Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
Wren & Holt Retail PLC is a Construction business headquartered in Birmingham, UK. As Director of eCommerce 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 Software Development 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 Software Development, 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 shortlisted five vendors through a structured process. The technical review knocked two out right away. Of the remaining three, this team stood out because their Software Development approach was specific rather than generic, backed by actual reference projects in Construction — not just case studies pulled off a website. The reference calls confirmed everything the proposal claimed.
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?
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 ROI model we took to the board was deliberately conservative. Current performance against that model puts us on track to hit payback well ahead of the eighteen-month target we set. The operational efficiency gains in particular have outpaced the model, partly because the new platform's data quality supports decisions the old system simply couldn't.
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?
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.