January 15 marks our 30th company anniversary, and we’re going to celebrate in style! But how did we get here? Well, 30 years ago, Andy Richardson started it all off and began a company called Influential Software. Together with John Simpson, they began offering digital transformation services before the term itself had even been coined.

Since the start, we have strived to stand out from the crowd of IT solutions providers with top tier solutions and a personal touch. Our core beliefs are:

• Satisfaction: a quarter of our clients have worked with us for over 10 years, while the longest has been with us for 28 years
• Experience: with an extensive history in hundreds of complex projects combined, our  developers, consultants, and support staff have sharply honed skills
• Accreditations: as a SAP Partner Center of Expertise (PCoE), we guarantee the best quality of our support services
• Awards: thanks to speedy and high quality delivery, our software development teams are frequently awarded prizes
• Partnerships: with partners such as Microsoft, SAP, Boomi, IBM, and more, we have the right expertise for any business need.
• Value: we offer competitively priced solutions to local businesses, SMEs, and large enterprises

Timeline of key events at Influential

For our company anniversary, we’re taking a look back at the key events and achievements we’ve had in the past 30 years.

15 January 1993: Influential Software was formed and offered Cognos Powerhouse development as core service.

1993 – 2000: Extended focus to Cognos BI development, data warehouse development and Oracle consultancy. Key clients include Mirror Group Newspapers, AstraZeneca, and West Anglia Great Northern Railway.

Early 2000’s: Services expanded to include web development and PHP development. We worked with clients such as Yell, Tomlinsons, and Eurosat.

Late 2000’s: Many key clients included Taylor & Francis, Cambridge University Press, Capita, STA International, S&G, and BPP.

We also opened our first office in Maidstone, Kent.

Early 2010’s: In 2010, we won a UK Government “Innovation and Growth” award, resulting in funded mangement and growth training sessions for our staff.

2010 also saw our expansion in US markets, with projects taking place in Florida and New York.

In 2011, we opened our first London office at The Gerkhin building. That same year, we ran the first ever Influential Academy to train tech apprentices. In the class of 2011, we met and hired our current CTO, Matt Tolliday.

During 2013, we achieved SAP Gold Partner status and up to 2016, our clients included Lotus Renault F1, Kwik Fit, Harper Collins, Centrica, and John Lewis Partnership. We also worked with many councils, education institutes and government departments.

Late 2010’s: our staff size grew past 50 and we helped clients such as American Express, Church of England, Ark Data Centres, DEFRA.

In recent years, we achieved Microsoft Gold Partner status (yay us!) and just last year, our client count surpassed 250.