Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I run technology for Elbtal Digital AG, a growth-stage Government & Public Sector company based in Frankfurt, Germany. My role as Chief Innovation 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 Government & Public Sector, but not the internal engineering depth to actually execute it. The CMS 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?
The scope ran the full CMS Development 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 were coming off a failed engagement and went into vendor selection this time with a lot more scrutiny. We asked pointed questions about how they handle scope changes, how they estimate, how they communicate bad news. The answers were specific and consistent across everyone we spoke to on their team, which gave us confidence it wasn't a rehearsed pitch.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Thoroughly. The requirements document was detailed enough that our own QA team used it directly to build acceptance criteria. Every user story had a clear business reason attached, and nothing was left open to interpretation. That discipline early on paid off through the rest of development and testing.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Professional throughout. The project manager always had a clear view of the critical path and flagged changes to it honestly, without spin. The one significant scope change we made mid-project went through a clean process — fairly priced, clearly documented, and absorbed without knocking the rest of the timeline off course.
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?
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?
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?
Yes, no hesitation. I've already referred them twice within my own Government & Public Sector network, both times to people facing CMS 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.