Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
Anchorpoint Insurance Co is a Insurance business headquartered in Philadelphia, USA. As Director of Technology 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?
Our IT Managed 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?
Mainly IT Managed Services, 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?
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?
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?
The project came in on schedule. Budget stayed within the agreed ceiling, including one scope addition we asked for ourselves, which was quoted fairly and handled without disturbing the rest of the timeline. Nothing about the invoice came as a surprise.
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 IT Managed Services program in Insurance and expect them to actually deliver against the brief, this is the team.