Type digital product studio London into a search engine and you get page after page of studios that all say the same three things: award-winning, user-centred, full-service. None of that tells you what working together is actually like. So here is the checklist we would use if we were the buyer, and, because it is only fair, how M3CA answers each line of it.
One team, or a relay race?
Most digital projects fail in the handovers. Strategy hands to design, design hands to engineering, engineering hands to whoever is left, and every hand loses a little of the original decision. Ask any studio you are considering who actually touches your product, and how many times it changes hands.
M3CA is one senior team across strategy, design, engineering, data, media and security, working from 35 Berkeley Square in Mayfair. The person who runs your discovery week is the person who builds. There is no account layer relaying messages in between.
Can they show working software, not just case-study theatre?
A polished case study proves a studio can write a case study. Ask for something you can open and use. Our own platforms are live: a clinical records system in health care, a kitchen management platform for hospitality, a managed IT service, a CNC and fabrication workflow, and the M3CA Skills Hub learning platform with a catalogue of a thousand courses. Each one runs at its own address and serves real users.
Do they start with a scope or with a quote?
A price quoted before anyone has studied your systems, your data and your obligations is a guess wearing a suit. We run a five-day discovery week before any build: the decision the product must serve, the systems it has to live with, the records and access obligations, and what breaks on your busiest day. It ends with a written scope, named phases and named people. Only then is anything priced.
If a scope cannot survive being read aloud to the people who have to live with it, it is not finished.
How we close a discovery week
What happens after launch?
Plenty of studios are brilliant right up to the invoice for the final phase. Ask what the second year looks like. Our engagements are built to be handed over or to be run with you long term, with the security review, the audit trail and the documentation treated as part of the product, not an optional extra. If the honest answer is that you do not need us, we would rather say it in week one.
The short version
- —One senior team, no handover chain, based in Mayfair.
- —Live platforms you can open today, across health care, hospitality, IT, education and more.
- —A discovery week and a written scope before any price.
- —Security, records and audit treated as part of the build.
- —Every engagement quoted on its scope, never from a rate card.
If that is the shape of studio you are looking for, tell us what you are trying to change. You will get a considered reply from the people who would actually do the work, and every conversation starts with a scope, not a sales deck.