News & Events

How London came to be


How London came to be

Melissa UK Team | News & Events, United Kingdom

If you’ve been following us on Twitter, you’ll see that we shared our story and how the office in London came to be.

But just in case you missed it, we thought that we would bring it to our blog.

Melissa was started in 1985 by our CEO and founder Ray Melissa in California. The business rapidly grew and became a leading specialist firm providing global intelligence solutions. Our data quality tools such as address and name verification, auto-address complete and most recently ID verification have enabled over 10,000 businesses across the globe to have a data-driven competitive edge.

Our growth led to the move to a new HQ which is located in the heart of Rancho Santa Margarita, California and is home to more than 200 employees. But the organisation continued to grow and there was a need for local support for global organisations headquartered around the world. With nearly 30 years as a global data quality leader, our international expansion was essential to the company’s ongoing growth strategy and we responded to the need for local sales and support or global clientele by opening up our first international office in Germany which was then followed by India.

Here’s what our CEO had to say:

“Melissa Data is responsive to international business needs, building our worldwide presence and offering products and services with a global perspective. Our comprehensive data quality solutions, both onsite and cloud-based, recognise data quality as a global challenge — adding value to any type of organisation from major international brands to small businesses and start-ups. Our clients are able to correct, verify and standardise address information no matter the state, country, province or region — improving overall business operations through a commitment to better contact data.”

Our mission for expansion was a go and we were ready to conquer the data world!

And of course, we had our eyes set on London! Named the biggest financial powerhouse in the world, we knew that tackling the UK market was next on the list.

So in 2014, we landed in the City headed by our managing director Barley Laing, the former CEO of leading web services company World Address. His previous roles include executive management positions with BT, ADC Telecommunications, Shell and Xerox, leading both sales and engineering operations worldwide.

Barley’s commitment to Melissa can be clearly seen as the company has experienced continuous growth in the UK over the last few years – so much growth that we moved from the City to Canary Wharf, home to leading banks and growing fintech.

Our business is set to grow by 70% by the end of 2018 and with our constantly expanding team, we’re set to make our mark in the capital’s financial district.

Interested in joining our team? Drop us an email at info.uk@melissa.com and we’ll get back to you!

If you are interested in continuing the conversation, please connect with us on Twitter.

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