Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I run technology for Étoile Technologies SAS, a growth-stage Agriculture company based in Lyon, France. My role as Directeur Technique 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?
Regulation in our Agriculture segment shifted and the compliance deadline came from the regulator, not from us. The scale of the Digital Marketing changes required justified bringing in a specialist rather than pulling our internal team off the product roadmap to handle it.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The scope ran the full Digital Marketing 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?
A peer in the Agriculture space had used them for something similar in Digital Marketing and recommended them without hesitation. Our own due diligence backed that up. Domain knowledge, Digital Marketing 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?
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?
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 Digital Marketing 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 instinct for never losing the business goal in the middle of technical decisions. I've worked with technically strong teams before who lose that thread once things get complicated. This team kept every architectural call tied back to the outcome we'd actually agreed to, which made the harder trade-off conversations a lot easier.
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 Digital Marketing program in Agriculture and expect them to actually deliver against the brief, this is the team.