Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I run technology for Highland FinTech Ltd, a growth-stage Retail & E-commerce company based in Glasgow, UK. My role as Chief Technology Officer covers product engineering, platform operations, and our vendor relationships. We'd hit a point where our internal capacity just couldn't keep pace with what the roadmap demanded.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
We had a clear product direction for our next stage of growth in Retail & E-commerce, but not the internal engineering depth to actually execute it. The Embedded Systems Development piece specifically needed specialist skills we couldn't realistically hire for on the timeline our business plan demanded.
What services did the company provide for your project?
Mainly Embedded Systems Development, with some adjacent architecture and QA work folded in. They owned the whole thing from requirements to go-live, including hooking it into four of our existing systems. Not needing a second vendor to cover that ground was genuinely useful, both cost-wise and logistically.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
A peer in the Retail & E-commerce space had used them for something similar in Embedded Systems Development and recommended them without hesitation. Our own due diligence backed that up. Domain knowledge, Embedded Systems Development depth, and a track record of actually delivering — that combination made the decision easy.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Better than we understood them ourselves, honestly. The workshops they ran surfaced assumptions we'd never questioned and exposed a few requirements that flatly contradicted each other. Sorting that out before development started saved us from what would have been serious rework later.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Genuinely excellent, especially given the time difference between Glasgow, UK and the delivery team. Written updates were consistent and specific, anything needing a decision got same-day turnaround, and nothing slipped through the cracks across the whole engagement.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
On time and inside the approved budget. Their estimating was notably accurate — they'd broken the work down in enough detail during discovery that the forecast held up the whole way through, instead of drifting with every small change. We had exactly one change request, and it was for scope we added ourselves.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
We went live about three months ago. User adoption beat the target we'd set by roughly 20 percent in the first month, and support ticket volume has dropped noticeably since. Features we'd shelved because the old architecture made them too expensive to build are now back on the roadmap.
What did you like most about working with this company?
What they did after launch. A lot of vendors treat go-live as the finish line. This team treated it as the start of a different phase — the hypercare period was substantial, the documentation held up in practice, and they checked back in at the thirty and ninety day marks to go over production metrics with us unprompted.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Yes, no hesitation. I've already referred them twice within my own Retail & E-commerce network, both times to people facing Embedded Systems Development problems similar to ours. I made those referrals confidently because I know the experience I had was repeatable, not a one-off stroke of luck on our project.