The research surfaced friction points we'd stopped noticing because they'd always been there
Going in, the integration work was what worried me most. Our systems landscape is messy, a couple of the third-party APIs we depend on are barely documented, and one of those vendors has a well-earned reputation for slow, inconsistent support. This team absorbed all of that. They documented what the upstream providers wouldn't, built in resilience wherever the upstream behavior was flaky, and shipped something that has worked exactly as specified since go-live. I genuinely couldn't have asked for more on that front.
Project summary
The shift to EVs created dealer network management needs our existing system was never designed for. A targeted rebuild was the path the leadership team had already agreed on.
- Project Type:
- UI/UX Design
- Project Cost:
- $50,000 to $149,999
- Project Duration:
- Nov 2025 - Feb 2026
- Business Type:
- Automotive
- Location:
- Miami, USA
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
Coastline Retail Group is a Automotive business headquartered in Miami, USA. As Chief Digital Officer I'm responsible for the whole technology agenda — infrastructure, product, and how we pick vendors. Every decision we make on the technology side has to tie back to a clear business case before it gets approved.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
A competitor move forced our hand and compressed a roadmap item we'd planned for the following year. The UI/UX Design investment we'd scheduled twelve months out suddenly needed to happen in six, and building it internally in that window wasn't realistic.
What services did the company provide for your project?
Mainly UI/UX Design, 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?
The questions they asked during the briefing stage told us most of what we needed to know. Vendors who ask sharp questions during sales tend to bring that same rigor into delivery, and that held up. The technical proposal had real substance, the team was senior from the start, and the pricing was straightforward.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Very well. The discovery phase was more thorough than anything we'd been through with prior vendors. They pushed back on requirements that were vague or contradictory, suggested better alternatives where our own thinking was limited, and produced a spec our internal stakeholders agreed was the clearest version of the product they'd ever seen written down.
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?
Yes to both. I'd quietly built in some contingency given the complexity and the number of integrations involved, and none of it ended up being needed. Delivery landed on the agreed date and the final invoice was within a rounding error of the approved budget — rarer than most people in this industry would admit.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The clearest measure is how the system's actually performing in production. In the four months since go-live we've had zero major incidents, our page performance scores improved across every Core Web Vitals metric, and two enterprise clients who'd previously flagged our old platform's limits during renewal talks signed again without raising it.
What did you like most about working with this company?
Their willingness to just be direct. If our requirements were unclear, they said so. If our priorities contradicted each other, they explained why. If an approach we'd assumed was right actually had real downsides, they told us before we'd committed to it. That kind of honesty is exactly what I look for in a long-term partner.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Yes — though I'll add that they're not the cheapest option out there and they're selective about what they take on. If price is your main filter, look elsewhere. If you need a partner you can trust with a serious UI/UX Design program in Automotive and expect them to actually deliver against the brief, this is the team.
