7ninjas

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.

Laurentian Tech Partners is a Retail & E-commerce business based in Montreal, Canada. As VP of Innovation, I own the technology strategy and vendor relationships. Every spending decision gets evaluated against a concrete business case — we do not invest in technology for its own sake.

What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?

Our previous vendor had left us with three years of accumulated technical debt. Delivery velocity had dropped to maybe a third of what it should have been. We needed new engineering eyes and a structured plan to dig out.

What services did the company provide for your project?

Primarily POS System Development, with QA and solution architecture included in scope. They owned the build end-to-end from requirements through to go-live, including three existing system integrations. Not needing to coordinate separate QA or architecture vendors was genuinely valuable.

Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?

We shortlisted five vendors. Two were eliminated immediately based on the technical proposals. Of the remaining three, this team's POS System Development approach was the most specific and evidenced — actual Retail & E-commerce reference cases, not generic slides. The reference calls confirmed what the proposal described.

How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?

Well. They pushed back on areas where our requirements were vague or poorly thought through and helped us arrive at something more considered. That consultative approach during discovery is not universal and it made a real difference to the quality of what was built.

How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?

Communication was proactive and well-calibrated. Technical detail for the engineering audience, executive summaries for the steering group, and risks raised with proposed mitigations rather than just problem statements. The fortnightly sprint reviews kept our stakeholders informed without pulling them into every working session.

Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?

Delivered on time. We had one week of unplanned delay due to an external API issue that neither party controlled. They communicated it early, proposed a workaround, and the launch date stayed the same. That is how delays should be managed.

What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?

Hard to isolate perfectly given other business variables, but the metrics attributable to the POS System Development work are meaningful — session time up, conversion up, error rate down, NPS for the digital channel improved by double digits. Account managers say it is coming up positively in client conversations for the first time.

What did you like most about working with this company?

They kept the business objective visible throughout technical decision-making. I have worked with excellent engineers who lose the strategic thread as complexity increases. This team maintained a clear link between every architectural choice and the outcome we had agreed to achieve.

Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?

Absolutely. We are scoping a second engagement and I expect this to become a multi-year partnership. For anyone in the Retail & E-commerce space looking for serious POS System Development delivery, I would put them at the top of the evaluation list.

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.

Tel Aviv Ventures Ltd is a mid-size Media & Entertainment business in Tel Aviv, Israel. I joined as VP of Product two years ago specifically to modernise how we build and buy technology. This engagement was part of that programme.

What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?

Our previous vendor had left us with three years of accumulated technical debt. Delivery velocity had dropped to maybe a third of what it should have been. We needed new engineering eyes and a structured plan to dig out.

What services did the company provide for your project?

Full Game Development lifecycle — discovery, architecture, development across ten sprints, integration testing, performance validation, production deployment, and a four-week hypercare period. They also produced system documentation and ran structured knowledge transfer sessions for our team.

Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?

We had been through a failed engagement the year before and took vendor selection seriously this time. We asked specific questions about how they handle scope change, estimate work, and communicate problems. The answers were consistent across everyone we spoke to, which suggested the process was real rather than sales-trained.

How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?

Extremely well — partly because they had enough Media & Entertainment context to ask the right questions without us having to explain the basics. The functional spec translated our business requirements into technical language with a precision that meant the development phase had almost no clarification cycles.

How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?

I used to chase status updates weekly on vendor engagements. This was the first time I did not have to. Updates came consistently, problems surfaced early, and the shared project board always reflected reality rather than optimism.

Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?

Yes on both. There was one sprint where a third-party API dependency introduced a one-week slip. They flagged it three weeks before it became critical, presented two options, and we agreed on one that recovered the timeline within the same sprint. That kind of foresight is the difference between good and average project management.

What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?

Hard to isolate perfectly given other business variables, but the metrics attributable to the Game Development work are meaningful — session time up, conversion up, error rate down, NPS for the digital channel improved by double digits. Account managers say it is coming up positively in client conversations for the first time.

What did you like most about working with this company?

The directness. When our requirements were unclear, they said so. When our priorities were contradictory, they explained why. When a technical approach we assumed was right had significant downsides, they told us before we committed. That kind of honesty is what I actually want from a technology partner.

Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?

Yes. The value starts in the discovery phase — clients who invest time in that process will get the most out of the engagement. We did and it is evident in what was delivered.

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.

We are a Telecommunications company based in Bordeaux, France. My role as Head of Digital Products at Arc-en-Ciel Digital SAS means I sit at the intersection of business goals and technical delivery — which means I care a lot about vendors who can translate between both.

What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?

Our ERP Development capability had become the bottleneck for everything. Feature requests, client requirements, internal initiatives — all of them were queuing behind a platform we had patched past its design limits. We needed a proper rebuild.

What services did the company provide for your project?

The stated scope was ERP Development delivery. In practice they also contributed to product strategy conversations, flagged gaps in our requirements, and produced integration documentation that our partner vendors later told us was unusually thorough.

Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?

Referral from someone whose technical judgment I trust. The due diligence we ran confirmed what we had been told. The proposal stage was also notably more thorough than the alternatives — they clearly understood the ERP Development requirements better than the other vendors we evaluated.

How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?

Honestly, better than we understood them ourselves going in. The workshops they ran surfaced assumptions we had not examined and caught three requirements that were in direct conflict with each other. Resolving those before development started saved us a significant amount of rework.

How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?

I used to chase status updates weekly on vendor engagements. This was the first time I did not have to. Updates came consistently, problems surfaced early, and the shared project board always reflected reality rather than optimism.

Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?

Yes on both. There was one sprint where a third-party API dependency introduced a one-week slip. They flagged it three weeks before it became critical, presented two options, and we agreed on one that recovered the timeline within the same sprint. That kind of foresight is the difference between good and average project management.

What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?

We went live six weeks ago so it is early. The launch was clean, adoption is tracking ahead of plan, and the first client demo of the new platform generated a positive reaction we had not seen for the previous version. Ask me again in six months and I will have better numbers.

What did you like most about working with this company?

The directness. When our requirements were unclear, they said so. When our priorities were contradictory, they explained why. When a technical approach we assumed was right had significant downsides, they told us before we committed. That kind of honesty is what I actually want from a technology partner.

Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?

Yes, with the caveat that they are not the cheapest option and they are selective about what they take on. If price is the primary criterion there are alternatives. If you want a ERP Development partner in the Telecommunications space who will actually deliver against a serious brief, this is the team.

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.

Pinnacle Commerce Group operates in the Logistics & Supply Chain sector out of Miami, FL, USA. In my role as Co-Founder & CEO I am responsible for both the technology strategy and day-to-day delivery. We hold our vendors to the same standards our clients hold us to.

What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?

Our internal team was good but maxed out. The CRM Development work needed for this phase of the product required a depth of experience we did not have internally, and could not build in time.

What services did the company provide for your project?

Primarily CRM Development, with QA and solution architecture included in scope. They owned the build end-to-end from requirements through to go-live, including three existing system integrations. Not needing to coordinate separate QA or architecture vendors was genuinely valuable.

Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?

Referral from someone whose technical judgment I trust. The due diligence we ran confirmed what we had been told. The proposal stage was also notably more thorough than the alternatives — they clearly understood the CRM Development requirements better than the other vendors we evaluated.

How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?

The requirements process took longer than we expected but the thoroughness showed in the development phase — we had noticeably fewer mid-sprint clarifications and no major requirement changes that required rework.

How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?

Communication was proactive and well-calibrated. Technical detail for the engineering audience, executive summaries for the steering group, and risks raised with proposed mitigations rather than just problem statements. The fortnightly sprint reviews kept our stakeholders informed without pulling them into every working session.

Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?

On time. Budget was within the approved ceiling, including one scope addition we introduced mid-project that was quoted fairly and handled in parallel without affecting the main delivery stream. No surprises at invoice stage.

What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?

The ROI case we presented to the board was intentionally conservative. We are tracking to hit the payback point in under twelve months against an eighteen-month model. The efficiency gains have exceeded the forecast, partly because the data quality the new system produces enables decisions the previous one could not support.

What did you like most about working with this company?

They kept the business objective visible throughout technical decision-making. I have worked with excellent engineers who lose the strategic thread as complexity increases. This team maintained a clear link between every architectural choice and the outcome we had agreed to achieve.

Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?

Yes. I would specifically recommend them for CRM Development projects where getting the requirements right at the start is critical. That is where they earn their fees — and the downstream delivery reflects it.

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.

Windmill Tech BV is a mid-size Food & Beverage business in Amsterdam, Netherlands. I joined as Chief Technology Officer two years ago specifically to modernise how we build and buy technology. This engagement was part of that programme.

What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?

We had a clear product vision for our next growth phase in the Food & Beverage market but the IT Consulting expertise we needed was not something we could recruit for on our timeline. An external specialist was the pragmatic answer.

What services did the company provide for your project?

The core engagement was IT Consulting delivery. During discovery they also provided technical consultancy that materially improved our requirements — things we would not have caught until development if they had not raised them. They also took ownership of the third-party integrations that had caused problems in previous projects.

Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?

We had been through a failed engagement the year before and took vendor selection seriously this time. We asked specific questions about how they handle scope change, estimate work, and communicate problems. The answers were consistent across everyone we spoke to, which suggested the process was real rather than sales-trained.

How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?

Well. They pushed back on areas where our requirements were vague or poorly thought through and helped us arrive at something more considered. That consultative approach during discovery is not universal and it made a real difference to the quality of what was built.

How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?

Good. The sprint cadence worked well for our team. Fortnightly reviews gave us the checkpoints we needed. The one friction point — time zone overlap — was resolved after the first sprint and did not reoccur.

Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?

Yes on both. There was one sprint where a third-party API dependency introduced a one-week slip. They flagged it three weeks before it became critical, presented two options, and we agreed on one that recovered the timeline within the same sprint. That kind of foresight is the difference between good and average project management.

What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?

Five months post-launch: zero P1 incidents, Core Web Vitals in the green, and two enterprise clients who had been citing platform limitations in renewal conversations have since renewed without raising the issue. The system is doing what we needed it to do.

What did you like most about working with this company?

Team continuity. The engineers who ran the discovery sessions built the system. That consistency over a five-month engagement is valuable in ways that are hard to articulate until you have worked on projects where it was absent. Every conversation built on the previous ones.

Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?

Yes. The value starts in the discovery phase — clients who invest time in that process will get the most out of the engagement. We did and it is evident in what was delivered.