David Urpani

David, 46 years old, is married with two children. He specialises in business building, business improvement, business and corporate strategy and technology. For 9 years, up till mid-2008 David was Founding Director – Strategy & Technology - of the highly successful on-line business, iSelect Pty Ltd. After co-founding iSelect in 2000 David co-lead the business to become Australia’s leading on-line insurance brokerage employing over 150 people and turning over tens of millions of dollars. He developed and patented the technology that allows iSelect customers to make informed purchase decisions.

Previous to iSelect, David was Managing Principal of the Business Intelligence Consulting Practice of Oracle Corporation in Melbourne. There he advised some of the world’s biggest enterprises - including Amazon.com. Citibank, NZ Dairy Board - in the areas of Strategy & Technology and Enterprise Management Systems.

David has over 25 years experience in research, consulting and building businesses. He is a highly-trained, experienced, motivated and proven business technologist, strategist and entrepreneur with a passion for innovation, continual improvement, selling ideas and cultural change. He is also a versatile, quick lateral thinker and fast-learner who is well-able to build and motivate a team to embrace and implement new strategies, new ideas, new technologies and innovation.

David’s Ph.D. in the Decision Support and Knowledge Management aspects of Artificial Intelligence, delivered a practical solution which improved process efficiency and business bottom line of the sponsoring manufacturing enterprise.

Employer:	A number of businesses and investors
Position:	Consulting in Strategy & Technology
Time period:	July 2008 - Present
Description:	Since leaving iSelect, the company he founded, David has consulted to a number of businesses and investors in the areas of technical due diligence, business process improvement, business strategy and technology. He has just completed a 3-month engagement with Inmatrix a Smorgon family company with Commercial Credit Risk Management software applications in the area of Commercial Credit Risk Management. His task was to develop a product and revenue model strategy with the aim of a possible exit.

Employer:	iSelect Pty Ltd, Melbourne
Position:	Founder, Director, General Manager – Strategy & Technology
Time period:	December 1999 - June 2008
Description:	In mid 1999 David developed a business plan for a start-up online health insurance brokerage business that became iSelect. David raised several million dollars in venture capital and hired the start-up team. He invented and patented a Customer Decision Support (CDS) system that helps customers make a purchase decision by providing online advice on the best-fit health insurance policy online and by a call centre. Today iSelect employs over 150 people, sells several tens of million dollars worth of policies annually, and is still growing rapidly. His key focus was on setting up the business and developing strategies for profitable and sustainable growth. These strategies included identifying and mitigating risk, ensuring business continuity under ongoing double-digit growth, rolling out of new business lines, ensuring ongoing innovation, and improving productivity. Key achievements in this role include: • taking an idea and commercialising it, building a successful business and becoming an employer of choice that has generated big returns to investors; • committing to investors and delivering on a go-live date for design, build and rollout of all back office and customer facing systems in 6 months, from a green fields site to production system; • gaining patents for the technology innovation that drives the customer recommendation process; • winning the trust of, and signing agency agreements with, health insurance funds for whom iSelect has now become a trusted and successful sales channel; • developing and executing on business strategies taking the business from a start-up to a multi-million dollar, 150 people company and market leader.

Employer:	Oracle Corporation (Australia)
Position:	Managing Principal - Business Intelligence Practice
Time period:	December 1996 - November 2000
Description:	Involved in a variety of pre-sales and strategy consulting roles centred on the use of Data Mining, Business Intelligence, CRM and Data Warehousing technologies in a variety of industries including Consumer Packaged Goods, Financial Services, Manufacturing, Telecommunications, Utilities and Government. Most of these assignments required conducting C-level executive workshops in client organisations to develop solutions that addressed well-defined business needs and opportunities. Assignments of note include: • developing customer behaviour predictive models for Amazon.com, Citibank and Bell Atlantic Mobile; • acting as data mining adviser - Probe Project, Telecom NZ; • developing churn analysis model for Binariang, Malaysia (mobile phone operator); • developing Global Data Warehousing Bootcamp for Oracle Corp., London, UK. Presented and ran first ever Oracle Data Warehousing Boot camp for AsiaPac consultants in Sydney, Australia; • acting as Enterprise Data Warehouse Architect on the Enterprise Management System project at the New Zealand Dairy Board, Wellington, New Zealand. David was the only AsiaPac representative on an otherwise US consultant-run global account project. On client’s recommendation was awarded Asia Pacific Consulting Excellence Award .

Employer:	Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Melbourne
Position:	Research Scientist, Decision Support Systems Lab, Division of Building, Construction & Engineering
Time period:	December 1995 - November 1997
Description:	Responsibilities centred on identifying productivity bottlenecks and risk points in the building industry and then developing solutions that made use of expert systems technology. Of particular note is the development of BCAider, a decision support system that checks building plans for compliance with the Building Code of Australia. This tool was commercially very successful and later exported to Malaysia and Indonesia. During 1996–1997 David represented CSIRO on the Constructability Task Force of the Construction Industry Institute charged with examining business re-engineering and rationalisation issues in the construction industry.

Employer:	Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne
Position:	Lecturer - Business Forecasting, Marketing Data Management, Statistics, Financial Mathematics
Time period:	December 1991 - November 1997
Description:	David lectured to business undergrads and MBA students in: Financial Mathematics, Marketing Data Management, Business Forecasting, Statistical Analysis, Information Systems Management.

Employer:	WP Brown & Partners Engineers
Position:	Structural & Civil Engineering Consultant
Time period:	December 1988 - November 1991
Description:	Civil and structural design work and project management of construction teams and liaising with other consultants in a multi-disciplinary team environment. Projects included structural design and construction of Warrandyte Primary School, extension of Canberra Airport terminal and GMH-Toyota Plant at Dandenong.

Employer:	Public Works Department, Malta
Position:	Civil Design Engineer
Time period:	December 1987 - November 1988

Papers:

Facilitating knowledge acquisition from industrial process data by automating feature selection, Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Industrial & Engineering Applications of AI and Expert Systems; Rule Induction, Second International Conference on Knowledge Discovery, KDD-96 Los Angeles; Rule Induction without Decision Tree Construction, 12th European Conference on AI, ECAI96, Budapest; Other papers including reviewer and several international conferences.

Patents:

#2001261922 - Customer Decision Support at point of sale

Sports:	Triathlons, Running
Hobbies:	French Literature, Artificial Intelligence, Physics, Photography
Memberships:	Full member, International Society of Applied Intelligence Member, Institution of Engineers, Australia Member, The Data Warehousing Institute Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors
Awards:	2006 Awarded Patent by IP Australia for invention “Customer Decision at Point of Sale” 1998 Oracle Award for Consulting Excellence, Asia-Pacific 1992 Portland Aluminium Scholarship in Industrial Research, Swinburne University 1991 Commonwealth Graduate Research Scholarship, Monash University 1974 Full Academic Scholarship, De La Salle College, Malta based on competitive nationwide entrance exam – Top 10 out of 2,000 that sat for this exam awarded scholarship.