Greg Heine's education and experience prior to Flightdocs was in business management. Although not an aviator, he always had an interest in aviation. "The idea of bringing together business, technology, and aviation into a career path was really exciting and has been a great experience over the last decade."
Heine has learned a lot from many individuals along the way, but his biggest mentor has been his dad. "He’s started three companies from scratch which have all been very successful. There aren’t many people out there that can say they have achieved that. He has a great business sense and an incredible drive to grow. Even though we have different styles and strengths, he’s been a major factor in my success."
Shortly after graduating from Bentley University, Heine joined Flightdocs in an entry-level position. He started doing data entry for the setup of aircraft maintenance schedule templates and revisions. From there he moved into an analyst position where he worked with customers to keep their aircraft maintenance compliance up to date. Shortly after that he managed the analyst team and operations. "During this time I gained a lot of “hands-on” experience, working with customers to understand their operation and how our software could be utilized within their operation. In 2012 I moved into sales and marketing where I helped boost growth and started to grow new sales by 50 percent year over year. Simultaneously we were developing a new platform, which we released in 2016 called Flightdocs Enterprise. While I am not a developer, I worked closely with our in-house development team to design, architect, and develop the platform." Heine is currently chief operating officer at Flightdocs and his core focus is in the development of new products and strategic positioning for the future.
Flightdocs is part of the NBAA, HAI, WAMA, PAMA, GBAA, and a few other organizations. "We attend many conferences throughout the year and really enjoy all of the events that are put together by these organizations. It’s great to be able to get facetime with so many of our customers in one place. Personally, in 2017, I was voted in to the board for the NBAA Maintenance Committee."
Nominated by Mercedes Jorge, Director, Marketing, Flightdocs: "The younger Heine has played a pivotal role in the company’s growth, which averages 30 percent a year. From the early days as an intern he rapidly progressed and took an active leadership role in developing the company’s signature product called Enterprise. Heine is proud that products like Enterprise have revolutionized the way business aviation professionals maintain their aircraft, eliminating oppressive paperwork and redundant activities. Today, his primary focus is finding growth opportunities and that takes him back to his product development roots. “We’re continually looking for new ways to help our customers streamline their operations with a steady stream of new products and technologies with new features and functionality,” Heine says. “That’s what drives our aggressive growth goals.” He is happy to focus on investing in research and development and promises “the next big thing” is just around the corner."
At any given time Flightdocs typically has in between four and eight interns on the Flightdocs team. The company has been able to bring on several interns as full-time employees as they graduate. "We also contribute to a few scholarships, most notably the NBAA TRACS scholarship, which provides education and training to up-and-coming maintenance technicians. We’ve been able to transform a traditionally heavy paper based workflow, and go fully electronic. This has made our customers so much more efficient and effective."
In the short term I’d like to focus in on taking Flightdocs to the next level and continuing to grow. I’m working on a number of new developments and I’m excited to see what they can do for the industry. In the future I’d like to start my own tech company from scratch: Take a vision and see it through to a final product in the hands of customers.
