F International

F International was founded in 1962 when successful female entrepreneurs and freelance working were rare.[2][3][4] Steve Shirley started the company despite having no capital or business experience, to escape the constraints of working as a woman in a predominantly male working context:[5]^{:loc 923}

It sounded mad. Drawbacks included the following. I had no capital to speak of. I had no experience of running a company. I had no employees, no office, no customers, and no reason to believe that there were any companies out there with any interest in buying my product. Nobody sold software in those days. In so far as it existed, it was given away free.

— Dame Stephanie Shirley.[5]^{:loc 997}

The total revenues for the first 10-month tax year were £1,700.[6]

The Cranfield School of Management undertook a study of the reported differences between male and female entrepreneurs in the late 1980s, concluding that because of the differences in context and background for men and women, the principal factor for successful women entrepreneurs was the nature of market entry.[7] F International is an early example: business and industry were short of computer-skilled people,[8] and the nature of much software and systems work was, even at that time, amenable to homeworking.[9]

The company, then known as "Freelance Programmers", was registered on 13 May 1964 and a "panel" of freelance software and systems specialists, almost exclusively female, began to work for the company. An early assignment came from Urwick Diebold and this attracted attention from the media.[10] The early days were difficult; at one point Kit Grindley, a recent acquaintance at Urwick Diebold, wrote Steve a cheque for £500 to cover operating costs and payments to the workforce.[5]^{:loc 1166} Once over the early cash flow problems the business began to grow. By 1966, there were about 75 regular freelance workers on the panel,[6] some of whom became significant role players as technical experts and project managers.[5]^{:loc 1762} Seriously problematic projects were rare, but one in particular, with Castrol, forced the management team to focus on quality management.[5]^{:loc 1226} Quality management became one of the foundations of the operating model for the company.[11][12]

At the start, in the 1960s, there were no accessible data communications services and no Internet, but in the 1970s the business attracted interest from academics and futurists as an example of what became known as teleworking or telecommuting.[13] The Harvard Business School documented the F International business in a number of case studies.[6][14] The business was the subject of several other international academic studies of homeworking.[15][16]

In the 1970s the company's development paralleled the emergence of feminist thinking and the consequent awareness and pre-occupation with gender equality; together these led to legislation in the United Kingdom that was intended to bring equal rights to women but had unexpected consequences; F International was specifically offering employment to women, and therefore they had to adjust their policies to be gender-independent.[17]

I felt strongly that my “female” approach, which had attracted such scorn in the business’s early years, had been vindicated, and it irked me that the state, in addition to its other meddlings, had now declared that approach illegal. Still, there was no point in quarrelling with the law, especially such a well-intentioned one. At a board meeting ... we amended our personnel policy again. Our purpose was now to provide employment for “people with dependants unable to work in a conventional environment.

— Dame Stephanie Shirley.[5]^{:loc 1897}

Despite these issues, the business continued to grow until the 1970s, when it encountered difficulties for at least two reasons: the business reported its first financial loss (of £3,815) and suffered its first significant personnel loss, when Pamela Woodman resigned to form Pamela Woodman Associates, working in direct competition to Freelance Programmers.[6] However, by the end of the decade, revenue had risen to £2.5m and there was a partnership with Heights Information Technology Services Inc in the United States, F International ApS in Copenhagen, servicing Scandinavia, and F International BV in Amsterdam, servicing the Benelux countries;[18] At home, still in the 1970s, spin-off businesses were re-absorbed into the parent business which was re-established in 1974 as "F International".[5]^{:loc 1838}

By 1980 the business had developed country-wide coverage with more than 600 staff.[5]^{:loc 2342} The administrative headquarters for the UK were then based in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, where the original organisation, Freelance Programmers had been founded.

F International was a founder member of the Computing Services Association, and was active in the British Computer Society and the Institute for Data Processing Management (IDPM)[19] It was in the early 1980s that a wider general interest in home working with telecommunications support became evident, a phenomenon that later known as teleworking or telecommuting.[20]

Key dates in the 1980s-1990s include:[6][5]

• 1981 - Freehold premises were bought in Berkhamsted
• 1981 - Steve Shirley established the F International Shareholders’ Trust to share the ownership of the company. In that year revenues had reached £3.4m.[6]
• 1982 - A subsidiary was established in Edinburgh
• 1983 - Franchising of Heights Information Technology Services Inc (USA)[19]
• 1984 - Following re-structuring, a survey was undertaken to establish the feelings of the workforce about the changes
• 1984 - The F International Charter was developed and published [21]^:61
• 1985 - The US partner company, now owned, was sold, and Hilary Cropper was appointed as Chief Executive of UK Operations
• 1985 - Quality management was successfully assessed to Ministry of Defence DEF STAN 05-21 standards[22][11]
• 1985 - F International was re-registered as a Public Limited Company (but not quoted on the stock exchange, an unusual move for a plc)
• 1985 - By the end of 1985 13% of the ownership of the business had been taken up by outside interests and 17% was with the FI Shareholders’ Trust
• 1986 - A primitive email service based on Prestel was introduced
• 1987 - In the Times’ Top 500 Companies, 25 per cent of the top 500 were FI Group clients, as were 50 of the top 100 and eight of its top 10.[23]
• 1987 - The company held a Silver Jubilee at the National Exhibition Centre to celebrate 25 years of operations
• 1987 - A further gift of 7% of the shares took staff ownership just short of 25%
• 1988 - The company name was changed again, to "FI Group"
• 1990 - Sir John Harvey-Jones (the Troubleshooter) opened a new FI Group headquarters and commended the company's success, that he attributed to "flexibility and speed" coupled with "decentralisation, delegation and releasing energy rather than [seeking] control".[24]
• 1991 - Staff take 44% ownership of the company by means of a workforce share scheme[25][26]
• 1996 - The company was floated on the London Stock Exchange in March[27]

As the 1990s opened, the company made several strategic acquisitions, for example AMP Computer Recruitment in 1990 and the Kernel Group in 1991, with the objective of providing clients with staffing and training services. In 1997, IIS Infotech Limited, an Indian computer services company based in New Delhi was acquired, joined in 1999 by a small London-based project management and IT consultancy group and in 2000 by Druid, a Reading-based software consultancy.[5]^{:loc 3773}

In March 2001, now a substantial and international business with over 6,000 employees, a market capitalisation of £1.2bn and projected sales for the coming year of £515m, the company announced that it was going to change its name to Xansa plc.[5]^{:loc 3926}