Looking back

Timeline of Cobalt Sky

Cobalt Sky have been supplying IT services to the Market Research industry since 1989. We're extremely proud of our heritage and our history, take a look at some of our key milestones in the timeline below.

ATP

Cobalt Sky (at the time, named ATP) starts offering consultancy services around Quantime software. At this stage it’s just Quantum, the data processing package.

1989

Ralph Westwood, becomes our first employee. He works on car clinics for Burke Germany and also starts helping Burke Sweden with the conversion of one of their major trackers to Quantum. Ralph is working alongside his future wife, Berit Pettersson, but doesn’t know it yet. Fast forwarding to 2020 and Ralph has just celebrated his 30th anniversary working for Cobalt Sky.

1990

Rishi Khanna becomes Cobalt Sky’s first ever graduate recruit. Graduate recruitment will go on to form the backbone of our hiring strategy, and Rishi will go on to manage our Data Processing department.

1995

We release Winyaps, a program to convert standard fixed-font tables into presentation quality output. Winyaps is still extremely popular in the industry, being used by many companies.

1996

We start offering internet survey scripting and hosting as this side of the industry starts becoming popular. We use Quancept Web, and are already familiar with the scripting language meaning that we're able to hit the ground running.

1999

ATP changes its name to Cobalt Sky and we celebrate with a big client party at The Atlantic Bar and Grill. Sadly, England lose to Portugal in the Euros that night but it doesn't put too much of a damper on our festivities. 

We move out of our offices in East Sheen, relocating to Putney in order to take advantage of better transport links. We're still in Putney to this day.

2004

Our data collection department move from Quancept to Dimensions (now Unicom IBM SPSS) for scripting online surveys, offering us the ability to script more and more complex surveys. This remains one of several softwares that we use to script our surveys.

2006

Along with The Simpsons, Taylor Swift, and Cher's song "If I could Turn Back Time", Cobalt Sky turned 20.

2009

The Market Research Society starts "The Oppies", a yearly awards ceremony aimed at recognising the work put in by operations providers in our industry. Cobalt Sky wins the top award, Operational Excellence for the first time. 

2014

Having narrowly missed out on the top award in 2015 and instead being awarded 'Highly Commended', Cobalt Sky return to winning ways in 2016 picking up the Operational Excellence award for the second time. We celebrate with industry colleagues at the ceremony held in Revolution near Tower Bridge.

2016

For the second year running and third time overall, Cobalt Sky win the Operational Excellence award. Some of the team also take part in Ride London, a charity event raising money for Scope.

2017

Rebecca Cole takes over as Managing Director with Alastair Sweeney becoming Head of Data Collection. This means that all management positions at Cobalt Sky are held by people who joined as graduates.

2018

The Operations Award ceremony is held at The Curtain in Shoreditch where we win the Operational Excellence award for the fourth time. Our Data Collection team are highly commended.

2019

Cobalt Sky turns 30 and we celebrate in style with a party at rooftop venue Madison, opposite St. Paul’s Cathedral.

2019

We sign the MRS Inclusion Pledge and the MRS Net Zero Pledge, commiting to creating a safer and more representative workplace and to become sustainable by 2026 respectively. 

2021

Cobalt Sky are awarded Best Data Collection (Online) at the 2021 edition of the Oppies. Having been selected as finalists 8 years in a row, it's a proud moment for the team.

2021

In an amazing night for the company, Cobalt Sky are named as winners of Best Data Collection for the 2nd year in a row AND Operational Excellence for the 5th time.

2022

An unprecedented hattrick for the Data Collection team as they pick up their 3rd Best Data Collection (online) trophy in as many years at the oppies. Cobalt Sky were also awarded the main Operational Excellence prize for the 6th time in total. 

History

Testimonials

Ipsos has used Cobalt Sky for scripting and fieldwork management for over 10 years. They work seamlessly with us, providing service levels we cannot rate highly enough. Communication is exemplary: Cobalt Sky is flexibility personified, implementing multiple changes in schedules and still delivering on-time.  Cobalt Sky add value through their continuing advice and suggestions and they are a real asset to us.

Mathias Gitschel

Director, Audience Measurement

Ipsos

Kantar Media Division works with Cobalt Sky on a complicated diary script with hierarchical data reporting and they always understand the issues that this data presents. The team at Cobalt Sky have a great appreciation of how the data needs to be collected in order to engage the respondents and also how it can be delivered, so that end users can understand and make use of it.

Charlie Gordon

Director

Kantar - Media Division

We run a project with Cobalt Sky which covers over 20 markets. The innovative method they designed for managing the differences in each market has made a significant difference to the amount of resource we need to run a project of this size. We feel like we are in partnership with them: their communication is exemplary and they are always on hand to help us manage this very complex large project.

Deborah Fitzpatrick

Deputy Managing Director

MM-EYE

Cobalt Sky are indispensable in terms of suggesting innovative solutions for data handling and reporting.  Our data is highly sensitive and vital to our client’s business which means we are constantly fielding urgent and fiddly data requests. The fact that our clients are so satisfied is in no small part down to the communication, responsiveness and flexibility of Cobalt Sky.

James Flack

Director

Jigsaw

Testimonials

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