Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
As Chief Technology Officer at Highland FinTech Ltd I oversee technology spend and delivery across our Telecommunications operations out of Glasgow, UK. We're a commercially minded business, so every technology decision gets judged on what it actually contributes to the bottom line, not on how elegant it looks on paper.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our Industry-Specific Solutions 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?
Full Industry-Specific Solutions delivery, with particular depth on the integration and data migration pieces — the riskiest parts of the whole program. On top of that, they kept a dedicated QA person on the project throughout and left our operations team with a proper runbook at handover.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
A peer in the Telecommunications space had used them for something similar in Industry-Specific Solutions and recommended them without hesitation. Our own due diligence backed that up. Domain knowledge, Industry-Specific Solutions 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?
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?
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?
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?
Hard to isolate perfectly given everything else going on in the business, but the numbers we can attribute directly to the Industry-Specific Solutions 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?
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?
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.