Chris Speakman
Chris specialises in Business Development Strategy, Leadership Development, and Finance Strategy with a Senior Management career spanning over 25 years within both Corporate and SMEs.
Having held positions including Head of Operations, Head of UK Sales, Head of Risk, Operations Director and Director of Business Development, Chris brings his wealth of knowledge in building successful Corporate Divisions, SLTs and SMEs to complement our Scaleup Director Team.
Chris initially spent over 15 years in Corporate Asset Finance, leading the key Joint Ventures Sales Division within the Bank of Scotland, working alongside, and growing partnerships with Scania, Heidelberg, JCB and Barclays. Moving to risk to become an Underwriter, he financed proposals for the likes of Porsche and Ferrari Maranello, progressing to Manager of Risk within three years, holding a personal £1m and joint £10m mandate. Chris then accepted the challenge of building two businesses within ICT; a c£1.2m Turnover SaaS company which he helped grow to over £3.5m and a full Managed Serviced IT business which also grew from c£2m to over £5m.
Moving to BT Business to build an Enterprise Division, he introduced and lead new technical business development teams, processes, procedures, and managed key partnerships to grow the division from zero base to c£40m Revenue and 34% GM, then led BT/EE’s largest outsource partner to drive them to achieve their ambitious growth. Heading up their North West Business Centre, under Chris’ leadership they grew from 85 to c300 staff, as he introduced a new management structure, implementing 10 Sales and Service Managers, 5 Operation Managers and 200 Account Managers. Turnover and profitability increased threefold.
Joining Inventya as Director of Business Development, and subsequently as Scaleup Director for Innovate UK, he believes strongly in growing successful partnerships, delivering the right values in driving the right culture across all teams, and supplementing these with a clear strategy, direction, detail and support. Chris is also currently Deputy Lead on the Scaleup Programme.
Outside of work, Chris spends his time with his two wonderful children, Olivia and Daniel, and family, becoming quite the den builder along the way.