Educated to degree level in Chemistry and Physics, it was Paul’s love of the ZX Spectrum which became the breeding ground for a burgeoning passion for all things programming. During his final year at Nottingham University Paul undertook a temporary position within a multi-million pound high-profile project at Barclays Bank technical HQ in Cheshire. This initial 5-week engagement involved working directly with the Coopers & Lybrand Management Consultant team implementing new systems to support sweeping and radical business change in the Bank’s branch network.
This perfectly established the introduction to the world of enterprise systems, business-benefit, internal and external stake-holders, high-governance project methodologies and of course the machinations and politics of corporate business. After returning to University for the final term, the Coopers and Lybrand team contacted the agency and tracked Paul down, demanding his return to the team. Paul found himself back at Barclays on the morning after his last degree examination, honing skills such as Business Analysis, Development Management, IT Operational and management of 3rd party development houses over a 6 year period encompassing multiple roles within Barclays Bank.
In 2003 Paul radically changed his working environment, joining a small SaaS and development house, delivering a commercial product and services to the Facilities Management industry. Paul successfully implemented radical technical change to benefit that business and that of its clients, by developing out the SaaS portfolio for the company, in-sourcing the development operation and heading up the support, development, testing, pre-sales technical and professional services operation for the company. Entrenched within the ‘pressure-cooker’ environment that is a small business delivering to Corporate and Public Sector clients, Paul was quick to see the benefits of “cloud” computing before the phrase was even coined.
2006 saw Paul’s first experience in the world of eCommerce, and specifically to the IT sales sector, taking control of the Venture Capital funded delivery of a Total Commerce Management suite of products, and launching IT247.com – a real proving ground for the software. It was during this time that the project, managed by Paul using the newly fashionable agile methodology, was awarded the Big Chip award for Best B2B eCommerce project of 2007. For the following 3 years Paul, as Technical Services Director, ran the development, implementation, and professional services operation for the Total Commerce Management suite of products, including the development and selling of commercial software solutions to the IT sales sector, whilst expanding the product portfolio to be vertical-market agnostic. At this time Paul also built an acute specialism in competitive intelligence data and its commercial usage in eCommerce.
Starting in 2010, Paul spent 3 years building the fledgling eCommerce and multi-channel success story that is Cleverboxes,bringing innovative techniques and automation to the website, hosting and social marketing processes, enabling a significant growth curve whilst keeping the operation lean in headcount terms; a marriage of all the technical skills and business-savvy acquired over his career to date.
And all of this was founded on Paul’s fascination with the 8-bit home micro explosion in the mid-80s, attributing his first interest in computing to being awe-struck as a friend typed in a programme-listing on a Dragon 32, at the tender age of 10.