The 70's - the start of a great adventure.

Bishopsgate Computer Services Limited (BCS), a United Kingdom private company was formed on 6th April 1970 as a computer software development company dedicated to the Freight Forwarding community. The registered office was at 53 Grosvenor Street, London W1, which was the office of one of the shareholders, Bishopstrade Limited (BTL).

It was Derek MAY who is the founder, owner and the driving force behind the software company. He was educated in Germany and the UK primarily in physics and pure, applied mathematics. A qualified Commercial Pilot he is also a Founding Fellow of the Institute of Analysts and Programmers and a Fellow of the Institute of Directors. He was also the designer of the Boffin Integrated Freight system, written in Wang Basic-2, starting in 1974. The system was re-written as Boffin/VS in ANSI074 COBOL from late 1978 for Wang VS computers.

The 80's started with a major growth thanks to LEP Transport Ltd.

It was on recommendation of Raith THURTON that Derek MAY called the MD of LEP Transport, Mr. Desmond LEEPER. This was the start of a beautiful friendship and very constructive development for Bishopsgate whereby Boffin/VS was installed in 4 regional computer centers in the UK covering the operations in 54 offices.

In 1988 Bishopsgate was confronted with the fact that the Boffin software was enjoyed with most freight forwarding companies but the sales were hampered because a considerable amount of forwarders did not want WANG computer equipment.

ORACLE approached Bishopsgate and made a proposal that if Bishopsgate invested in the purchase of an Oracle development license and was willing and able to rewrite the Boffin application in Oracle SQL then Boffin will be 100% compatible with all the platforms on which Oracle RDMBS is offered, now and in the future. Through that ingenious investment Bishopsgate became a Worldwide Oracle Partner.

On 1st June 1988 Bishopsgate started re-writing the full Boffin/VS Cobol based application into Oracle RDBMS 4GL. This gave Bishopsgate the guarantee that its freight software application will preserve its "hardware independence". There is only ONE Boffin/Open application today, which comprises more then 2800 Forms and reports with some J2EE JAVA and runs in different countries on different computer installations.

Since late 1988, Bishopsgate and Bishopstrade (registered in South Africa first and later in the UK) have been working with the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) where they wrote the whole of the Customs & Excise application for a network of Wang VS computers. All of the Bishopstrade owned application software is written in Wang ANSI'74 COBOL and the Kenyan Government have a license in perpetuity to use the runtime version of the application for their own use in Kenya.

The 90's are the start of our Bishopstrade Project Office in Johannesburg (South Africa).

Bishopstrade Limited further developed the Boffin/Open Freight application, including a container control package requested by the Stevedoring company, " Cornelder de Mozambique s.a.r.l.", in Beira (Mozambique).

From 2000 onwards Bishopstrade expanded gradually

It was for DHL Zimbabwe, who consolidated the operations for Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Angola, that we were requested to develop a centralized financial reporting system in one major foreign currency to be submitted to the Head Office in Europe.

As from 2006 Bishopstrade Limited was registered in Mauritius to become the African legal entity/ HQ for all its African operations while the offices in the UK became dormant as no further developments took place in Europe.

On 24th October 2007, Mr. Andre-Regis CLAEYS was appointed at the Board of Bishopstrade Limited companies as the new Chairman and C.E.O.

On 10th November 2007, the founder of Bishopstrade, Derek John MAY, passed away at the young age of 62, after an intensive struggle against pancreatic cancer. Derek May has been fortunate to have held wide-ranging responsibilities and to have been involved in a very large number of computer projects, almost entirely in the field of transportation, over a period of more then 35 years. Since he first founded his own firm in 1970, he has had specific experience of managing most computer situations, both in good times and in bad. His extensive knowledge of both computers and the international transport industry are reinforced by judgment and maturity. He had an open and friendly personality and has traveled extensively both for pleasure and in connection with the installations and development of computer systems for a wide variety of clients.

His professional experience in Africa brought him to South Africa, Kenya, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and Mauritius.

The new team (see who is who) is committed to expand the dream and vision started by Derek John May.

New partnerships have been established in East Africa and a new Regional Project Office for the East African Community has been set up in Kigali - Rwanda named Bishopstrade s.a.r.l (Rwanda)

We aim to expand a professional, independent computer software approach, which is dedicated to the African Freight and Customs specialists.