerate the digital transformation initiative effort and streamline the decision-making process across the technical, contracts, finance and commercial teams.”

“We built the Aeris ASSET solution with lessors’ unique needs in mind, ensuring that the software provides a simple and intuitive interface and a flexible framework that enable team members to perform complete customizations, with little or no external support,” adds Vazhayil.

Aeris ASSET provides lessors’ teams with the ability to:

• Better manage its asset and lease data
• Automate Business Intelligence reporting
• Customize Tech Spec and Lease Summary dashboards
• Integrate enhancements via quarterly product releases
• Integrate seamlessly with Aeris MATCH to feed data from deals to lease management and vice-versa, providing real-time access to information for decision-making.

Read the client case study.

About Novus Aviation Capital

Established in 1994, Novus Aviation Capital (“Novus”) is an independent, privately held aircraft leasing platform, focused on investing in commercial aircraft assets. The Novus team operates out of its four global offices in the Middle East, Europe and Asia and is active in operating and financing leases, mezzanine and, junior debt as well as third-party aircraft remarketing, servicing and, advisory services. www.novus.aero

The Power of Visualization and Reports to Detect Patterns in Data

“Data visualization is a great way to simplify data and show it in a form that is understandable, insightful and actionable. Data visualization is being increasingly seen as the vital final step of any successful data-driven analytics plan.” – Caroline Lee

Data visualization provides a visual representation of data (e.g. graphs, charts, maps) to make it easier to identify new opportunities, detect patterns and highlight risks. This rapid transition from seeing to understanding is what makes visualizations valuable.

For many organizations, ‘data visualization’ means collecting every bit of information available then figuring out how to use it. It’s a costly challenge – once you’ve invested heavily in gathering the data, how do you extract the value it contains? Many visualizations tell people what they should see in data resulting in confirmation bias and a loss of objectivity. Common problems include using the wrong visualization method, oversimplifying data, omitting baselines, cluttered visuals, overuse of colors and the use of persuasive text.

The key is to get the data into a format that everyone can explore and understand. At LeaseWorks, we know how to successfully and accurately blend your data and visualizations together to tell a captivating story. We specialize in transforming data, developing effective reports and visualizations, optimizing performance and maximizing your return on investment.

Visualizing Exposure and Managing Customer Lease Receivables

An overview of how an unorganized lease receivables approach in Excel can overwhelm an organization and tips on how to manage the data effectively.

Visualizing Exposure and Managing Customer Lease Receivables

With commercial aviation emerging from a worldwide health crisis, the post-pandemic landscape is constantly evolving. Severe labor shortages as a result of the pandemic’s staff cuts have created significant headwinds as global airlines attempt to mount a comeback. With airline customers affected, lessors are continually facing the challenge of dealing with late payments and requests for lease payment deferral or repayment agreement restructuring.

Challenge

Managing lease receivables in Excel in today’s business environment is a burdensome task and can quickly overwhelm a lessor’s platform. Consequently, manually monitoring cash receipts across various bank accounts in different countries on a daily basis can inhibit the provision of accurate, real-time data points to the management team to inform their strategic decision-making. 

• Limited data visualization in Excel: Collating data across more than one dimension (i.e. MSN, Operator, Lease, Asset type, SPV, etc) becomes cumbersome when visualizing the dataset within Excel.
  
• Tracking different types of lease receivables:   Deferral or power by the hour (“PBH”) arrangements have created new varied types of receivables. Tracking more than one or two types of receivables across an entire fleet becomes challenging when trying to plot the data across an all-encompassing Excel chart.
  

• Refreshing data filters or fields in real time: Updating an existing report with unique data filters requires manual updates to the Excel spreadsheet, necessitating a refresh of the data behind the Excel graph, along with a reformatting of the corresponding updated Excel chart or graph.  
  
• Updates to receivables data in Excel is a manual and time-consuming process: Cash activity and Accounts Receivable reconciliation is required daily to provide up-to-date information imported into Excel and manually manipulated into a summarized format, resulting in an excessive use of organizational resources and the margin for human error through manual data entry.
   
• Excel disorganization: Cash activity across numerous accounts aggregated in spreadsheets leads to difficulty in collaboration across multiple users and it is difficult to introduce workflow features to enhance review and reporting functionality.
   

Solution

Here are some ways to manage receivables data more effectively:

• Frequent cash receipt downloads and cash account reconciliations: Utilizing banking register downloads through online banking portals into .xlsx or .csv format to reconcile cash account balances can help in minimizing input error.  Daily or frequent recording of cash receipts provide near real-time receivables data.
  
• Building a strong reporting and AR analytics framework helps concisely present information around receivables liquidity and overall exposure: If resources allow, building a robust AR reporting structure in Excel utilizing PivotTables allows for limited multi-dimensional reporting across the portfolio. A reporting framework can be established to provide standardized metrics, such as days outstanding trends and overall AR exposure (net of security deposits and any maintenance reserves).
  
• Utilizing filtered down reports and select distribution lists:  With the sheer volume of receivables held on some lessors balance sheets, a portfolio wide receivables snapshot is often cumbersome to navigate by various users of the reporting.   Keeping such reporting in a filtered and concise format and utilizing dimensions (i.e. region, SPV financing, etc.) to provide only relevant information will help make the report more digestible to colleagues.

LeaseWorks and Core Financials Deliver Integrated Accounting Experience for Aircraft Lessors

Companies Further Advance Mutual Vision to Empower Aviation Industry’s Transition to Digital World

STAMFORD, Connecticut – June 8, 2022 – LeaseWorks Inc., the leader in cloud-based software products and Core Financial Systems (“Core”), the leading SaaS aircraft leasing financial software solutions provider shall begin collaboration to deliver an integrated solution experience for clients in the aircraft leasing industry.

The collaboration intends to deliver an integrated accounting experience for lessors’ finance and accounting teams, enabling them to generate financial transactions in LeaseWorks and seamlessly export these transactions to Core – resulting in a more agile and aligned organization that is better equipped to respond to the changing financial needs of an aircraft leasing platform.

“We are excited to collaborate with Core to provide the necessary tools to enable lessors to gain more value from their software investments and facilitate their coordination and growth,” said Haseem Vazhayil, Chief Executive Officer at LeaseWorks.

Tony Salmon, Managing Director at Core, said, “Through this collaboration, our smart SaaS based financial solutions are constantly adapting to the needs of their users. This optimizes their operation and creates economic and operational benefits. The basis for this is the seamless connectivity of data, a “Core strength of the Core Solution”. As part of our Group strategy led by our Group CEO Pat Toner, we are working on collaborative opportunities with a suite of comprehensive solutions in the market to further develop and use the technologies in practice”.


LeaseWorks and Core will seamlessly integrate the two market-leading products:

• LeaseWorks’ Aeris ASSET™ suite of products providing a flexible platform to centralize and streamline asset management across technical, contract and finance operations. Its finance module is built purposely to facilitate financial transactions around accounts receivables, payables, loan management and settlements, combined with robust executive reporting capabilities; and
• Core’s suite of products enables finance organizations to manage multitude of accounting operations and workflows. Its general ledger stores books and records and captures journal entries specific to aircraft leasing operations.

The integration will allow customers to set up their chart of accounts, entities, dimensions, accounting periods, book codes and bank accounts. Customers will also be able to map the system’s aviation sub-ledger onto the Core general ledger to facilitate the generation of debits and credits into Core, based on financial events entered in LeaseWorks. Accounting profiles configured by a customer’s chart of accounts can be set up and linked to a specific lease for accounting configuration on a lease-by-lease basis.

“Building on our mutual vision to empower the aviation industry’s transition into the digital world, the LeaseWorks and Core teams are thrilled to be able to combine our well-respected expertise and knowledge of accounting operations to help lessors focus on improving their decision-making and increasing their platforms’ agility in unprecedented times,” concluded Vazhayil.

About Core Financial Systems – A Tekunh Group Company

Core Financial Systems®, is the leading SaaS aviation financial software solutions provider of choice. As an Infor Channel Partner, Core has earned a reputation of leading technology advancement in both the development & deployment of World Class cloud based financial business solutions globally across multiple market industries including aviation, banking, fund management, asset management and government sectors.

We assist organizations to harness their business information and processes. Through this they can remove complexity, improve compliance, reduce costs and increase their competitive advantage. Our company has more than 20 years of experience in implementing Financial Management, Purchasing & Procurement and Business Intelligence Solutions into international organizations. For further information please visit our website at www.corefinancial.ie

LeaseWorks Transforms Lessors’ Ability to Manage Aircraft Assets with New Robust Software

Enhancements to Company’s Industry-Leading Asset and Contract Management System Revolutionize Ways to Manage Maintenance Reserves, Finance, Billing & Accounting Activities

DUBLIN – May 10, 2022 – LeaseWorks® shared with the global audience of Growth Frontiers Dublin 2022, the largest gathering of aviation finance decision-makers since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rollout of major enhancements to its industry-leading aircraft asset and contract management system, Aeris ASSET™.

The leader in cloud-based software products for the aviation leasing industry signaled the introduction of a new lineup of modules and software extensions to revolutionize lessors’ ability to manage a wide array of leasing-related activities. The rollout includes a robust and comprehensive supplemental rent module, completely rethinking, from the ground up, how complex maintenance reserves can be easily tracked with software. In addition, the billing and collections module now further leverages the capabilities of the Salesforce platform and the Leaseworks product architecture to give lessors the flexibility to integrate with a variety of accounting solutions.

Haseem Vazhayil, Chief Executive Office of LeaseWorks, points out that “our team is constantly focused on innovating; building and delivering on the best-in-class software products for managing assets, enabling lessors to efficiently handle maintenance reserve charges, funds and reimbursements while addressing their most pressing challenges.”

With the goal of helping lessors to stay ahead of technological and industry disruptions, the LeaseWorks team has collaborated with current and prospective customers to release critical enhancements in the accounts receivables and payables modules of its Aeris ASSET product. The new robust capabilities are designed to give CFOs and their finance teams the ability to streamline billing, invoicing and collections processes. The changes also provide increased flexibility in integrating with several accounting software packages as well as more flexible maintenance reserves calculation models.

“We are investing heavily to bring to market a simple, ground-breaking solution unlike any other, which empowers companies to tailor and streamline their asset management software directly to meet their needs,” adds Vazhayil. “We are very excited about the new functionalities and the enhanced user experience this best-in-breed product provides.”

“It’s our goal every day to make every aspect of the customer experience a little better. At LeaseWorks, we’re passionate about helping people get things done; that’s our way – the LeaseWorks way,” concluded Vazhayil.

FTAI Aviation and LeaseWorks Partner to Revolutionize the Way Lessors Work with MROs

FTAI Aviation and LeaseWorks Partner to Revolutionize the Way Lessors Work with MROs – Collaboration Generates Unprecedented Cost Efficiencies and Process Enhancements Across the Value Chain

FTAI Aviation (“FTAI”) offers a range of services to airlines, MRO and lessor customers worldwide, including aircraft and engine leasing, engine modules and maintenance services and part-out services. The lessor’s partnership with a major North American-based MRO, ensures that its high-value assets are well maintained and serviceable.

The Need

As engines approach their lease expiry, the FTAI team works with their MRO partners to perform engine shop visits and re-certify them before they can be delivered to the next customer.

Historically, FTAI managed this complex process, just as many lessors do, using Excel spreadsheets and email communication. The parallel, back-and-forth email communication and the inability to track projected versus actual timelines across spreadsheets made the process extremely cumbersome and caused notorious maintenance and repair delays.

Given its growth ambitions, FTAI had the vision to automate the management and oversight of shop visits, helping to streamline the information flow to track workscopes, resulting in better predictability around timelines and costs, while saving millions of dollars in the process.

Additionally, centralizing the information would help FTAI better understand the root cause of delays and analyze trends. The lessor could take corrective action with the MRO and be able to better anticipate issues ahead of future shop visits in real time versus the lag that occurred when FTAI had to rely on consolidating multiple spreadsheets.

“We needed to automate this complicated engine shop visit process to reduce downtime on our engines and avoid unnecessary costs and we needed a way to collaborate directly with the MRO by capturing all the tasks, timelines and communications related to a shop visit in a centralized place,” pointed out Julie Malabossa, Director of Operations for FTAI’s Module Factory program.

The Solution

FTAI was already using LeaseWorks’ CRM module for facilitating internal Contact and Deal Management processes, as well as the LeaseWorks Customer Portal to coordinate tasks with airline customers.

“The open and collaborative nature of that implementation and the continued support they received from the LeaseWorks team led FTAI to extend the technology to another set of key stakeholders, its MRO partners,” said Angela Balzano, Product Manager.

LeaseWorks deployed the MRO Portal, a shop visit management solution, to enable FTAI to collaborate directly with their MRO partners in a centralized location, providing both companies’ teams with the ultimate visibility into project progress, delays and all communications related to the shop visit.

With the LeaseWorks platform, the team at FTAI and their counterparts can now log in to the MRO Portal to get real time information they need, share updates, track progress and categorize delays.

Additionally, FTAI can visualize aggregated patterns around recurring issues that may cause time delays or cost overruns by engine type, modules, or other factors. LeaseWorks reports and dashboards also make it easy for the Technical team and management to get visibility on all aspects of their MRO relationship, such as engine status, costs, estimated timelines and potential delays.

“At Leaseworks, our mission is to help lessors embrace the digital world and help them become nimble by spending less time chasing information and more time making decisions. We work closely with our customers to understand problems and deliver timely digital solutions to increase efficiency, reduce costs and accelerate their digital transformation initiatives,” concluded Haseem Vazhayil, LeaseWorks President & Chief Executive Officer.

Airborne Capital Improves Portfolio Management with Aeris ASSET

Airborne Capital leverages Leaseworks’ asset software solutions to support its rapidly growing business.

The Need

Prior to implementing Leaseworks, Airborne managed aircraft portfolios using a number of systems. As the company grew, it needed a system that would automate their technical, contract, finance and management functions without putting too much burden on their team. 

Airborne needed to:

• Centralize and monitor the portfolio asset data to ensure aircraft values were safeguarded.
• Derive accurate, timely and granular insights into the technical condition of the assets.
• Manage cash flows to ensure that the appropriate resources were available at the right time for customers.
• Automate the invoicing process to ensure lease managers stay on top of customer payments and delays.

All the above considered, Airborne required a system that would monitor critical information and enable the lessor’s team to make better decisions in a timely and efficient manner.

Donna Marie O’Neill, Head of Operations at Airborne, scoured the market for an off-the-shelf software solution, which would provide an adaptable framework to accommodate the rapid growth of their business. 

Donna Marie heard about Leaseworks from an industry colleague, who advised her about the advantages and benefits of Leaseworks’ asset management product, Aeris ASSET. Donna Marie realized that the flexibility of the Leaseworks platform, with its cloud and mobile device accessible format and robust dashboards and user friendliness, was exactly what Airborne needed for their expanding platform.

Since Airborne deals with many portfolio investors, who have different needs and requirements, such as managed aircraft and Asset Backed Structures, it was crucial to implement a system that adapted quickly.

While managing customers’ portfolios through Excel spreadsheets was a temporarily workable solution, such manual processes had limitations and eventually would hinder the goal of scaling the platform.

The Solution

“The implementation process started by communicating the importance of standardizing processes around data entry,” explained Archana Sukumar, the Leaseworks Customer Success Manager who was assigned to assist the lessor.

Sukumar and her team meticulously gathered and documented Airborne’s processes and adapted the system’s configuration to meet Airborne’s business requirements.

Leaseworks’ Aeris ASSET product enabled Airborne to:

• Better manage their asset and lease data
• Automate reporting
• Ensure that all operational transactions like rent and maintenance reserve collection and claims were always timely and accurate
• Improve their Portfolio Management by replacing spreadsheets and manual processes.

Tapping into the flexibility of the Leaseworks platform, Airborne streamlined their business processes by implementing an approval process within the system and setting up important notifications.

“The implementation process was efficient and the Leaseworks team’s assistance was best-in-class,” commented Donna Marie O’Neill. “We now have the ability to automate our invoicing and generate on-demand management reports without manual processes.”

TrueAero Streamlines Deal Management with LeaseWorks’ Aeris MATCH

Keeping Track of Commercial Activity and Customer Interactions

With more than $680 million in leased assets, TrueAero is a leading provider of aircraft and engine leasing, aircraft consignment and part-out services. Like any other lessor, TrueAero recognizes the importance of having standardized processes around remarketing their assets, in addition to being able to track commercial conversations and action items related to airline customers.

The Need

In an effort to continuously improve and maximize its portfolio value, TrueAero sought a one-stop solution for tracking communication, evaluate commercial options in the market, manage deals and access customer information to make the right decisions around the purchase, lease, sale and sale leaseback of its assets.

TrueAero realized that a more efficient centralized system to manage transactions and related KPIs was necessary to support continued growth. TrueAero created a deal flow process that mapped out specific stages of a deal to trigger action items and follow-up tasks for the relevant teams as well as expand on the breadth and depth of customer relationships, enhanced visibility into performance, effectiveness and information sharing.

The Solution

TrueAero leveraged the Aeris MATCH Deal Management functions to enable their leasing and trading teams to:

• Centralize all deal-related information, including status, bids, customer meeting history, documentation, market intelligence and commercial terms
• Review the history of any deal and track revisions of rent offers and other pricing negotiations, providing full visibility in deals pursued with any airline and giving management the ability to analyze the probability of future success
• Utilize the mobile app to access the history of conversations with an airline and use voice-to-text to enter meeting notes into the system
• Use analytics to drive real-time decisions and deal approvals
• Customize dashboards to evaluate KPIs related to assets, operators, Marketing Executives, regions or any other metric
• With the robust capabilities of Aeris MATCH and LeaseWorks dedicated team of professionals, TrueAero has successfully boosted productivity and efficiency, reduced risk and costs and optimized revenue.

LeaseWorks Debuts Aeris PORTAL with Launch Customer FTAI Aviation

Company’s New Platform Advances Lessor’s Digital Transformation, Providing Unparalleled Convenience and Efficiency to Airline Customers

Edinburgh, United Kingdom – October 4, 2021 – LeaseWorks®, a leading provider of cloud- based solutions and support services to the aviation industry, kicking off its presence at the ISTAT EMEA conference held in Edinburgh, U.K., announced the launch customer, FTAI Aviation, a subsidiary of Fortress Transportation and Infrastructure Investors LLC (NYSE: FTAI), for its recently rolled out Aeris PORTAL™.

The new software product, which digitally transforms the ways in which lessors collaborate and exchange information with customers, is being deployed to enhance FTAI Aviation’s customer interaction through a digital experience.

“Digitization has brought new ways for lessors to engage customers and serve their demanding information needs 24×7,” explained Angela Balzano, LeaseWorks’ Director of Product Management. “User self-service experiences in the e-commerce world have set high customer expectations of being able to have the same information transparency while doing business.”

In response, lessors, like FTAI Aviation, are reinventing themselves through digital transformation, augmenting their capabilities to better serve the ever-increasing, real-time information needs of customers, while opening new opportunities to upsell, cross-sell and focus sales teams on closing deals rather than chasing the information demands.

Faced with an increasingly challenging operating environment, compounded by the ongoing effects of the pandemic, FTAI Aviation is strategically targeting digital growth to gain a competitive advantage among lessors as a technology centric leasing platform.

“At FTAI Aviation, we recognize the importance of providing customers with access to real time data. The Aeris PORTAL integrates our leasing platform and The Module Store in one location for customers to access,” explained David Moreno, Chief Operating Officer of FTAI Aviation. “We were looking to provide unparalleled convenience and efficiency to our customer base. We found that in the Aeris PORTAL.”

FTAI Aviation and LeaseWorks collaborated to implement the new portal solution, enabling the lessor’s customers to:

• Search for real-time asset inventory to streamline fleet planning;
• Submit utilization files electronically to cut down invoice turnaround times;
• Centralize invoice aging to bring transparency around payment delays; and
• View individual asset profiles, including shop visit information and MR funds allocations.

“With the automation and support of LeaseWorks’ digital platform, we now let customers find information on their terms – whatever they need and whenever they need it,” added Mr. Moreno.

Core to Aeris PORTAL is the capability to make it easier for lessors to bring commercial, contracts and technical teams together to deliver a unified digital experience for airline customers. The portal integrates LeaseWorks’ market-leading Asset and CRM products to deliver a self-service, data-centric tool to meet ever-increasing information needs — from furnishing data about asset availability for the marketing phase to executing aircraft returns.

“We are thrilled to expand our relationship with FTAI Aviation as the launch customer for Aeris PORTAL,” said Haseem Vazhayil, President & Chief Executive Officer of LeaseWorks. “Lessors have always been at the forefront in their approach to serve the time-sensitive and information needs of their customers. With Aeris PORTAL, they will be able to better serve customers spread across the globe, with a readily scalable, easy-to-use and customer-friendly digital platform.”

To read the FTAI Aviation client success case study.

About Fortress Transportation and Infrastructure Investors LLC

Fortress Transportation and Infrastructure Investors LLC owns and acquires high quality infrastructure and equipment that is essential for the transportation of goods and people globally. FTAI targets assets that, on a combined basis, generate strong and stable cash flows with the potential for earnings growth and asset appreciation. FTAI is externally managed by an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group LLC, a leading, diversified global investment firm.