Smart&Soft Reviews

A development partner who genuinely understood our business, not just the code

Lukas Becker / Head of Digitalisation - Becker Industrie GmbH

Verified
Oct 26, 2024

Project summary: We had a clear product vision but lacked the engineering capacity internally to execute it within the window our market opportunity required.

Project governance was one of the things that impressed me most. We had a dedicated project manager who ran tight fortnightly sprints with clear acceptance criteria, a shared backlog that gave us full visibility at all times, and a change request process that was fair and transparent. Nothing slipped through the cracks, no bill shock at the end, and the final delivery matched the original scope document almost perfectly. In my experience that kind of discipline is genuinely uncommon.

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

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 TypeSoftware Development

IndustryEnvironmental Services

Project Cost$50,000 to $149,999

DurationOct 2025 – Dec 2025

Questions & Answers

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

Becker Industrie GmbH is a Environmental Services business based in Munich, Germany. As Head of Digitalisation 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 Environmental Services 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?

Primarily Software Development, 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?

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?

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 Software Development platform shows a meaningful improvement in the metrics that matter to our Environmental Services 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?

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?

Yes. The referral I would give comes with context: they are not the cheapest option and they are not the fastest to schedule. If you are optimising purely on price or looking for someone to start tomorrow, there are other choices. If you want the work done properly and a partner you can trust with a complex, high-stakes Software Development engagement, this team is the answer.

Penetration testing delivered with clear findings and actionable remediation steps

Kenji Watanabe / General Manager, IT - Tokai Digital KK

Verified
Oct 16, 2024

Project summary: Last-mile delivery performance had become a brand issue and we needed a real-time tracking and exception management platform that both our team and our clients could use.

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

Their calendar books up quickly which made scheduling the initial kickoff slightly challenging — a good problem for them to have and not one that affected our delivery

5.0

Overall

5.0

Quality

5.0

Schedule

5.0

Cost

5.0

Communication

Project TypeCybersecurity

IndustryLogistics & Supply Chain

Project Cost$150,000 to $499,999

DurationMay 2025 – Aug 2025

Questions & Answers

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

Tokai Digital KK is a Logistics & Supply Chain business based in Tokyo, Japan. As General Manager, IT 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?

We had a product concept validated by market research but no clear path to build it within our budget and timeline constraints. Our Logistics & Supply Chain competitors were moving quickly and we could not afford to spend eighteen months finding out a generalist agency could not execute the Cybersecurity work our product required.

What services did the company provide for your project?

The full Cybersecurity lifecycle from discovery through to production deployment and hypercare support. This included requirements workshops, solution architecture, sprint-based development, QA and automated testing, deployment to our cloud environment, and a structured handover with documentation. They also provided a brief post-launch period of dedicated support which was genuinely useful.

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 Cybersecurity, 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?

The requirements understanding was solid from early on, aided by the fact that they had prior experience in the Logistics & Supply Chain 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 Tokyo, Japan 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. 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?

Yes, without qualification. I have already made two direct referrals to peers in the Logistics & Supply Chain sector who were facing similar Cybersecurity 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.

Analytics dashboard that our executives open before their morning coffee

Allison Park / Chief Product Officer - Vertex Media Inc

Verified
Jun 22, 2024

Project summary: Claims fraud detection had been rule-based for years and we were losing ground to more sophisticated patterns — we needed a machine learning model built on our own historical data.

We ran a structured RFP with seven vendors. Three made it to the technical evaluation stage. This team won on the strength of their technical proposal, their domain knowledge, and frankly on the quality of the questions they asked us during the process. A vendor who asks good questions in the sales phase tends to ask good questions during delivery too. That hypothesis proved correct. The project is now live, performing above the KPIs we agreed, and our stakeholders are genuinely impressed.

PROS

Engineering quality that our internal team can maintain without calling the vendor, thorough documentation, proactive risk identification throughout the project

CONS

Time zone difference required some adjustment to our internal communication habits but the team managed the overlap window efficiently and it never affected momentum

5.0

Overall

5.0

Quality

5.0

Schedule

5.0

Cost

5.0

Communication

Project TypeData & Analytics

IndustryInsurance

Project Cost$150,000 to $499,999

DurationApr 2025 – Jan 2026

Questions & Answers

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

Vertex Media Inc is a Insurance business based in Los Angeles, USA. As Chief Product Officer 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?

Growth into new markets had exposed serious limitations in our platform. What had worked for our original user base in Los Angeles, USA was not going to scale internationally, and the Data & Analytics requirements for those new markets were meaningfully different. We needed a partner who had solved that kind of problem before.

What services did the company provide for your project?

Primarily Data & Analytics, 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?

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?

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?

The project management was the best I have experienced in a vendor relationship. We had fortnightly sprint reviews with structured agendas, a shared backlog that we could inspect at any point, a risk register that was actively maintained rather than created at kickoff and never opened again, and a project manager who treated our time as something worth protecting. Communication was proactive, not reactive.

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?

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?

Yes. The referral I would give comes with context: they are not the cheapest option and they are not the fastest to schedule. If you are optimising purely on price or looking for someone to start tomorrow, there are other choices. If you want the work done properly and a partner you can trust with a complex, high-stakes Data & Analytics engagement, this team is the answer.

App store ratings climbed immediately after launch — says it all

Minjun Oh / Director of Engineering - Sejong Digital Corp

Verified
Apr 01, 2024

Project summary: Post-pandemic recovery meant rebuilding our booking infrastructure from scratch with a focus on flexibility, cancellation handling, and real-time inventory across multiple GDS providers.

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

Technical depth across the full stack, honest and timely communication, delivered exactly what was scoped without surprise additions to the invoice

CONS

Time zone difference required some adjustment to our internal communication habits but the team managed the overlap window efficiently and it never affected momentum

5.0

Overall

5.0

Quality

5.0

Schedule

5.0

Cost

5.0

Communication

Project TypeMobile App Development

IndustryTravel & Hospitality

Project CostLess than $10,000

DurationFeb 2025 – Mar 2026

Questions & Answers

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

I lead technology at Sejong Digital Corp, a mid-sized organisation in the Travel & Hospitality sector headquartered in Busan, South Korea. My remit as Director of Engineering 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 existing Mobile App 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 full Mobile App Development lifecycle from discovery through to production deployment and hypercare support. This included requirements workshops, solution architecture, sprint-based development, QA and automated testing, deployment to our cloud environment, and a structured handover with documentation. They also provided a brief post-launch period of dedicated support which was genuinely useful.