Like most people I had a rough 2021, mine involved a 5 month stay in hospital and a joust with sepsis, Covid and a ruptured hernia. As a result I’m recovering (very) slowly, but thanks to family, friends, carers and the NHS I’ve been back at home for nearly a year and very grateful to be enjoying life. For the first time in 37 years work is having to take a back seat to getting myself healthy again, which takes up most of my time. I’m not sure what the future holds but I’m beyond thankful for the NHS keeping me on this mortal coil, and the Homecare infrastructure for helping me be at home. Please please never take these valuable services and their exemplary professionals for granted, good health is not guaranteed.

Scottish Continuity, formerly called Scottish Continuity Group, is a non-profit body comprising some of the largest global financial institutions with representation from local and national government and members throughout the public and private sectors.Our aim is to share best practice in Business Continuity Management and Corporate Governance throughout all Scottish businesses and organisations through training, seminars and networking.

I started doing consultancy work, ostensibly with SME's, back in 1996 while still running my own IT business. It was very apparent among some of my customer base that while they generally did a grand job of work for their clients they had limited means or resource to convey that capability to prospective new clients. I found by providing some basic sales background support, whether it be in recruitment, incentivisation structuring, target market identification or sales process mapping, that significant progress could be achieved by some simple strategy introduction. My most recent specialisms have been in the fields of IT Security, Business Continuity, Software Sales and Risk Management but after 30 plus years in sales I feel that a lot of the basic principles translate and apply across multiple disciplines and businesses. My style has always been very pragmatic, not archetypically "salesy" but more crucially concerned with creating and maintaining long term customer relationships and ensuring that clients experience a solid and mutually beneficial commercial relationship. Thankfully I continue to enjoy working with a number of like-minded clients and partners, and would welcome any conversations regarding any such aspirations. These days I work with multiple clients providing Business Development support and acting as an interim Sales Manager/Director, still predominantly in Business Continuity, IT Security and IT Infrastructure and Asset Management/Environmental Disposal projects.

Sungard Availability Services (“Sungard AS”) is a leading provider of critical production and recovery services to global enterprise companies. Sungard AS partners with our customers across the globe to understand their business needs and provide production and recovery services tailored to help them achieve their desired business outcomes. Leveraging 35 years of experience, Sungard AS designs, builds and runs critical IT services that help customers manage complex IT, adapt quickly and build resiliency and availability. To learn more, visit www.sungardas.com or call 020 8080 8080. Connect with us on Twitter @SungardAS and on Facebook.com/SungardAS.

I worked with the security team in Scotland looking after new and existing clients and business partners on projects including:Security & Penetration TestingInformation Security SoftwareForensic & Cyber Incident ResponseManaged Security ServicesAudit, Compliance & GovernanceWebsite Performance OptimisationWebsite Load TestingWebsite Performance Monitoring

Working with the Enterprise Sales Team to grow NVT's corporate and mid-range client portfolio.

Glen Abbot is the UK's leading independent Business Continuity Consultancy firm. Although based in Scotland, Glen Abbot's consultancy covers the globe. Glen Abbot has clients from Houston to Stavanger, from Shetland to Plymouth, from Calgary to Coventry. Glen Abbot provides guidance and services to many of the worlds best known businesses - and to many not so well known organisations too. Regardless of your firms size or location - you need to be prepared for the unexpected. Glen Abbot is passionate about ensuring that you gain the full benefits from our experiences. We will ensure that you and your teams are prepared for the unexpected - regardless of whether it's a fire, a flood, a systems failure, a weather problem or any other unexpected incident.

The Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust leads Scotland in the promotion and support of self-employment and business creation amongst young people, thus contributing to the economic development and community regeneration of the country's regions in line with the policy of the Scottish Executive.I became involved with PSYBT to give something back to young people, often from disadvantaged backgrounds, who have an aspiration to starting their own business. I find it incredibly interesting and rewarding and look forward to charting the progress of some business stars of the future, while hopefully contributing something to their development along the way.

Enterprises in all sectors are seeking to improve efficiency by integrating all available information flows into a single management information system. "ImpactAware" (www.impactaware.com) is a dependency modelling based software service which has been designed to allow business continuity planning to be devolved to non-practitioners and to allow any organisation to quickly and easily compile a robust Business Continuity Plan in line with best practice.

Working with Graham and the team at Offrisk to optimise client engagement and to develop new business opportunities in BC, Risk and related strategic planning, training and exercising.

Inoapps is a rapidly growing and widely respected Oracle Consultancy. I was responsible for working with clients, partners and the Oracle Corporation directly to develop new business opportunities and channel relationships.

Developing a structured Business Continuity offering to add to Lumison's already comprehensive portfolio of Hosting,VoIP and ISP solutions.

Joined a struggling IT training business to try to improve sales and generally update the business, initially as Sales Director but was quickly promoted to MD. Unfortunately we proved to be too small a player in an aggressive marketplace and recovery was impossible. Despite having an enthusiastic buyer for the business for several months of due diligence, they pulled out late in the negotiation leaving us no option but to liquidate the company in October 2007.

I developed an IT Disaster Recovery facility in partnership with Sungard within Scotland Online's state of the art datacentre facility in Dundee. This provided a unique and powerful proposition combining a leading Webhosting facility with the world's largest Business Continuity provider.

Developed and marketed an IT DR sales function and workarea facility within Dacoll's Head Office and managed external DR third party "ship in" contracts, including RBS and JP Morgan.

I was a Senior Account Manager, initially with Guardian iT and subsequently (after acquisition) with Sungard Availability Services. I looked after about 100 accounts and enjoyed a successful and lucrative time at Sungard, and made some lifelong friends.

I was responsible for the development of Oracle opportunities in Scotland for Compelsolve, working closely with Oracle Scotland. We achieved some decent high profile wins, notably one of the first Oracle CRM deals in the UK.

I worked with a variety of SME's, generally as an interim Sales Director, providing mentoring, training, recruitment and generally shaping and motivating their sales effort.

I joined Info'Products immediately after their acquisition of Simmons Magee, which provided them with a Scottish operation. It was a difficult integration of two very different companies but despite a challenging working environment we achieved our £10m target for Scotland in the year that I was there.

Newarc was a small but successful IT Solutions company and hardware supplier. We grew the business from 3 staff and a turnover of £130k in 1993 to 10 staff and a turnover approaching £1m in 1997 when I sold the business to a competitor, maintaining employment for all staff.

Embarked on IT sales career which has lasted to date. Developed from Junior sales role through to senior and enjoyed a successful and educational time at Compel.

Sold copiers and fax machines, an extremely effective introduction into sales, it taught me a lot about the realities and disciplines of effective selling and the importance of hard work!

Had a part time Betterware door to door job while at school and on leaving school was offered the Area Manager role. Employed about 20-25 brochure distributors managing their stock, cash collection etc.