Paul Hopkins was formerly Director of Information Systems at Newcastle University and De Montfort University following 20+ years in the commercial sector in Procter & Gamble, Courtaulds, Coopers & Lybrand and Thorn Lighting. In many of these roles, he implemented shared service-type solutions across many multi-national companies.

Within the HE sector, he was Chair of RUGIT (Russell Group of IT Directors) and also Chair of the UCISA Procurement Group. He was a member of the HEFCE Shared Services Advisory Board (2006-08). Within the JISC Flexible Services Delivery programme, he has been Principal Investigator on the STEP-C project implementing ESB and SOA solutions within DMU and Southampton Solent Universities. Currently, he is leading a JISC-funded study of ‘Early Adopters of shared Service and Cloud Computing’.

He founded HE-Shared Services consultancy in 2008 to help institutions and potential shared services providers to work better together.