Delivering bespoke enterprise software solutions
At ACS we've been developing business-changing, bespoke software solutions for over 11 years.
Quality and reliability is everything to us. So we build long-term partnerships with our clients to develop and support effective and robust software platforms, working in an agile and collaborative way. The end product, enabling you to exceed your short and long-term business goals.
The ACS development team has extensive experience, working on projects for Enterprise size businesses right through to dynamic Start-Ups, spanning a number of industries from sports governing body FIFA, to Angry Birds gaming.
As our development is bespoke, we work on a wide range of projects from a completely new piece of software to something that integrates a number of existing disparate systems. The world is your oyster, but you can learn more about the type of work we’re commonly asked to deliver on our website.

headquarters
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Clarence Mill Business Centre, Clarence MillBollington, CHS SK10 5JZUnited Kingdom
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Recommended Providers
Portfolio
Common Goal, The Manchester United Supporters Trust, Fifa, Sony Music, EA, EA Chillingo, Everwell Occupational Health, miProgram

Crystal SDK
Chillingo, who were later bought out by EA and rebranded as EA Chillingo tasked ACS with helping them to build a social gaming framework for the iPhone platform called Crystal SDK.
The SDK was designed to make it easy for iPhone game developers to add features to their games such as achievements, challenges and achievements.
In order for the platform to scale efficiently we built the server side platform on top of a cloud infastructre that could scale up and down as needed.
The SDK was a huge success and was a huge sucsses and was even integrated into the number one selliing iPhone game, Angry Birds, and scaled to over 60 million end users world wide.

Common Goal
Common Goal was started by Manchester Uniteds Juan Mata as a way to unite the football industry in pledging 1% of revenue to football for good organisations across the globe that work towards tackling several of the UN Social Development Goals, such as gender inequality, education and employability.
When Common Goal came to ACS they were using a back end CRM style technoology called Podio, which was was used to manage their back end processes. They needed us to build them a web site that would allow players and managers to join the movement that would integrate with this back end technology.
Though ACS does normally work with websites as such we felt that the cause was a worthy one and that they needed someone within ACS' skillset to achieve the necessary intregration and the right solution to allow them to scale up as their company grew.
Reviews
the project
Website Dev & Backend Support for Athletic Nonprofit
"They’re really making an effort to get to the bottom of our challenges."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the co-founder of Common Goal, an athletic nonprofit organization. It’s more of a movement about professional football players, managers, and football clubs pledging a minimum of 1% of their salaries towards supporting social projects all around the world. In the U.S., it would be soccer.
Technology and tech development play a big part in supporting the transactions around the 1% pledge donation and for stewarding the relationships with the nonprofit organizations that we serve. We are a major charity that is growing this movement of athletes supporting charitable organizations.
What challenge were you trying to address with ACS?
We were looking for a partner that would be able to build a custom website that also supports the transaction process and enables smooth integration with our CRM system. The purpose is to make sure our content and project management system can be easily managed through the CRM. The system we are using is Podio.
The task of ACS was to ensure that the backend process had an optimized integration with how we’re operating as an organization which involves content management and the CRM system we already had in place.
What was the scope of their involvement?
The team developed our website that is basically supporting this movement, serving as a digital home for it. The purpose of our website is to inform and inspire people about what we’re doing and what our organization is, as well as to tell stories. In the end, it’s also about facilitating transactions of the donation.
ACS is an ongoing partner of ours— it’s not a one-off project that is already concluded. We’re constantly developing the tech capabilities of our website and CRM further with them. They are our lead tech partner.
What is the team composition?
Our company only has one main point of contact. We have worked with two of the founders and they have their team of software developers, but I’m not sure how many have been involved in creating our solution.
How did you come to work with ACS?
ACS approached me and suggested that I engage with them.
How much have you invested with them?
We've spent about €100,000—€150,000 (approximately $117,000 – $170,000 USD).
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working together in January 2018 and we continue to work with them in our projects.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
Their work has been very positive. With the actual tech development and programming, ACS is a partner that delivers high-quality outputs. They have a deep understanding of what we’re looking to achieve as a company.
Above all, they are able to use their skills and competence in the area of software development, frontend design, and conceptualization. It’s been an overall good experience.
How did ACS perform from a project management standpoint?
The communication has been great in terms of their reliability, their level of responsiveness, and their level of transparency when it comes to actual costs. ACS also has a very good process in terms of account management and communication.
We communicate through regular video chats. Once a year, we have an in-person meeting since we’re not in the same country. They’re based in the UK and we’re based in Germany. We communicate via email as well. ACS’ time management has been good but not excellent. There have been cases where deadlines had to be extended. But we know that’s also part of the nature of software development. Overall, they’re a very trustworthy partner.
What did you find most impressive about them?
There’s a high level of trust between our company and ACS. We always know they’re capable of delivering the highest standard of tech development. We have a very thoughtful engagement. They’re really making an effort to get to the bottom of our challenges. Further, they really go above and beyond in understanding and empathizing with our issues. It’s a very complementary skill set to what we have internally.
Are there any areas they could improve?
For us, it’s been a very positive experience. We just need to improve collaboration between our design teams and the person in charge of our company’s communications department. Moving forward, we need to ensure that there will be smooth communication between our internal team and their teams. We went through a couple of iterations and talks to figure out what the best process will be.
After that, ACS and our firm gained some learnings and also discussed our troubles with meeting the deadlines. In summary, we want to achieve process optimization, reduce the feedback loops, and establish more effective communication.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
I highly recommend ACS. They are among the top people that I have worked with in my professional career in terms of tech companies. I can recommend them without any reservation especially if you’re looking for a long-term partner that can support you if you have scaling challenges and ambitions. Most importantly, they have a high level of competence in conceptualization as much as in the front- and backend development.
While the work is ongoing, the engagement thus far pleases the client. Their expertise in software development, frontend design, and conceptualization make them a reliable partner. ACS is responsive, transparent, and understanding.