Uptime @ Crunch Time thought leadership initiative will be guided by a distinguished Advisory Board of business visionaries and technology and performance experts. These executives offer their consultative expertise to enrich and deepen the value of program content and its activities, including research reports, best practices development, and executive dialogs.

Yusuf Lanewala
IT Advisor, Saraswat Bank

Yusuf is an IT Sales, Strategy and Management professional with over 25 years of IT industry experience in India, US and Europe. He has an MBA from the State University of New York and has also attended an Executive education program in Change Management at the Harvard Business School.

Yusuf’s professional career started with the Management Consulting Division of Price Waterhouse & Co. where he was responsible for delivering several Systems Consulting projects.

In 1979, he joined International Data Management (IDM), a 100% employee owned company. IDM was a leading IT services company. 175 ex-Marketing and Systems employees of IBM formed IDM in 1978 when IBM wound up its operations in India. At IDM, Yusuf led a large region and was a regular member of the “100% Club”.

In 1991 Yusuf joined Mafatlal Consultancy Services (MCS) which was part of the US $ 1 billion Arvind Mafatlal conglomerate and served them as President & CEO. Under Yusuf’s leadership MCS was rated as the third largest provider of IT services in the domestic market in India. MCS was also one of the pioneers in the BPO business. MCS developed several leading products like X-Chequer (a Total Banking System), Clarient 2000 (a Y2K repair framework), X-Tenna (a collaboration tool), COBAG (a COBOL code generator), HOTLINK (a PC to PC communication tool), Mutual Fund processing, etc.

In 1999, Yusuf set up his own consulting venture where he advised several IT services companies on business strategy. He also consulted with several leading banks, advising them on IT selection and deployment of Core Banking, Anti Money Laundering, Business Intelligence, Debit Cards, ATMs, Internet Banking, Mobile Banking, etc. In his capacity as an advisor, he spearheaded technology transformation of an important bank in India, which won a special award for technology implementation in 2004, 2005 and 2006 from the Indian Bankers’ Association.

Yusuf has also been involved as a Member of the Board, in setting up an IT services subsidiary for a leading bank which has set up an IT and IT Enabled Services Company. The company has set up a SaaS model for providing services to the Banking sector.

Yusuf has recently been involved as a Founding Director of the Business Process Council, a Society that has been formed with a mission to collect, produce and enhance a common body of knowledge of Business Processes. Yusuf has also been closely involved with various industry associations like NASSCOM, MAIT, CSI, MACCIA and ICC-India. He is also actively involved with Rotary International.

Kelly Ison
Director of Business Process Management at OSI Restaurant Partners, LLC.

Ms. Ison is responsible for aligning process improvement initiatives with BPM, using leading edge transformation approaches, such as Lean Sigma techniques. She has over 20 years experience in the technology industry with emphasis on total quality and Continuous Improvement Process (CIP) methodologies, including the introduction of dramatic new business processes to a wide range of industry segments.

Previously, Ms. Ison was Director of Shared Business Services at Outback Steakhouse, Inc.—accountable for delivering operational process improvement projects while meeting strategic and business requirements. While in this role, Kelly delivered improvements in three strategic systems driving to an annual ongoing savings of $600,000.00 a year.

An expert in translating corporate strategies into achievable business process improvement plans, she is adept at defining and managing inter-related concurrent projects. In addition, Ms. Ison maintains an International perspective and desire to achieve the highest level of business process efficiency in a global business environment.

Kelly is a chapter founder for the Association of Business Process Management Professionals in Tampa Florida and currently serves as Vice President of Business Development. Ms. Ison received a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration Management from Trinity College and is in the process of acquiring a second major in Technology Management from Saint Petersburg College. Kelly holds a membership with the Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society. In addition, she is a frequent speaker at industry and association conferences and is certified Lean Sigma.