Executive Team
Frank Coker
President / CEO
Frank Coker has specialized in management consulting, business development and information systems technologies for more than 30 years. Frank is a Certified Management Consultant (CMC).
Prior to CoreConnex, he has launched 5 start-ups and at his most recent (Health Systems Technologies) he served as the CEO, grew it to over 100 employees, and obtained $22 million in venture capital. The assets of that company are now part WebMD. Mr. Coker’s prior work experience includes five years with Price Waterhouse as a Senior Manager in consulting, and five years with IBM in sales and marketing and 20+ years as president of the consulting firm Information Systems Management, Inc. Frank has been president and CEO, chairman of the board, COO, CFO, and served in a variety of other leadership positions in his companies.
Frank launched CoreConnex, Inc. in 2005 with Co-founder Tony Lael with the goal of creating a company that provides business resources to the IT solution provider market. CoreConnex began as a consulting firm to IT solution providers and then launched a Professional Services Automation product for IT solution providers followed by a financial dashboard product, the Corelytics Financial Dashboard. CoreConnex has sold off its PSA line of business in 2009 and is focused on building its financial dashboard business through partnerships with leading companies in the IT services market.
Frank holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Weber State University and a M.S. in Business Administration from Frostburg State University. He is a board member and past president of the Institute for Management Consultants, Pacific Northwest Chapter, and board member and past president of the Society for Information Management, Seattle Chapter. He teaches at the University of Washington Information School in the Masters in Information Systems Management program and also serves on their Board of Advisors.
Tony Lael
Executive Vice President
Tony has specialized in operations management, management consulting, small business management, IT operations and software development since 1996. Prior to starting CoreConnex, Tony founded Aponus Consulting, LLC in 2002 a management and technical consulting firm with specialization in helping small companies develop strategic business plans, operationalize marketing and sales strategies as well as pricing, packaging and selling IT managed services offerings.
Tony co-founded CoreConnex, Inc. in 2005 with Frank Coker with a vision of helping IT solution providers link their ideas of success to reality and financial growth. Tony co-designed the ConnexIT PSA (Professional Services Automation) software, a SaaS offering, and was instrumental in launching the company and operationalizing its marketing and sales processes. He also provided financial consulting and financial modeling services to early CoreConnex customers. Tony has played a lead role in product development, product launches, customer support services, market analysis, partnership development and ongoing strategic planning.
Tony drives the social marketing efforts of CoreConnex and provides business advisory services to customers of the Corelytics Financial Dashboard. He also manages the relationships with CoreConnex Channel Partners who offer Corelytics to their customers.
Tony holds a B.A. with an emphasis in Information Systems Management from Washington State University and a B.S. in Operations Management from Central Washington University.
Torsten Kablitz
Chief Software Architect
Torsten is the CoreConnex SCRUM Master and has been instrumental in implementing agile software development methodologies within CoreConnex. Torsten has architected the Design Patterns concepts used by CoreConnex which enables highly flexible, extensible and re-useable software. He is also responsible for educating new development staff that are brought on board to support the growing needs of CoreConnex and their customers.
Torsten has more than 20 years of software product development experience; and has built several successful development and implementation teams in large and small companies. His past positions include: Director of Technology at Alliance Health Technologies, Director of Product Development at Advanced Research Systems, Inc., and Product Development Manager at Health Systems Technologies, Inc. Mr. Kablitz has a track record of successfully delivering software products on-time and on-budget by introducing structured methodologies and rigor to the development process.
Torsten holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Physics from the University of Utah.
Ray Makela
Vice President Business Development
Ray joined CoreConnex in late 2009 and is a dynamic business development executive, entrepreneur and technology leader with over 20 years of management, consulting, and sales experience. Prior to joining CoreConnex, Mr. Makela held the title of Chief Customer Officer (CCO) and Principal at Codesic, where he was responsible for building the company’s service capabilities, evangelizing its service offerings and partnerships and managing all programs that impacted customer relationships. Codesic, with its staff of more than 100 professionals, was acquired by CGI, Inc. in 2007, Mr. Makela remained as Director of Consulting Services for the Seattle Metro Region.
Prior to joining CGI and Codesic Consulting in 1999, Ray held management positions at Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting) and Claremont Technology Group in Seattle where he was responsible for the business consulting practice. During his career he has successfully delivered strategic engagements for numerous clients in the public sector, financial services, telecommunications, high-tech, and non-profit sectors.
Ray holds a B.A. from University of Washington and an M.P.A. in Public Administration and Information Systems from the University of Southern California. Ray also served as an officer in the United States Navy and an assistant Professor of Naval Science at University of Southern California.
Bob Taylor
Director of Operations
Bob is a tireless advocate for the customers and our development team. He is fastidious in his approach of doing the right things right when working with our customers.
A former Certified Public Accountant, Bob worked on the audit staff of a national CPA firm before moving into the technology field. As Vice President for Technology at Pacific Rim Import Corporation, he was responsible for managing a network of offices across the country and the support of a nationwide salesforce. Bob has over 15 years experience in managing technology, development teams of all kinds and overseeing customer relationships.
For the last year, Bob has been instrumental in managing the CoreConnex development team and getting our core business systems operational including the PSA (Professional Services Automation) system we use to manage support incidents and projects, SCRUM project management methodology tracking we use to drive our development process, issue tracking we use for software bug management, and our internal operations, communications and customer presentations and Office Live we use to centrally store critical customer document management . He has also been the driving force behind our customer service efforts as well as created a sophisticated analysis engine for customers like Cisco to manage the World Theaters for Partner Compensation.
Prior to joining CoreConnex in late 2007, Mr. Taylor served as the Technical Services Manager at Pickering & Associates (a Seattle-based IT solutions firm) where he provided first response analysis of customer issues, diagnosed severity, and assigned an appropriate mix of engineering personnel and resources to resolve problems.
Bob holds a B.A. from the University of Washington with an emphasis in Accounting.
