About

I'm Paul McLaren and I've spent over 20 years working in technology, providing advice, showing colleagues what is possible and making complex IT decisions, basically I like helping people with tech.   In my career I have worked with organisations spending thousands to millions of pounds, and now I am providing a service for small and medium sized business owners making the same kind of business critical decisions on a very different budget.

I've worked on both sides of major technology deals. As customer-side Technical Lead for NHS Scotland, I helped decide how to spend £300M on the original Scottish Wide Area Network procurement. Later, I moved to the supplier side as Lead Architect for Capita, helping build and grow that same network into one connecting over 70 organisations and 6,000 sites, developing a number of new products and services along the way - eventually playing a lead role in the technical team for its re-procurement. 

My roles have always involved working with customers to understand their needs, work out together how technology can help and designing solutions that were deliverable and met their budget.

That's given me something most advisors don't have: I know how technology gets sold, procured, and delivered, and where it typically goes wrong.

Along the way, I've helped organisations with the kind of problems most businesses eventually face:

• Moving to the cloud — helping shift away from ageing in-house computer systems to modern, more reliable cloud services that get continuous improvements and have reliable backups (including some of the earliest public sector moves to this in Scotland).

• Keeping systems secure — designing networks between customer sites and in-building Wi-Fi as well as security setups using vendors like Cisco, Palo Alto, Fortinet and Juniper that protect against the kind of cyber threats that make headlines.

• Getting the most out of Microsoft and Google tools — from email, Word and Excel to online services like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 for hosting websites, document collaboration and form building.  

• Choosing and rolling out new software — helping select and set up systems like customer databases and service platforms using software like Salesforce, ServiceNow and Microsoft Power Platform so they fit how the business actually works.

• Making sense of AI -  adopting services like CoPilot, Gemini and Claude, and helping organisations of thousands of people actually use them well, not just install them.

• Writing the strategy and the business case — putting together clear, costed plans so decision-makers know what they're investing in and why.

• Troubleshooting - resolving project issues such as supplier non-delivery, misunderstanding of requirements and scope creep, then agreeing a solution that works for all parties and getting things back on track.

Why I started McLaren Solutions

Big organisations get access to this level of technology thinking as a matter of course. Small and medium-sized businesses rarely do — yet they're often the ones who can least afford to get an expensive tech decision wrong.

I set up McLaren Solutions to close that gap: independent, experienced advice for businesses that want a second opinion before they commit budget, sign a contract, or choose a system they'll be living with for years.   I am not linked to any particular supplier so there are no products to sell and no vendor commissions — just clear advice from someone who's sat in the room making the technology decisions and providing advice.

A bit more about me

I'm based in Aberdour, Fife, and I'm SC cleared if you need additional security coverage. Outside client work, I have mentored young people through the MCR Pathways programme, and recently spent two months volunteer teaching in rural Kenya — helping a primary school get online, training staff to use AI in their lesson planning, and I now continue to work with them as they adopt Google Workspace.

LinkedIn

You can find me here: www.linkedin.com/in/paul-mclaren-4024994

If you're facing a technology decision and want an honest, independent view, get in touch: paul@mclarensolutions.com