Business problems. Practical technology. Commercially viable solutions.
Charles Paumelle
Making innovation work in the real world.
Helping businesses turn emerging technologies into practical, commercially viable solutions.
Approach
Innovation only matters when it changes what a business can actually do.
For more than thirty years, my work has sat where business meets emerging technology: finding pragmatic, commercially viable ways to turn new possibilities into results.
The business problem comes first. Technology is there to serve it, and a solution that cannot be deployed economically at scale is not much of a solution.
The technologies have changed many times, from business processes and e-commerce to IoT, connected devices, wireless and networks, and now AI. The approach has not: understand the problem, learn quickly, work across boundaries, use what already works, build what is needed and get it deployed.
Start from the problem
What needs to change in the business, and what is it worth?
Use what already works
Proven components and open standards before anything bespoke.
Build what is missing
The architecture, the prototype and the pieces nobody sells.
Get it deployed
A pilot is a step, not an outcome. The measure is operation at scale.
Experience
Thirty years, several waves of technology.
Each wave brought new tools. The work stayed the same: help organisations adopt them where they made commercial sense.
- 2013–
Microshare
Co-founder
Connected technologies, IoT and operational solutions: sensing, data and applications deployed in buildings and industrial sites.
- 2010–2013
Accenture
Emerging technology practice
Led emerging-technology work for clients across Europe, Africa and Latin America.
- 2006–2010
Knowledge Rules
Managing Director, EMEA
Led the European business of a specialist consultancy, later acquired by Accenture.
- 2004–2006
Dell
B2B online business and procurement
Online selling and e-procurement for business customers.
- 2000–2004
Shell
Global e-business
E-business initiatives across a global energy group, as the internet became a business channel.
- 1995–2000
Pegasystems
Enterprise workflow and business rules
Process automation and rules-based systems for large organisations, in the early years of enterprise workflow.
Alongside
- 2014–2016
Redwood Software
Strategic alliances
Partnerships for an enterprise automation software company.
- 2017–2020
LoRa Alliance
Chair, Marketing Committee
Promoting LoRaWAN, the open standard for low-power wide-area networks.
Selected work
Real-world applications
Industrial contact tracing
During the pandemic, a secure Bluetooth-based contact-tracing system for a global pharmaceutical company. Developed quickly from adapted off-the-shelf hardware, custom firmware, data collection and cloud services, and deployed internationally.
Buildings that inform their own operations
Occupancy sensing already in place for space planning, put to work on cleaning schedules and other building services, so effort goes where it is needed.
Proximity and safety in industrial sites
Ultra-wideband proximity and safety solutions combining devices, wireless communications, fleet management and operational applications.
Networks and connected systems
Practical distributed networking and infrastructure, built from existing technologies and open standards.
Described without customer names or confidential detail.
Now
AI and the physical world
AI becomes far more useful when it has reliable context about what is happening in the physical world: which spaces are in use, where equipment is, which conditions have changed.
Sensors, connected systems, networks and applications can provide that context. With it, people and AI agents can make better decisions and act on them. Much of my current work is here, building on years of deploying connected systems in real buildings and industrial sites.
International
Wherever the problem happens to be
Work across Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas, with a multilingual, multicultural background and long experience of different business cultures.
Talk
The impossible job of being an IoT expert
The Things Conference 2019 · 15 minutes · published by The Things Industries, 11 February 2019 · Playing the video loads YouTube. Watch on YouTube
Contact
Start a conversation
Selectively available for independent engagements on difficult business problems where technology is part of the answer.