Story ID: 
Utah Broker Creates Business Aircraft Valuation Tool
By: Jerry Siebenmark
Caption: Soljets' proprietary Soldata database aims to bring greater transparency and accelerate decision-making in the aircraft sales and acquisition process.
Word Count: 274
Soljets, a Utah-based business aircraft brokerage, has developed a proprietary database called Soldata to add transparency and accelerate decision-making in the aircraft sales and acquisition process by tracking aircraft values and transactions. Under development for about six years, the database is available solely to Soljets clients and tracks the technical and financial lifecycle on about 24,000 different turbine aircraft.

“Buyers and sellers demand real-time aircraft market intelligence, and Soldata is the next-generation platform to meet that expectation,” said recently appointed chief technology officer Ryan Crawford, who was contracted to develop the database before joining the company full time.

Information tracked by the database includes airframe and engine times, maintenance programs, inspection status, features, and cabin configuration. Soldata also identifies the market value on specific attributes of a business aircraft such as age, utilization trend, and paint and interior refurbishment using its fair market value (FMV) valuation tool. “It’s actually like a very interesting missing link for our industry,” Soljets partner Matt Stringfellow told AIN.

Stringfellow approached Crawford about six months into the 2015 launch of Soljets looking for a way to create what would become Soldata and FMV. “I’ve always been a data guy and I’ve always had my own little tools I used at different brokerage firms,” he said. “And I can’t tell you what a difficult task it was keeping all those spreadsheets up to date and then archiving all the data and keeping yourself sharp on all these different markets when you’re talking to buyers and sellers, so it was just something I just started crafting up in my head.”