Our Team

Kenneth Bassey, Founder and Chairman

Kenneth Q. Bassey, chairman and founder of Saphran, Inc., is a veteran of the hyper-competitive automotive industry, with extensive experience working in the Japanese-based supplier sector.

Prior to forming Saphran in 2001, Bassey worked as manager of strategic planning, sales and marketing at Toyoda Gosei North America and its affiliates. At Toyoda Gosei, which incorporates the Toyota Production System as its key operating discipline, Bassey developed business plans and long term forecasting for all divisions of this $550 million Tier One supplier. Bassey, who is fluent in Japanese, has also worked at ZF-Lemforder Corporation (a German-based automotive supplier) and Japan-based YSK Corporation, serving in account management capacities, where he worked with all of the Big Three and every Japan-affiliated automotive manufacturer with operations in North America.

Bassey is a graduate of University of Michigan where he earned a bachelor of business administration degree.

He is a lifetime member of the Detroit Economic Club.

Michael Mansfield, President and COO

Michael L. Mansfield, president of Saphran, Inc., is an experienced executive in the field of technology, with particular emphasis on customer-focused solutions.

Mansfield joined the Saphran management team from Fullscope, Inc., an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based developer of collaborative supply chain solutions, where he was vice president of development. Mansfield directed the efforts of research and development and third-party integration and quality assurance teams, delivering enterprise portal solutions for automotive, manufacturing and financial industries.

Previously, Mansfield co-founded NetPlanet (now ECS Group) where he served as vice president of development, managing the IT consulting company that served the automotive, financial and retail sectors.

He has also worked at Appnet/Software Services Corp. (now CommerceOne) where he was director of managed customer solutions, and was previously general manager of Cybertech, Inc., an multimedia technology solutions company serving security, law enforcement, broadcasting and sports markets, as well as the project lead at Williams International (based in Walled Lake, Mich.). At Williams, Mansfield oversaw the development of a shop floor scheduling system for this international manufacturer of turbine engines.

Mansfield earned a bachelor of science (computer science and artificial intelligence) from Taylor University of Upland, Indiana.

Roland Kovacs, Chief Architect

Mr. Kovacs has seventeen years of management and leadership experience in the areas of software applications and database development and architecture. Before joining Saphran, Kovacs led development of enterprise projects at Commerce One, where he served Ford and several other Fortune 500 companies. Prior to Commerce One, Roland was employed by Oracle, where he developed the underlying database application and tools, as well as office automation systems. Kovacs earned a Bachelor of Science in applied mathematics (computer science) and psychology with honors from Carnegie Mellon.

Joe Yassay, CFO

Mr. Yassay has over 15 years of experience in the automotive manufacturing and construction industries predominately in the Executive Vice President/ Chief Financial Officer role. MR. Yassay also worked in a financial management capacity of the Visteon Corporation. He has over 8 years experience of successful Merger/ Acquisition and business start-up experience. A founding member of CXO Resources, LLC an executive business resource group that provides organizations with hands-on expertise and prides itself on delivering results in the areas of ; M&A, turnarounds, on-demand executive management, capital resources, strategic and business operations, ISO certification, OSHA compliance, complete information technologies solutions, and innovations in advertising and marketing communication.

Mr. Yassay earned a Bachelors of Business Administration in Accounting from Eastern Michigan University and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Dubuque focused in international business.

Dennis Nash, VP Global Sales and Marketing

Dennis leads Saphran’s customer and prospect rapid and repeatable value delivery initiative. Dennis and the Saphran team have taken the typical 1 to 2 year solution deployment to reliably deliver global customer launches in 4 to 8 weeks with tracked paybacks in 2 to 9 months. This lean deployment reduces the Phase 1 launch cost, time, and resources for customers plus allows time to absorb best practice changes and new systems with goal of 100% success and satisfaction. Saphran Solutions is on this path!

This is only possible with great customers and partners! We thank them for their collaborative support of mutual success.

A specialty of Dennis’ is coaching companies to efficiently “cross the chasm” to ramp up revenues and profits faster than traditional approaches despite difficult odds and limited resources. Dennis has helped create and connect the early market leaders, like Saphran, with the best customers in their initial beachhead market. Dennis was an early adopter of CRM and 1-to-1 marketing best practices and continues to strive for outstanding customer relationships as judged by the customer and the company. Dennis believes every relationship should be a win-win. This has yielded many fold return on investment for customers and the solution provider companies by applying robust change management, executive support, and business case tools to support rapid business improvements at the customer.

He has developed teams to deliver effective opportunity management, voice of the customer, and winning business & marketing strategy to optimize business results and customer satisfaction for companies that include: Oracle, Ernst & Young, IBM, British Telecom, Proforma, Telxon, Activplant, and others.

Dennis helped found the MIT Enterprise Forum for Greater Lakes Chapter. He collaborates regularly with Automation Alley, New Enterprise Forum, Detroit Entrepreneur Network, TechTown, IT Zone/Spark, GLEQ, and other entrepreneurial support groups. He is volunteering at www.hope2plus.org to bring hope to everyone in need globally. He has been guest speaker and is very committed to supporting regional and global entrepreneurial technology growth.

Dennis earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in 1982 with a minor in business.