Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I run technology for Polder Digital BV, a growth-stage Environmental Services company based in The Hague, Netherlands. My role as Head of Platform Engineering 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?
Our Cloud Services capability had become the thing slowing everything else down. New feature requests, client asks, internal initiatives — all of it kept queuing up behind a platform that had been stretched way past what it was originally built for. We needed a proper rebuild, not another patch.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The scope ran the full Cloud Services lifecycle — discovery, requirements, architecture, development across roughly a dozen sprints, integration testing, performance validation, deployment, and a four-week hypercare window afterward. They also handed over full documentation and ran a knowledge transfer session for our internal team.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
We shortlisted five vendors through a structured process. The technical review knocked two out right away. Of the remaining three, this team stood out because their Cloud Services approach was specific rather than generic, backed by actual reference projects in Environmental Services — not just case studies pulled off a website. The reference calls confirmed everything the proposal claimed.
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?
The most structured project management I've dealt with from any outside vendor. Sprint planning was tight, acceptance criteria were specific, and retrospectives actually led to changes rather than just being a box to tick. The backlog and risk register were both treated as live tools, not paperwork. I never once had to chase a status update.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Both, yes. One sprint hit a one-week delay from a third-party API dependency outside anyone's control. The team flagged it three weeks ahead of time, laid out two options, and we picked an approach that clawed the schedule back within the same sprint. That's the kind of foresight that separates real project management from just reacting to problems.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
Hard to isolate perfectly given everything else going on in the business, but the numbers we can attribute directly to the Cloud Services work are solid: session duration up, conversion up, error rate down, and our NPS for that touchpoint has moved noticeably. Our account managers say it's coming up positively in client conversations now too.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The team stayed the same the whole way through. The engineers in the discovery sessions were the same ones who built the system. That continuity matters more than people expect, and you really only notice it when it's missing. Every conversation picked up where the last one left off.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Absolutely, with one caveat worth mentioning: the value really starts in discovery, so clients who take that phase seriously will get the most out of it. We put real effort in upfront and it clearly paid off in what got delivered.