About Aten Design Group
Aten Design Group is a team of strategists, project managers, designers and engineers that love building digital products and experiences with organizations doing work that matters. They excel at communication and thrive on collaboration. They like to help clients tackle challenges big and small. They develop digital products that enhance and empower people all over the world.
Services
Mobile App Development
Web Development
AR App Development
Enterprise App Modernization
Aten Design Group Reviews
Write a ReviewCloud modernisation that shaved weeks off our release cycle
Wei Jian Lim / CTO - Lion City Ventures Pte Ltd
Verified
Jun 16, 2025
Jun 16, 2025
Project summary: Several previous vendor relationships had left us cautious. We needed a partner who would be honest about complexity upfront rather than discovering it mid-project.
The thing I appreciate most in retrospect is that they were honest when something was harder than expected. Twice during the project the team came to us proactively to say that a particular component needed more time to do properly and explained why cutting corners would create problems later. We gave them the time. Both decisions were correct. The resulting product is solid and we have had none of the post-launch instability that plagued our last two technology projects.
PROS
Technical depth across the full stack, honest and timely communication, delivered exactly what was scoped without surprise additions to the invoice
CONS
Honestly nothing worth documenting — we went in with high expectations and they were met on every measure
Project TypeCloud Services
IndustryGaming & Gambling
Project Cost$10,000 to $49,999
DurationDec 2024 – Jul 2025
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
Lion City Ventures Pte Ltd operates across the Gaming & Gambling sector with offices in Singapore. In my capacity as CTO I oversee both the strategic and operational technology agenda. We are a growth-stage business that needed a development partner capable of scaling with us rather than constraining us.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our Gaming & Gambling regulatory environment had changed and the compliance timeline was non-negotiable. We needed to rebuild specific components of our system to meet the new requirements and our internal team was already fully committed to the core product roadmap. Bringing in a specialist Cloud Services partner was the only realistic path.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The core engagement was Cloud Services but expanded to include technical consultancy during the discovery phase, which helped us refine the requirements significantly before development began. They also took responsibility for coordinating with our third-party data providers, which removed a significant coordination burden from our internal team.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
Their portfolio included two projects that were sufficiently close to our own brief in terms of complexity, Cloud Services scope, and Gaming & Gambling context that we felt confident they understood what we were asking. The proposal was technically rigorous, the pricing was transparent, and the proposed team structure gave us senior engineers throughout rather than just for the pitch.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Thorough and precise. They translated our business language into technical requirements without losing the intent, which is a skill that sounds straightforward but frequently goes wrong. Every user story they wrote was reviewed against the original business objective before it entered the sprint and the acceptance criteria were specific enough to remove subjectivity from QA.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Outstanding. I have worked with agencies that communicate beautifully during the sales process and go quiet during delivery. This was the opposite — structured, consistent, and genuinely informative throughout. Problems were surfaced early with proposed solutions rather than just problem statements, which made the inevitable mid-project decisions much easier to make.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes on both counts. There was one sprint where a third-party integration took longer than scoped because of undocumented API behaviour on the vendor side. The team flagged it immediately, proposed two mitigation options, and we agreed on an approach that recovered the timeline within two weeks. That is how scope issues should be handled and rarely are.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The most direct measure is that the problem we hired them to solve no longer exists. Beyond that, the new Cloud Services platform has reduced our operational overhead measurably, our team spends less time managing incidents and more time on product development, and we have been able to onboard two new enterprise clients who had previously cited our technical limitations as a barrier.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The post-launch behaviour. Some agencies disappear the moment the final invoice is paid. This team maintained the same level of responsiveness during the hypercare period as during development, handed over thorough documentation without being asked twice, and checked in proactively a month after go-live to review performance metrics with us. That last part was entirely unprompted.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Absolutely. I would recommend them with a specific note that the quality of the discovery process is where the value starts. Clients who invest properly in that phase will get the most out of the engagement. We made that investment and the returns are evident in the quality of what was delivered.
Software delivery that was on time, on budget, and beyond spec
Lukas Becker / Head of Digitalisation - Becker Industrie GmbH
Verified
Mar 05, 2024
Mar 05, 2024
Project summary: Citizen-facing services that had been paper-based for decades needed to be digitised in a way that was genuinely accessible to all demographics, not just the digitally confident.
The technical quality of the work is the easiest thing to praise, but what I want to highlight is the communication culture on this team. Every question got a same-day response. Every risk got flagged before it became an issue. When we needed to change direction mid-project — a business decision on our side — they absorbed the change professionally, requoted fairly, and kept momentum going. That flexibility is something you cannot assess in a proposal and it turned out to be one of the most valuable things about working with them.
PROS
Architectural decisions that will serve us for years rather than just solving the immediate problem, knowledge transfer that left our team genuinely capable, no scope creep at all
CONS
The volume of quality documentation they produced was genuinely impressive but also meant our team needed dedicated time to review it properly — a minor process point, not a complaint
Project TypeSoftware Development
IndustryGovernment & Public Sector
Project Cost$10,000 to $49,999
DurationMar 2025 – Apr 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
As Head of Digitalisation at Becker Industrie GmbH, I manage a cross-functional technology team serving our Government & Public Sector clients from Munich, Germany. We are a commercially focused organisation and every technology decision we make is evaluated against a clear business case. We needed a partner who understood that context, not just the technical brief.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our Government & Public Sector regulatory environment had changed and the compliance timeline was non-negotiable. We needed to rebuild specific components of our system to meet the new requirements and our internal team was already fully committed to the core product roadmap. Bringing in a specialist Software Development partner was the only realistic path.
What services did the company provide for your project?
End-to-end Software Development delivery with a particular emphasis on the integration layer that connected the new build to our existing Government & Public Sector infrastructure. They also provided UI/UX input that was not in the original scope but which they offered proactively because they could see it would affect adoption. That kind of initiative was characteristic of how they approached the whole engagement.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
Honestly, the quality of the questions they asked during the briefing process set them apart. Most vendors listen to the brief and come back with a solution to exactly what you described. This team came back with a solution to what we actually needed, which turned out to be somewhat different. That kind of consultative instinct is what we were looking for.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
The requirements understanding was solid from early on, aided by the fact that they had prior experience in the Government & Public Sector sector and did not need us to explain domain context that a less experienced team would have required. That background knowledge shortened the discovery phase meaningfully and reduced the volume of clarification questions during sprints.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Communication was handled primarily asynchronously given the time zone difference between Munich, Germany and the team's base, but it was managed so well that the gap rarely felt like a constraint. Written updates were clear and timely, escalations were handled promptly, and we never had to chase for a status update. The cadence was exactly right — enough to feel informed, not so much that it created overhead.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes on both counts. There was one sprint where a third-party integration took longer than scoped because of undocumented API behaviour on the vendor side. The team flagged it immediately, proposed two mitigation options, and we agreed on an approach that recovered the timeline within two weeks. That is how scope issues should be handled and rarely are.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The ROI case we presented to our board assumed a payback period of eighteen months. Based on current trajectory we will hit that in under a year. The efficiency gains in our Government & Public Sector operations have been more significant than the model projected, partly because the quality of the data coming out of the new system is enabling decisions we could not make before.
What did you like most about working with this company?
Their ability to hold the business objective in mind alongside the technical task. I have worked with technically excellent agencies who lost the thread of what we were actually trying to achieve. This team never did. Every architectural decision, every trade-off conversation, every prioritisation discussion was anchored to the outcome we had agreed at the start.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Unreservedly. We are in active conversation about the next phase of work and I expect this to become a multi-year partnership. For any organisation in the Government & Public Sector space looking for a Software Development partner who combines technical rigour with genuine commercial awareness, I would put this team at the top of the shortlist.
Security posture transformed from a liability to a genuine sales differentiator
Travis Bennett / Managing Director, Tech - Irongate Capital
Verified
Dec 05, 2023
Dec 05, 2023
Project summary: Clinical trial data management was scattered across sites and formats and we needed a unified platform that could satisfy both our data science team and our regulatory affairs function.
The engagement started with a discovery workshop that immediately signalled this team was different. They pushed back on two of our assumptions in the first session with evidence and a better alternative. That kind of intellectual honesty is rare and it set the tone for the whole project. Deliverables were consistently ahead of schedule, code reviews were taken seriously, and the final product is something we are proud to show enterprise clients during due diligence calls.
PROS
Consistent delivery against milestones, code quality that passed our internal review without major findings, post-launch support that felt like a partnership not a ticket queue
CONS
Honestly nothing worth documenting — we went in with high expectations and they were met on every measure
Project TypeCybersecurity
IndustryPharmaceuticals & Biotechnology
Project Cost$500,000+
DurationNov 2024 – Apr 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I lead technology at Irongate Capital, a mid-sized organisation in the Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology sector headquartered in Atlanta, USA. My remit as Managing Director, Tech covers everything from infrastructure to product development. We had reached a point where our internal engineering capacity was not sufficient to execute our roadmap without an experienced external partner.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology regulatory environment had changed and the compliance timeline was non-negotiable. We needed to rebuild specific components of our system to meet the new requirements and our internal team was already fully committed to the core product roadmap. Bringing in a specialist Cybersecurity partner was the only realistic path.
What services did the company provide for your project?
Primarily Cybersecurity, though the scope naturally touched adjacent areas. They handled architecture design, implementation, integration with our existing systems, performance testing under realistic load, and knowledge transfer to our internal team. The breadth of what they covered without requiring us to bring in additional vendors was one of the reasons the project ran efficiently.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
A direct referral from a peer who had used them for a comparable Cybersecurity engagement in the Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology space. That peer's experience had been excellent and their project profile was similar enough to ours that the recommendation carried real weight. Everything we found during our own evaluation reinforced that this was the right decision.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Extremely well. They asked detailed questions, challenged vague requirements until they were specific, and proposed sensible defaults for decisions we had not yet made rather than just leaving them open. By the time development started there was no ambiguity in the backlog, which is a rare starting position.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Outstanding. I have worked with agencies that communicate beautifully during the sales process and go quiet during delivery. This was the opposite — structured, consistent, and genuinely informative throughout. Problems were surfaced early with proposed solutions rather than just problem statements, which made the inevitable mid-project decisions much easier to make.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes. I will note that the original timeline was aggressive and I had privately expected a slip. They managed to hold it by making smart sequencing decisions early on that I only fully understood in retrospect. The budget discipline was equally good — we received a single change request for scope we had introduced ourselves and it was priced fairly.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
Hard to isolate precisely because several factors changed simultaneously, but the data we can attribute directly to the new Cybersecurity platform shows a meaningful improvement in the metrics that matter to our Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology business. Our account managers report that the new capability is coming up positively in client conversations, which was one of the strategic objectives we started with.
What did you like most about working with this company?
Their ability to hold the business objective in mind alongside the technical task. I have worked with technically excellent agencies who lost the thread of what we were actually trying to achieve. This team never did. Every architectural decision, every trade-off conversation, every prioritisation discussion was anchored to the outcome we had agreed at the start.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Absolutely. I would recommend them with a specific note that the quality of the discovery process is where the value starts. Clients who invest properly in that phase will get the most out of the engagement. We made that investment and the returns are evident in the quality of what was delivered.
Results that made the business case look conservative in hindsight
Charlotte Whitfield / Head of Digital Commerce - Sterling Retail PLC
Verified
Dec 31, 2022
Dec 31, 2022
Project summary: We needed to connect our factory floor systems to our ERP to give operations management real-time visibility into production status, waste, and throughput.
Twelve weeks from kickoff to live production deployment for a project of this complexity. I would not have believed that was achievable if I had not watched them do it. The velocity came from genuine engineering discipline — clear requirements, short feedback loops, automated testing, and a team that communicated internally without the overhead that slows most agencies down. The product has been live for four months with no critical bugs and one minor patch. We are already in scoping conversations for phase two.
PROS
Architectural decisions that will serve us for years rather than just solving the immediate problem, knowledge transfer that left our team genuinely capable, no scope creep at all
CONS
We underestimated the internal resource commitment required on our side during discovery — the team warned us, we did not listen fully, and the first sprint was slower as a result
Project TypePOS System Development
IndustryManufacturing
Project CostLess than $10,000
DurationJun 2025 – Feb 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
Sterling Retail PLC is a Manufacturing business based in Manchester, UK. As Head of Digital Commerce I am responsible for all technology investment decisions, vendor selection, and ensuring our digital capabilities match our growth ambitions. We operate in a competitive market where the quality of our software directly affects our ability to win and retain clients.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our existing POS System Development capability had accumulated years of technical debt that was slowing every new feature to a crawl. Incident frequency was rising, developer confidence was falling, and we knew a rebuild was overdue. We needed a partner with the depth to do it properly rather than apply another layer of patches.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The core engagement was POS System Development but expanded to include technical consultancy during the discovery phase, which helped us refine the requirements significantly before development began. They also took responsibility for coordinating with our third-party data providers, which removed a significant coordination burden from our internal team.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
Price was a factor but not the deciding one. They were mid-range in our evaluation. What tipped it was the combination of their technical depth in POS System Development, the seniority of the team they proposed to assign to our account, and the clarity of their project governance model. We had been burned by an agency that overpromised before and we needed to see evidence of process maturity.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Better than we did at the start, which sounds like an exaggeration but is genuinely accurate. The discovery workshop they ran surfaced assumptions we had not examined and contradictions in our requirements that would have caused real problems mid-development. The functional specification they produced was the clearest articulation of our product that we had seen written down.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Professional and efficient. We used a shared project management tool that gave our stakeholders visibility without requiring them to attend every meeting. The project manager had a clear escalation path and used it appropriately. The only time I needed to intervene directly was when I chose to, not because something had been missed.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes. I will note that the original timeline was aggressive and I had privately expected a slip. They managed to hold it by making smart sequencing decisions early on that I only fully understood in retrospect. The budget discipline was equally good — we received a single change request for scope we had introduced ourselves and it was priced fairly.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
Quantitatively: user engagement metrics are up significantly since launch, our support ticket volume has dropped, and we have received unsolicited positive feedback from clients who noticed the improvement. Qualitatively: our internal team is proud of the product we now have, which affects morale and retention in ways that do not show up on a dashboard but matter enormously.
What did you like most about working with this company?
Their ability to hold the business objective in mind alongside the technical task. I have worked with technically excellent agencies who lost the thread of what we were actually trying to achieve. This team never did. Every architectural decision, every trade-off conversation, every prioritisation discussion was anchored to the outcome we had agreed at the start.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Unreservedly. We are in active conversation about the next phase of work and I expect this to become a multi-year partnership. For any organisation in the Manufacturing space looking for a POS System Development partner who combines technical rigour with genuine commercial awareness, I would put this team at the top of the shortlist.
Company Info
Founded
2000
Employees
10 - 49
Hourly Rate
$100 - $149
Client Rating
5.0/5 (4 reviews)