GES: The Company
| company history |  GES Amersham HQ |
GES, the UK Radio Industry’s leading software house was setup by Jon Bareford and Trevor Toms in the mid 1990s when they were commissioned on an independent project to write a system called ‘Marbles’ a Proposal Management System for Media Sales and Marketing (a sub division of capital at that time).
Trevor, who had recently come from the rapidly growing computer games market was amazed at the state of the computer systems that the radio industry put up with: “When we moved into radio industry the place was in shambles - could you believe it - systems were still written in DOS!”
When MSM wound down as an organisation Jon and Trevor, as the developers of Marbles, were contracted to help setup the new sales houses that opened to pick up where MSM left off – Opus at GWR and Emap On-Air went live in the autumn of 1997, and the Capital group followed in Jan 1998. The original Marbles system was re-developed and renamed by Jon and Trevor and the industry standard planning and proposal management system now known as PlanIt was born.
Jon was surprised at the speed with which the new establishments took off: “We were running around for a hectic 3 months getting all the major sales houses on their feet – it was a Big Bang!”
Company expansion started immediately, but finding the right people was a real constant challenge for the duo, and it wasn’t until late ‘98 that they found Paul Patrick, fresh from Leeds University, full of energy and youthful enthusiasm. Then, shortly afterwards Mike joined to handle the daily support of the burgeoning list of clients.
With Chrysalis, GMG and many smaller stations on board with the PlanIt system, GES could, like some other Radio System suppliers, have settled into their own comfortable little niche. But Trevor and Jon had a much bigger vision.
They recognised that existing systems in many other areas of the Radio Industry had major business limitations, and especially in the area of Traffic. At all of GES’s clients sales operations, orders produced from the PlanIt planning system were having to be printed out then re-keyed into Traffic applications which couldn’t even accept electronic orders.
Development of the new Radio Traffic System was conducted with a design advisory team including many clients, and in late 2002, with the project picking up speed Andrea joined the GES team. Andrea came with a wealth of experience as a real Traffic Manager and from the day she joined she worked tirelessly to ensure that the product met all the real-world requirements and aspirations of its future users.
The new GES traffic system first went live in October 2003, and within one year it rolled out to over 60 stations across two of the largest radio groups in the UK.
Meanwhile expansion continued in our other areas, Neil joined in early 2002 to maintain and grow the PlanIt system, extending its integration with the new Traffic system and adding new business functionality, such as planning to Avails and dynamic ratecard pricing.
2004 sees a new era for GES with a fully integrated solution for radio sales points and stations, and the launch of the ‘ radio intelligence’ branding to reflect the dramatic new business approach of the GES systems.
And the next area of the industry to progress in to?
Well with the high profile appointment of Max Davies, the former head of JICRIT, we now have the brains behind agency-buying sector and are designing a system specifically tailored to suit agency requirements - which we look forward to presenting in 2005.
