The Smyth Group Reviews

E-commerce build that united our digital and in-store inventory for the first time

Victoria Haines / Chief Product Officer - Solaris Media Group

Verified
Jun 06, 2026

Project summary: B2B customer churn was concentrated among accounts that had complained about portal usability. We needed a complete redesign of the self-service experience before the next contract renewal cycle.

The integration layer was the part of the project I was most concerned about going in. Our system landscape is complex, several of the upstream APIs we relied on were poorly documented, and two third-party vendors had a history of unpredictable response times on integration questions. This team managed all of that. They documented what the upstream vendors could not, built resilience into the integration architecture where the upstream behaviour was unreliable, and delivered a solution that works as specified in production. I could not have asked for more.

PROS

Clear and consistent communication adapted appropriately for both technical and non-technical stakeholders, shared tooling that gave our team real-time visibility, reliable sprint delivery throughout

CONS

Time zone coordination required some deliberate overlap management from both sides in the first couple of sprints, after which we had an efficient async rhythm that worked for the whole project

4.0

Overall

3.5

Quality

4.5

Schedule

4.5

Cost

4.0

Communication

Project TypeE-commerce Development

IndustryTelecommunications

Project Cost$50,000 to $149,999

DurationDec 2025 – Mar 2026

Questions & Answers

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

I lead technology at Solaris Media Group, a growth-stage Telecommunications business based in Los Angeles, USA. As Chief Product Officer my remit spans product engineering, platform operations, and strategic vendor partnerships. We had reached an inflection point where our internal capacity was not sufficient to execute our roadmap at the pace our market required.

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

We had a defined product vision for our next phase of growth in the Telecommunications market but lacked the engineering depth internally to execute it. The E-commerce Development requirements in particular required specialist experience that we could not realistically recruit for on the timeline our business plan required.

What services did the company provide for your project?

Primarily E-commerce Development, with adjacent work in solution architecture and quality assurance. They were responsible for the full build from requirements through to go-live, including integration with four existing systems in our technology landscape. The breadth they covered without requiring additional vendors was commercially and logistically valuable.

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

The quality of the questions they asked during the briefing process was the first indicator. Vendors who ask precise questions in the sales phase tend to apply the same rigour during delivery. That hypothesis proved accurate. The technical proposal was substantive, the team structure was senior throughout, and the pricing was transparent.

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

Better than we managed ourselves going in. The workshops they facilitated surfaced assumptions we had not examined and exposed three requirements that were in direct conflict with each other. Resolving those before development began saved us what would certainly have been significant rework later in the project.

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

Professional and efficient. The project manager maintained a clear view of the critical path at all times and communicated changes to it transparently. The one significant scope adjustment we made mid-project was handled through a clean change request process — fairly priced, clearly documented, and absorbed without disrupting the overall timeline.

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

Yes to both. There was a single sprint where a dependency on a third-party API introduced a one-week delay. The team identified it three weeks in advance, presented two mitigation options, and we agreed on an approach that recovered the schedule within the same sprint cycle. That level of foresight is what separates good project management from reactive problem management.

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

We went live four months ago. User adoption exceeded the target we had set by 23 percent in the first month. Support ticket volume has dropped measurably. The features we had deferred because the previous architecture made them prohibitively expensive to build are now in development. The platform they built has opened our roadmap.

What did you like most about working with this company?

Their instinct for keeping the business objective visible throughout technical decision-making. I have worked with technically excellent teams who lose the strategic thread as complexity increases. This team maintained a clear connection between every architectural choice and the outcome we had agreed to achieve. That orientation made the trade-off conversations significantly easier.

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

Unreservedly. We are in active scoping conversations for a second engagement and I expect this to develop into a multi-year partnership. For any organisation in the Telecommunications sector looking for E-commerce Development expertise combined with genuine delivery discipline, I would put this team at the top of the evaluation list.

Predictive models that have measurably changed how we approach every planning cycle

Abdullah Al-Shehri / Head of Innovation - Desert Tech Ventures

Verified
May 22, 2026

Project summary: Our campaign management workflow had grown to involve twelve different tools and significant manual reconciliation. The inefficiency was affecting both speed and accuracy.

What made the most difference in practice was the quality of the engineering judgment on this team. Not the ability to execute a specification — that is a baseline expectation. The ability to recognise when a specification was suboptimal, explain why, propose an alternative, and support the client in making a decision about it. That consultative dimension elevated the output beyond what the brief described and resulted in a product that is more fit for purpose than the one we had originally specified.

PROS

Senior-level engineering presence throughout the entire project, not just during the pitch, honest and commercially fair handling of scope changes, codebase that our internal team praised on review

CONS

We underestimated the input required from our subject matter experts during the requirements phase. The team flagged this early but our resource planning did not fully reflect it — our responsibility, not theirs

4.0

Overall

4.0

Quality

3.5

Schedule

3.5

Cost

4.0

Communication

Project TypeAI & Machine Learning

IndustryAdvertising & Marketing

Project Cost$500,000+

DurationMay 2025 – Feb 2026

Questions & Answers

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

Desert Tech Ventures is an established Advertising & Marketing organisation headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. My role as Head of Innovation covers both strategic planning and operational technology delivery. We maintain high standards for our vendors because our clients hold us to high standards — a bar we expect our partners to meet.

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

We had a defined product vision for our next phase of growth in the Advertising & Marketing market but lacked the engineering depth internally to execute it. The AI & Machine Learning requirements in particular required specialist experience that we could not realistically recruit for on the timeline our business plan required.

What services did the company provide for your project?

The scope covered the full AI & Machine Learning lifecycle: discovery and requirements definition, solution architecture, iterative development across twelve sprints, integration testing, performance validation, production deployment, and a structured four-week hypercare period. They also provided system documentation and a knowledge transfer programme for our internal team.

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

We had a failed engagement behind us and were more rigorous in our selection process as a result. We asked detailed questions about how they managed scope change, how they handled estimation, and how they communicated problems. The answers were specific, evidenced, and consistent across the team members we spoke to. That gave us confidence that the process was real rather than rehearsed.

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

Extremely well, in part because they had relevant Advertising & Marketing experience that reduced the context-setting overhead significantly. They understood the domain vocabulary, asked the right questions, and translated business requirements into technical specifications with a fidelity that meant the development phase had very few clarification cycles.

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

Communication was proactive, timely, and appropriately calibrated. Technical updates for the engineering audience, executive summaries for the steering group, risk flags with proposed mitigations rather than just problem statements. The fortnightly sprint reviews gave our stakeholders visibility without requiring them to attend every working session.

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

On time and within the approved budget. The estimation accuracy was notable — they had broken the work down in sufficient detail during discovery that their forecast proved reliable throughout, rather than being a number that shifted with every change in scope. We received one change request and it was for scope we had introduced ourselves.

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

The most direct measure is the performance of the system in production. In the five months since go-live we have had zero P1 incidents, our page performance scores have improved across every Core Web Vitals metric, and two enterprise clients who had cited our previous platform limitations during contract negotiations have since renewed without that objection arising.

What did you like most about working with this company?

The post-launch behaviour. Some vendors consider go-live to be the end of their professional obligation. This team treated it as the transition to a different kind of engagement. The hypercare period was substantive, the documentation was thorough and genuinely useful, and they checked in proactively at the thirty-day and ninety-day marks to review production metrics with us.

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

Unreservedly. We are in active scoping conversations for a second engagement and I expect this to develop into a multi-year partnership. For any organisation in the Advertising & Marketing sector looking for AI & Machine Learning expertise combined with genuine delivery discipline, I would put this team at the top of the evaluation list.

Accessibility-first approach that broadened our audience and impressed our enterprise clients

Yuki Hashimoto / Head of Product Development - East Asia Commerce KK

Verified
May 05, 2026

Project summary: Rapid growth had created a skills gap on the platform engineering side of our business. We needed an experienced partner to close that gap while our internal team scaled, without compromising quality or timeline.

We gave this team an aggressive timeline, a technically complex scope, and a client-side project team that was stretched thin and not always available at the speed the engagement required. They absorbed all of that gracefully. Where they needed input they were precise about what they needed and when. Where they could proceed independently they did. The result was a delivery that landed on time despite the constraints on our side, which I regard as evidence of genuine professional maturity.

PROS

Architectural decisions designed for longevity rather than just the current brief, thorough automated test coverage, post-launch stability that validated every technical choice made during discovery

CONS

Pipeline availability for kickoff required a few weeks of lead time — in hindsight that selection pressure means you are working with a team that is in demand for the right reasons

4.0

Overall

4.5

Quality

4.0

Schedule

4.5

Cost

3.5

Communication

Project TypeUI/UX Design

IndustryInformation Technology

Project Cost$10,000 to $49,999

DurationSep 2025 – Apr 2026

Questions & Answers

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

As Head of Product Development at East Asia Commerce KK I oversee technology investment and delivery across our Information Technology operations in Osaka, Japan. We are a commercially focused business and our technology choices are always evaluated in terms of their direct contribution to business outcomes rather than technical elegance alone.

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

We had a defined product vision for our next phase of growth in the Information Technology market but lacked the engineering depth internally to execute it. The UI/UX Design requirements in particular required specialist experience that we could not realistically recruit for on the timeline our business plan required.

What services did the company provide for your project?

The scope covered the full UI/UX Design lifecycle: discovery and requirements definition, solution architecture, iterative development across twelve sprints, integration testing, performance validation, production deployment, and a structured four-week hypercare period. They also provided system documentation and a knowledge transfer programme for our internal team.

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

A trusted peer in the Information Technology sector had used them for a comparable UI/UX Design engagement and their recommendation was unequivocal. Our own due diligence confirmed the pattern they described. The combination of domain knowledge, UI/UX Design depth, and demonstrated delivery discipline was the deciding factor.

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

Thoroughly and precisely. The requirements document they produced was detailed enough that our QA team used it directly to write acceptance criteria. Every user story had a defined business objective attached. Nothing was left to interpretation. That discipline in the requirements phase paid dividends throughout development and testing.

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

Communication was proactive, timely, and appropriately calibrated. Technical updates for the engineering audience, executive summaries for the steering group, risk flags with proposed mitigations rather than just problem statements. The fortnightly sprint reviews gave our stakeholders visibility without requiring them to attend every working session.

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

On time and within the approved budget. The estimation accuracy was notable — they had broken the work down in sufficient detail during discovery that their forecast proved reliable throughout, rather than being a number that shifted with every change in scope. We received one change request and it was for scope we had introduced ourselves.

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

Quantifying the impact precisely is complicated by other variables in our business, but the metrics we can attribute directly to the UI/UX Design work are meaningful: session duration up, conversion rate up, error rate down, and our NPS for the digital touchpoint has improved by eleven points. Our account managers report that the new capability is coming up positively in client conversations.

What did you like most about working with this company?

The post-launch behaviour. Some vendors consider go-live to be the end of their professional obligation. This team treated it as the transition to a different kind of engagement. The hypercare period was substantive, the documentation was thorough and genuinely useful, and they checked in proactively at the thirty-day and ninety-day marks to review production metrics with us.

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

Unreservedly. We are in active scoping conversations for a second engagement and I expect this to develop into a multi-year partnership. For any organisation in the Information Technology sector looking for UI/UX Design expertise combined with genuine delivery discipline, I would put this team at the top of the evaluation list.

A partnership that began with a single project and earned a place on our preferred vendor list

Nathan Prescott / VP of Technology - Ironclad Insurance Group

Verified
Apr 15, 2026

Project summary: The transition to EV had created demand for dealer network management capabilities our existing system was not designed to support. A targeted rebuild was the agreed path forward.

Our stakeholder group included board members, clinical leads, compliance officers, and end users — each with different technical literacy and different success criteria. This team navigated that stakeholder landscape as well as any vendor I have seen. They adjusted their communication register depending on the audience without losing the substance. They managed expectations honestly throughout. And they delivered a system that each group can point to as meeting their requirements. That breadth is genuinely uncommon.

PROS

Collaborative culture that made the team feel like a genuine extension of our organisation, strong asynchronous communication across time zones, zero-drama handling of the inevitable mid-project changes

CONS

Their insistence on a detailed functional specification before development began felt like friction at the time. In retrospect, it was the reason the development phase ran without the ambiguity that has derailed similar projects for us previously

4.5

Overall

4.5

Quality

5.0

Schedule

4.5

Cost

5.0

Communication

Project TypeEmbedded Systems Development

IndustryAutomotive

Project Cost$50,000 to $149,999

DurationSep 2025 – Jan 2026

Questions & Answers

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

Ironclad Insurance Group is an established Automotive organisation headquartered in New York, USA. My role as VP of Technology covers both strategic planning and operational technology delivery. We maintain high standards for our vendors because our clients hold us to high standards — a bar we expect our partners to meet.

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

We had a defined product vision for our next phase of growth in the Automotive market but lacked the engineering depth internally to execute it. The Embedded Systems Development requirements in particular required specialist experience that we could not realistically recruit for on the timeline our business plan required.

What services did the company provide for your project?

The core engagement was Embedded Systems Development delivery, though their scope expanded to include technical consultancy during discovery that materially improved our requirements. They also took ownership of the third-party integration workstream that had been a coordination challenge in previous projects, removing that complexity from our internal team entirely.

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

We had a failed engagement behind us and were more rigorous in our selection process as a result. We asked detailed questions about how they managed scope change, how they handled estimation, and how they communicated problems. The answers were specific, evidenced, and consistent across the team members we spoke to. That gave us confidence that the process was real rather than rehearsed.

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

Extremely well, in part because they had relevant Automotive experience that reduced the context-setting overhead significantly. They understood the domain vocabulary, asked the right questions, and translated business requirements into technical specifications with a fidelity that meant the development phase had very few clarification cycles.

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

The project management framework was the most structured I have experienced with an external vendor. Sprint planning was tight, acceptance criteria were specific, retrospectives were honest and acted on. The project manager treated the shared backlog as a live document and the risk register as an operational tool rather than a compliance artefact. I never had to ask for a status update.

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

Yes. I had privately built a contingency expectation into my planning given the project complexity and the number of integrations involved. None of that contingency was needed. The delivery landed on the agreed date and the final invoice matched the approved budget to within a fraction of a percent. That outcome is rarer than the industry acknowledges.

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

We went live four months ago. User adoption exceeded the target we had set by 23 percent in the first month. Support ticket volume has dropped measurably. The features we had deferred because the previous architecture made them prohibitively expensive to build are now in development. The platform they built has opened our roadmap.

What did you like most about working with this company?

The post-launch behaviour. Some vendors consider go-live to be the end of their professional obligation. This team treated it as the transition to a different kind of engagement. The hypercare period was substantive, the documentation was thorough and genuinely useful, and they checked in proactively at the thirty-day and ninety-day marks to review production metrics with us.

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

Unreservedly. We are in active scoping conversations for a second engagement and I expect this to develop into a multi-year partnership. For any organisation in the Automotive sector looking for Embedded Systems Development expertise combined with genuine delivery discipline, I would put this team at the top of the evaluation list.

Project execution that matched the proposal in every dimension that mattered

Beatriz Cavalcanti / Chief Digital Officer - Cerrado Tech SA

Verified
Mar 11, 2026

Project summary: Our field service management system had not been updated significantly in six years. Rising technician count and increasing job complexity had exposed every one of its limitations.

Six months after go-live our platform is processing three times the transaction volume we specified in the original brief. The architecture choices made during discovery accommodated that growth without remediation work. That is the difference between a team that designs for what you tell them and a team that designs for what you are likely to need. We are in conversation about a Phase 2 engagement and I expect to be using this partnership for several years.

PROS

Collaborative culture that made the team feel like a genuine extension of our organisation, strong asynchronous communication across time zones, zero-drama handling of the inevitable mid-project changes

CONS

The engagement was priced at the quality level rather than the budget level. We evaluated the alternatives and concluded that the delta was a reasonable premium for the reduction in delivery risk

4.5

Overall

4.5

Quality

4.5

Schedule

4.5

Cost

4.5

Communication

Project TypePOS System Development

IndustryEnergy & Utilities

Project Cost$150,000 to $499,999

DurationOct 2025 – Feb 2026

Questions & Answers

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

Cerrado Tech SA is an established Energy & Utilities organisation headquartered in Brasília, Brazil. My role as Chief Digital Officer covers both strategic planning and operational technology delivery. We maintain high standards for our vendors because our clients hold us to high standards — a bar we expect our partners to meet.

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

We had a defined product vision for our next phase of growth in the Energy & Utilities market but lacked the engineering depth internally to execute it. The POS System Development requirements in particular required specialist experience that we could not realistically recruit for on the timeline our business plan required.

What services did the company provide for your project?

The core engagement was POS System Development delivery, though their scope expanded to include technical consultancy during discovery that materially improved our requirements. They also took ownership of the third-party integration workstream that had been a coordination challenge in previous projects, removing that complexity from our internal team entirely.