From the Desk of Robert M. Alexander, NLA President
Fellow members,
Many of you were in attendance at the recent Annual Membership Meeting where I announced that SantaCruz would FINALLY be connecting with GNet by GRiDD Technologies. This announcement was a long time coming. When I became President of the NLA at the 2020 CD/NLA Show in Las Vegas, I had a meeting with Apurva Patel of SantaCruz about an hour after being elected where he agreed to integrate with GNet.
Little did I know that it would take over two years and many, many conversations with Apurva and Amir Zafar from GNet to get to where we are today.
In order to try to push everything along, many helping hands stepped in to work with Apurva and Amir over the course of several months. The NLA Tech and Social Media Committee worked diligently to create the Ground Reservation Exchange Standards (GRES) to create standardized verbiage for the industry. Fellow Board member and Tech/Social Media co-chair Jay Erlich reached out to George Jacobs and George offered to help wherever he could. I collaborated with George and Board member Jason Kaplan behind the scenes to move the process along.
As the 2022 CD/NLA Vegas Show approached, the conversations became more pressing and more promising and I was hopefulthat we would be able to make this announcement to the industry during the Annual Membership Meeting.
Even during our meeting rehearsal early Monday morning, just hours before the meeting, it was not a guarantee that the deal would be done in time. I convinced Sarah and Kyle to give me extra time at the end of the meeting just in case we were ready to announce the deal.
Luckily, just an hour or so before the meeting, we had a signed deal. I was so proud to announce to our members and the industry that SantaCruz would be connecting with GNet and was happy to include George, Amir, and Apurva in this special moment.
I can assure you that the NLA will be working closely with software providers to ensure the integration process moves along and we will certainly keep members posted along the way. This is an exciting time for our industry and I look forward to how this software integration can make our businesses more efficient, our procedures more streamlined, and our industry more connected than ever.
As always, stay safe, stay determined, and stay strong.
