VerticalWave Solutions

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

Cerrado Tech SA is a mid-size Food & Beverage business in Brasília, Brazil. I joined as Chief Digital 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?

Compliance requirements in our Food & Beverage space changed and the deadline was set by our regulator, not by us. The E-commerce Development work required was specialist enough that pulling our internal team off the product roadmap to do it was not an option.

What services did the company provide for your project?

Primarily E-commerce 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 E-commerce Development requirements better than the other vendors we evaluated.

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

Extremely well — partly because they had enough Food & Beverage 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?

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?

On time and on budget. The estimation accuracy was the part I found most impressive — they had broken the work down thoroughly enough during discovery that the forecast held throughout rather than drifting with every scope conversation. We had one change request, and it was for scope we had added ourselves.

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?

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?

Absolutely. We are scoping a second engagement and I expect this to become a multi-year partnership. For anyone in the Food & Beverage space looking for serious E-commerce 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.

East Asia Commerce KK operates in the Education sector out of Osaka, Japan. In my role as Head of Product Development 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 Web 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?

The stated scope was Web 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?

A peer in the Education sector had used them for a similar Web Development engagement and recommended them without qualification. Our own due diligence confirmed the picture they described. The combination of domain knowledge and delivery track record made the decision straightforward.

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?

Very strong on the async side, which mattered given the time difference between Osaka, Japan and the delivery team. Written updates were specific and consistent, decisions got responses the same day, and nothing was dropped across a five-month engagement. That discipline is harder than it looks.

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?

The fact that problems surfaced upward before they became crises. I have worked on enough vendor engagements to know that the ability to manage upward — to raise bad news early rather than bury it — is genuinely rare. This team did it consistently.

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

Yes. I would specifically recommend them for Web 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.

Tel Aviv Ventures Ltd is a mid-size Legal Services 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?

We had a clear product vision for our next growth phase in the Legal Services 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?

Full IT Consulting 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 shortlisted five vendors. Two were eliminated immediately based on the technical proposals. Of the remaining three, this team's IT Consulting approach was the most specific and evidenced — actual Legal Services reference cases, not generic slides. The reference calls confirmed what the proposal described.

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

Very well. The discovery process was more thorough than anything we had experienced before. They challenged requirements that were vague, proposed better alternatives where our thinking was limiting, and produced a spec that our stakeholders agreed was the clearest articulation of the product they had ever seen written down.

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?

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?

Biggest impact: our internal team is no longer spending three days a week maintaining a platform they hated working with. That productivity is now going into building. The platform change was as much about our engineering team's quality of life as it was about the end user.

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, 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 IT Consulting partner in the Legal Services 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.

As VP of Product at Brightline EdTech Inc, a Energy & Utilities organisation in Austin, TX, USA, I manage technology investment and delivery outcomes. We make commercial decisions about technology — every project needs a credible case before it gets approved.

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

Our internal team was good but maxed out. The CMS 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?

The core engagement was CMS Development 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 a fixed budget and a non-negotiable timeline. Several vendors told us it could not be done. These were the ones who said it could and explained clearly why. They turned out to be right.

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

Thoroughly. The requirements document they produced was detailed enough that our QA team used it directly to write acceptance criteria. Every story had a defined business outcome attached. Nothing was left to interpretation, which paid dividends all the way through to testing.

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. The estimates they provided during scoping proved accurate throughout delivery, which is rare. Most vendor estimates start optimistic and drift. These did not.

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?

I already have. Three people in my network have used them based on my recommendation and all three have reported positively. That is the only endorsement that matters.

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

Zenith FinServ Ltd operates in the Travel & Hospitality sector out of Bangalore, India. In my role as Chief Data Officer 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?

We had a clear product vision for our next growth phase in the Travel & Hospitality market but the E-commerce Development 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?

Full E-commerce 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 a fixed budget and a non-negotiable timeline. Several vendors told us it could not be done. These were the ones who said it could and explained clearly why. They turned out to be right.

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?

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. The estimates they provided during scoping proved accurate throughout delivery, which is rare. Most vendor estimates start optimistic and drift. These did not.

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?

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 E-commerce Development partner in the Travel & Hospitality space who will actually deliver against a serious brief, this is the team.