F International was a British freelance software and systems services company, founded as Freelance Programmers in England in 1962, by Dame Stephanie Shirley; she was involved in the company until she retired in 1993. The company was renamed in 1974 to F International. In 1988 the company was renamed again, to The FI Group, and later as Xansa plc. Xansa plc was acquired by the French company now known as Sopra Steria in 2007.
History
Founding
F International was founded in 1962 when successful female entrepreneurs and freelance working were rare. 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:
The total revenues for the first 10-month tax year were £1,700.
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. F International is an early example: business and industry were short of computer-skilled people, and the nature of much software and systems work was, even at that time, amenable to homeworking.
The company, then known as "Freelance Programmers", was registered on 13 May 1964 and a "panel" of freelance software and systems specialists, nearly all female, began to work for the company. An early assignment came from Urwick Diebold and this attracted attention from the media. 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. Once over the early cash flow problems the business began to grow. By 1966, there were about 75 regular freelance workers on the panel, some of whom became significant role players as technical experts and project managers. Seriously problematic projects were rare, but one in particular, with Castrol, forced the management team to focus on quality management. Quality management became one of the foundations of the operating model for the company.
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 remote work. The Harvard Business School documented the F International business in a number of case studies. The business was the subject of several other international academic studies of homeworking.
Early history
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.
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. 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; 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".
By 1980 the business had developed country-wide coverage with more than 600 staff. 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) It was in the early 1980s that a wider general interest in remote work via telecommunications support became evident.