This year we celebrate 10 years in business. We know that without our fantastic team we wouldn’t have made it this far – it takes a lot of early morning coffee runs, passion in our chosen areas and sheer determination right from sourcing a project through to completion and subsequent go-live and support.
When you offer a service such as ours you put yourself right at the core of someone’s business. Their processes, sometimes running the same way they did from day dot, are up for scrutiny and not everyone wants to hear how their company can function better than it already does. Through the adoption of modern technology we like to demonstrate just how efficiently a business can run and what the rewards can be for businesses who take on the challenge of upgrading their software and hardware.
Blue Rock offices officially opened on Shamrock Quay in 2006
This said, our humble beginnings have never been forgotten. When our directors George, Lance and Glen first decided to set up their own company with a view to offering the same personalised service you can only find from an independent, they had no offices and 20 loyal customers who liked the sound of the new ethos. Blue Rock Systems was born so the directors could realise their dream of delivering world-class software to wholesalers, merchants, suppliers and distributors whilst maintaining the small company feel that is often lost in big corporates.
With a base established in Shamrock Quay Marina, Southampton, the company’s ideals began to catch on. As news of Blue Rock spread the brand gathered momentum and in 2005 Blue Rock acquired CMS; as we grew in size, we also increased our projects and in 2007 we celebrated our 100th customer.
To further the reach of the business, we took over Sense Computers in Nottingham in 2009. The acquisition brought in a well-established hardware team who fitted into our philosophy with ease. With two locations and 23 members of staff we comfortably expanded Blue Rock to cover the north of the UK.
Blue Rock Systems acquire Sense in 2009
Our work within our chosen industries was strengthening year on year. Aside from working with our key vertical markets (merchants, distributors, suppliers and wholesalers) we were also developing a buying group solution that would utilise the incredible flexibility of the software solutions we offer. In 2013 we became an NMBS approved supplier, before being chosen to deliver our buying group solution to the NMBS themselves.
2014 was Blue Rock’s biggest year. It saw us acquire a couple of small businesses in Brigg, North Lincolnshire, bringing our staff total to 40. With the acquisition came access to a secure server farm located in Kent. The ex-MOD bunker allows us to offer cloud hosting services for software and infrastructure to both new and existing clients (now a total of 360).
An aerial view of our Brigg office
This year is already off to a fantastic start. We’ve had three sites go-live – a bathroom distributor, an industrial pipework merchant and a luxury natural stone supplier with offices across the world – and 3 new members of staff join us in the offices.
The Blue Rock outlook is very much about looking to the future and embracing modern technology, whatever it might be. We feel it is our duty to provide a consistently updated service so you can get the best out of your software now and as your business grows. It is for this reason that we continue on into our tenth year looking forward to a positive future and with high hopes for what it might bring. Thank you to all our customers, old and new, for your continued support and valued contributions to the Blue Rock team. Here’s to the next 10 years!