Gravitate Reviews

About Gravitate

It is a leading software development firm in Auckland. Gravitate has enjoyed a thriving reputation as a provider of high-quality Internet services to a huge range of industries. Their benefits from a solid skill base ready to take on the most challenging technical jobs, while still being quick enough to assure that flexibility & creativity are never lost. Their experienced team delivers profitable products and services.

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Data warehouse that finally gave every team a single source of truth

Oliver Harrington / Chief Technology Officer - Meridian Consulting Ltd

Verified
May 27, 2026

Project summary: Our internal engineering team had reached capacity and we needed a partner with complementary skills to help us deliver a critical platform upgrade on a tight deadline.

Our industry has specific compliance requirements that many generalist agencies struggle with. This team came with working knowledge of the relevant frameworks, asked pointed questions about our obligations, and built controls into the architecture rather than bolting them on at the end. Our compliance team reviewed the delivered system and had only minor observations, which is genuinely unusual for a first-pass review. That domain awareness saved us significant remediation cost.

PROS

Collaborative working style that made them feel like an extension of our team, excellent written communication for our async timezone relationship, clean and readable codebase

CONS

The initial project brief document they required was more detailed than we were used to providing, but in hindsight that rigour was part of why the project ran so smoothly

5.0

Overall

5.0

Quality

5.0

Schedule

5.0

Cost

5.0

Communication

Project TypeData & Analytics

IndustryInformation Technology

Project Cost$500,000+

DurationNov 2024 – Sep 2025

Questions & Answers

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

Meridian Consulting Ltd operates across the Information Technology sector with offices in London, UK. In my capacity as Chief Technology Officer 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?

The immediate trigger was a performance failure during our peak trading period that cost us measurably in both revenue and client trust. The root cause was architectural and our internal team did not have the Data & Analytics expertise to address it properly. We needed specialists.

What services did the company provide for your project?

End-to-end Data & Analytics delivery with a particular emphasis on the integration layer that connected the new build to our existing Information Technology 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?

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 Data & Analytics, 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?

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?

Communication was handled primarily asynchronously given the time zone difference between London, UK 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 Information Technology 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?

The quality of the written communication. This matters more than most clients articulate. Clear, concise, technically accurate updates that our non-technical stakeholders could read and understand. Proposals and change requests that made the decision obvious rather than obscuring it in jargon. That communication quality reduced our internal coordination overhead significantly.

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

I recommend them to anyone who asks and occasionally to people who do not. The combination of Data & Analytics expertise, Information Technology domain knowledge, and delivery discipline is genuinely difficult to find. We found it here and we intend to keep it.

A technology partner worth every penny of the investment

Stephanie Coleman / SVP of Digital Strategy - Horizon Financial Group

Verified
Nov 22, 2023

Project summary: Our competitors had been investing in technology for two years and we needed to close a meaningful gap quickly without compromising on the quality of what we shipped.

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

Business-aware approach to every technical decision, strong project governance, fast turnaround on feedback, zero drama during a genuinely complex engagement

CONS

Premium pricing compared to some of the alternatives we evaluated, but the quality of the output and the absence of rework costs made the investment straightforward to justify

5.0

Overall

5.0

Quality

5.0

Schedule

5.0

Cost

5.0

Communication

Project TypePOS System Development

IndustryNonprofit & NGO

Project Cost$500,000+

DurationJan 2025 – Feb 2026

Questions & Answers

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

I lead technology at Horizon Financial Group, a mid-sized organisation in the Nonprofit & NGO sector headquartered in Boston, USA. My remit as SVP of Digital Strategy 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?

The immediate trigger was a performance failure during our peak trading period that cost us measurably in both revenue and client trust. The root cause was architectural and our internal team did not have the POS System Development expertise to address it properly. We needed specialists.

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?

We evaluated four vendors in total. Two were eliminated after the technical assessment stage because their proposed architectures showed a surface-level understanding of what we needed. This team's proposal demonstrated genuine depth in POS System Development and specific knowledge of the Nonprofit & NGO sector that the others could not match. The reference calls confirmed a consistent pattern of delivery.

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 Nonprofit & NGO 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 Boston, USA 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?

On time and within the agreed budget. They had given us a range estimate at the start, which I had been sceptical of, and they landed within the lower half of that range. Their estimation accuracy came from having broken the work down in genuine detail during discovery rather than giving a rough number and hoping. It showed in every sprint.

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?

The continuity of the team. The engineers who scoped the work were the engineers who built it. That sounds like it should be standard practice but in my experience it often is not. The institutional knowledge that comes from that continuity pays dividends at every stage, particularly when you are dealing with a complex Nonprofit & NGO domain where context takes time to build.

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

Yes, without qualification. I have already made two direct referrals to peers in the Nonprofit & NGO sector who were facing similar POS System Development challenges. In both cases I gave the recommendation specifically because I was confident the experience would match what I described — which is a level of confidence I do not extend lightly.

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