What is Prevuelo?
Prevuelo™ is a method for checking a company’s finances before it makes big decisions, the same way an aircraft is checked before takeoff. Prevuelo is Spanish for “preflight”.
Where the name comes from
Before an aircraft takes off, a lot happens that passengers almost never see.
Maintenance reviews the reports from the previous flight. It fixes, or defers under approved rules, anything left open, and signs the aircraft’s release. Without that signature, the aircraft does not leave. The flight is dispatched with its flight plan and fuel calculation, and fuel is loaded. Cleaning, catering and supplies come on board. The crew boards and briefs the flight. And before the door closes, a pilot, usually the captain, walks down to the ramp and goes all the way around the aircraft: the walk-around. Tires, surfaces, lights, anything that is not as it should be. Then, in the cockpit, come the checklists.
Only after all of that does the aircraft take off.
Some of those steps are about service. The safety ones are not optional: the maintenance release, dispatch, fuel, the exterior inspection and the checklists. They exist because problems are far easier to solve on the ground than in the air.
In many companies it works the other way around. Big decisions take off without a check: opening a new location, hiring ten people, signing a loan, launching a product. And when something goes wrong, it is discovered in the air, when the cash has already run short.
That is what Prevuelo is: the work done on the ground, before takeoff.
How it works
First, the diagnostic
Like the maintenance check. We measure where the company stands on five dimensions: liquidity, capital structure, governance discipline, operational efficiency and adaptive capacity. The result is the Prevuelo Index, a 0–100 score that shows where the risk is today.
Then, the processes
Like the checklist. Budget, scenarios and points of no return defined in advance: the conditions that must be met before committing money that cannot be recovered.
In flight, the instruments
Like the cockpit panel. Indicators and alarms with concrete thresholds, so problems show up while there is still time to correct them.
The three phases have names of their own: Measure, Rebuild and Resist.
What Prevuelo is not
- It does not guarantee success. Nothing does. An aircraft with every check in order can still run into bad weather.
- It does not predict the future. The Prevuelo Index measures today’s risk; it does not forecast what will happen.
- It does not replace your accountant or your software. It organizes them into a system for making decisions.
What it does is help identify what is wrong, correct it and measure it. And it raises the odds that the company works, at the very least, the way it was designed and written down.
A bit of history
The method was first published as MR³ (Measure, Rebuild, Resist). The phases are the same; the name changed to say what matters most: the work starts before takeoff. Earlier versions, with their dates, are on the Publications page.
Run your first check
The Prevuelo Index gives you a first reading of your company in 5 minutes.
Prefer to do it with support? Schedule your diagnostic.