Our Story

Our Story

Kynetix was founded in 1996 by Paul Smyth and Matt Dolton. The company has thrived, despite economic storms, due to the focus, hard work and dedication of the team and its core commitment of fostering long term client partnerships through delivery of great customer service.

Where did it all start?

In 1995 Paul attended an inspiring talk by Craig Low of IBM.  Entitled "Just Say Yes" it was about delivering excellence in customer service.

It confirmed everything he believed about service and also made him realise that his current organisation didn't prioritise customers' needs and was driven purely by sales.

Paul had formed the basic idea for a company and invited a colleague, Matt Dolton, to join him. Matt shared his passion about looking after customers, and Kynetix was launched in 1996.

Establishing the core values

The key philosophy was to focus first on customers' needs and servicing them to the best of their ability so that long-term, trusted-partner relationships could be built.

We wanted a business that would achieve consistent growth through long-term relationships rather than one that had to keep finding new customers because existing customers were unhappy.

Growth

The company grew steadily in the late 1990s, acquiring new customers and increasing revenues year on year. Then came the dot-com crash of 2001. Within a very short period many of the customer projects
we were working were frozen as organisations slashed their IT budgets.

The next 3 years were spent treading water as there was very little investment in IT. Two things saved us after the dot-com crash. Firstly, our approach to building long-term relationships paid off and secondly, our conservative approach to cash management.

Maturity and re-growth

As the business grew again we secured two of our largest contracts ever. Both of these contracts were for major global commodity exchanges and helped solidify our position as pre-eminent experts in this domain.

Good staff make all the difference

It's one thing to have a great philosophy and value system; it's another thing to execute on it. Key to our success has been our staff. They are the heroes on the front-line working hard to deliver new systems to our customers.

There's an old adage that you should "hire for attitude and teach skill". We like to hire people with both attributes. Our staff have to share the company's values otherwise how can we ensure that we will deliver on our promises?

It is extremely doubtful that there has ever been an IT project of any reasonable size where there hasn't been a set of challenges. It's at time like these that our staff shine. They take on the responsibility of ensuring that we meet our commitments and that we end up with
a satisfied customer.

Forward to the future

It's now 2013 and the UK is officially back in recession. However, at Kynetix we continue to look forward and to plan for future growth. Today our values are as strong as ever. We are dedicated to helping our customers' implement great software solutions that will change
their businesses.

We only succeed if our customers succeed!