Senior - History

1997

Senior Marketing, a business development consultancy founded by Pete Senior whose aim was to help Nottingham businesses with growth activity, was in its 5th year. Working from his home office in Nottingham, Senior worked on a mixture of planning, marketing research and promotional activity.

1998

Marketing professional Tricia Durrant joined Senior in discussing what would be the next step for the marketing industry, agreeing that the 'world wide web’ and the emerging platform of company web pages was it. Their partnership began and Durrant set up Senior Sites, one of the first web agencies in the region.

1999

The beginning of 1999 saw Durrant and Senior merge Senior Marketing and Senior Sites; a partnership which lead to the inception of Senior Internet Ltd. With a slogan of ‘Making websites that work’, the 2 person operation began running out of a small office on the outskirts of Nottingham.

2000

The turn of the millennium saw Senior Internet’s 5th ever member of staff join the team. This advancement meant we could provide more SEO and email marketing packages to our clients, expanding our team’s skill set to offer more than just web build.

2001

Quickly outgrowing the first office, we moved into a barn conversion in Mapperley, Nottingham, which we renovated into a superb web design company office. It took team effort and vision to transform The Stables into the foundations of one of the leading creative digital agencies in the UK.

2002

In 2002 Senior grew to a team of 8 and began offering programming services. We developed our first e-commerce websites and a very basic CMS, SeniorCMS, was developed to allow clients to update their own sites. Development of SeniorCMS, subsequently named RiverCMS, would grow rapidly over the coming years.

2003

A defining year for project wins! In 2003 we gained Shoreham Port as a client and collaborated on all their on- and offline marketing materials. We rebranded them from head to toe, including a new logo – now a major feature used on all port buildings, stationary and equipment.

2004

2004 saw us develop e-Vol, our first ever web-based application. With e-Vol we began to dedicate our expertise to working exclusively with membership organisations. We also gained important press coverage through the development of websites for Early Bites to promote Nottingham County Council catering facility’s school dinners service.

2005

A landmark moment in Senior Internet history; we used our web-application development expertise to create the very first version of software-as-a-service absence management system, e-days. The software quickly found a place in the global market and has seen popularity soar, now boasting over 125,000 users worldwide.

2006

Two years of research, consultation, design and development by studio team culminated in the launch of e-tranetCRM. We also continued improving e-days for our growing client base with the release of e-days2. New features include overview screens, status indicators on requests and support for an increased number of users.

2007

An excellent year for projects wins, 2007 helped us secure our status as a dedicated digital and creative agency for the membership sector! We gained the IPA- one of the largest membership organisation for the advertising industry- as clients, which led to the further development of our enterprise CMS.

2008

The year of upgrades! A hosting upgrade meant we became a tier 1 ISP with a server cluster in London. We also upgraded our offices! High demand and continued growth forced us to relocate into a larger office building in central Nottingham. We also fully launched our enterprise CMS, SeniorCMS!

2009

Senior began catering almost exclusively for the membership sector, picking up 3 notable membership clients and developing Memberbase, a membership-focused CRM system. SeniorCMS went from strength to strength, with 17 new projects launched in a year, including e-commerce sites. 2009 also saw the birth of our social media presence.

2010

Despite the tempestuous economic climate, we blossomed in 2010. We rebranded SeniorCMS to RiverCMS, to evoke the easy, intuitive ‘flow’ of the software. We became inducted into the RAR register, won our first ever industry award and by the end of 2010 had completed an outstanding 40 CMS projects!

2011

The team almost doubled in number in 2011 and we took on 10 clients new clients in the membership sector alone. Together we reached our first million; a momentous occasion for the team. 2011 also saw us go mobile; always one step ahead of the game, this meant we were ready for the mobile boom of 2012.

2012

By the end of the year the headcount at Senior reached a record high of 19, and we began to hold monthly social events so we could get to know each other. RiverCMS had a massive 60 users, and we virtualised our hosting solution to produce the Senior Cloud.

2013

A ground-breaking year for us- literally! An increase in staff inspired us to remove the office walls making it open plan; creating a more social atmosphere and ensuring collaboration on projects became easier. Demand for RiverCMS grew; 75 sites, including our 20 membership clients, were now using the system.

2014

Senior employed a record 13 new staff this year, and the team exceeded 30. We won a record 7 industry awards, and developed over £250K worth of new sites, boasting 78 in total. An incredible turnover of 2 million meant the team were treated to a weekend in Barcelona!

2015

Now in its tenth year and e-days had grown to be a substantial division of the company, with 18 staff and over 600 companies / 100,000 system users. It was time to e-days to gain its independence. e-days Absence Management Limited was born at the end of 2015, giving Senior the opportunity to refocus on web agency projects for the membership sector.

2016

After months of development we launched RiverCRM this year. It was picked up by a number of clients including the Nuclear Institute and AoME, who, thanks to the system saw a record number of membership applications in the first week alone. Throughout the year we sold 6 more systems!

2017

Gaining its 50th membership client during the year, Senior cemented its position as one of the lead UK providers of web systems to the membership sector. Assisted by its extended complement of membership web products Senior had a highly successful membership sales year.

2018

With RiverCRM supplying the foundation database and River providing a sophisticated user front-end, this year saw Senior delivering its most complex membership web systems to date. Fully integrated with multiple member types, knowledge-centres, events, mapping and e-commerce feeding accounts software and payment providers.