Paul, it’s great to meet you. Welcome to Invenio. I’d love to take this opportunity to learn more about you, your background, and what ignited your passion for innovation.

Q: To start with, perhaps you could tell me a little about your background?

Sure, I’ve recently joined Invenio from Ernst & Young (EY) where I spent 17 years. I’ve been working with SAP for nearly 30 years, starting out as an engineer pulled into an SAP implementation in 1997 and then becoming an SAP Developer with GlaxoSmithKline. I soon became Portal Lead there, before switching to AgilityWorks which was later taken over by EY. While at AgilityWorks/EY I became Subject Matter Expert in UI and Process, then progressed to Global Team Lead in Technology and, later, Director.

Q: Can you share a little about your professional approach and what you bring to your role as European Head of Technology Architecture and Innovation at Invenio?

I’ve never been someone who thrives on rigid processes for the sake of having a process. In SAP programmes, governance and methodology are vital, but they only deliver real value when they’re balanced with people-centred leadership. My strength lies in working closely with colleagues, understanding their capabilities, and helping them identify and bridge skills gaps.

I don’t see myself as a “manager” in the traditional sense – managing tasks through a linear process isn’t what drives transformation. I focus on leadership which, for me, means inspiring teams, creating clarity, and enabling them to achieve outcomes in the most effective way possible.

Q: You’ve just joined Invenio. How has the first week been?

It’s been invigorating. I’d reached a point in my previous role where I’d run out of runway. I needed a new challenge and joining Invenio has been exactly that. From day one, I’ve felt energised – and that’s down to the culture here. There’s a strong emphasis on collaboration, innovation, and delivering measurable value in complex SAP environments.

Q: What excites you most about your new chapter with Invenio?

My focus and purpose have always centred around innovation, so I feel it’s kind of inevitable that I should end up where I am now. One of the key roles I’ll be taking on at Invenio will involve looking into innovation – specifically around AI and how that can work with SAP estates.

AI is still very much in its infancy. It’s a new frontier and, as such, it isn’t well understood yet. There’s a lot of confusion as to how AI can be used, and how to make it work. Only around 5% of AI projects deliver measurable value and only 1% of organisations consider themselves AI mature, so it’s about leading organisations by the hand as they work out the best way that AI can be used to help them grow their business. When businesses rush into adopting AI, they often end up using people to hold the AI processes together and deliver no real benefit, but it should be the other way around. When it comes to adopting AI and choosing the solutions to work with, it’s like most things, a matter of testing the water and taking your time.

Invenio is at a really exciting intersection in the SAP space. Whether it’s optimising core ECC processes, driving readiness for S/4HANA, or aligning business transformation with intelligent technologies, there are real opportunities to make a difference.

What I’m most looking forward to is supporting clients – not just with technical delivery, but with the people side of change too. I’ve been leading SAP transformation projects for a long time and the one thing I’ve learned is that they are never just about the system – they’re about how teams adapt, align, and move forward together. That’s where strong leadership makes a tangible impact.

Q: How do you use AI in your own life?

I use AI quite a lot to do the heavy lifting in my day-to-day life. I often turn on transcripts in a call to get everything recorded and I’ll ask AI to summarise the action points for me and give me a starting point for slides or an article that I can then build upon – or a start point for building an innovation process.

I find AI is great for getting me from blank page to a full page very quickly – and for me, just getting something on the page in the first instance is the bit that I find the hardest. Once there is something on the page, I find it much easier to adapt, develop or evolve it as needed.

So, in a comparatively short time, AI is there, in virtually everything I do. Sometimes, I even have arguments with it, just to get push-back and flesh out ideas and concepts. I find AI is like a muscle – the more you use it, the more you want to use it and the easier it gets.

Q: With so many businesses thinking about adopting AI, how can they know if they are ready for it?

I think most organisations are almost certainly not ready for AI – and I’ll tell you why. AI relies on data. A lot of it. And, in my past life, one of the hats I wore was very much around data management. Most organisations have poor data. And, if the data driving the solution is poor quality, it’s becomes hard to get great results. I think it will be a difficult journey for many organisations, but right now, AI is kind of inevitable. You need to get on board as best you can, otherwise you’ll get left behind.

When adopting AI, it’s a matter of finding the low-hanging fruit – where AI can be delivered effectively, easily and with limited risk.

One example of this is a nifty tool that Invenio has developed, which applies AI to invoices. It enables an organisation to check every single invoice against the data held in the system and root out fake invoices, duplicates, or inaccuracies. This AI tool called Invoice Shield, takes care of the kinds of tasks that are essential and tend to actually take up a lot of time, but that no-one will miss.

I think these types of tools can make a tremendous difference to an organisation.

Q: What is your superpower?

I’d have to say that my superpower is my ability to apply technology to finding solutions. One of my very first jobs was improving processes at a paper mill, so I guess I started young from that perspective and have been finding solutions to problems through the application of innovative technology ever since.

One of the biggest issues though, is that people are resistant to change. It’s human nature. Someone once said to me, “I know it’s a bad process, but I know how to do it”. That sums up the situation quite nicely – it's not a matter of the best solution, often, it’s a matter of the one that’s easiest for the user or decision maker in that moment. But that’s my superpower – taking away the bad process and putting a good process in its place, which includes making it simpler and more appealing for users too.

 Q: Any final thoughts as you get started?

I’m delighted to be here. It’s early days, but the energy and the potential are clear. I’m excited to work with the talented and friendly Invenio team, and our clients, to deliver programmes that are not only technically robust, but also truly transformative for the businesses we support.

Paul - Thank you for your time. It’s been a delight to meet you, and I look forward to seeing where you take your new role and the innovative products and services that I have no doubt will be making headlines very soon.