Overview
HWWA Consulting helps companies run effective employee benefits programmes — pensions, life assurance, and the rest. In summer 2025, William Annison brought us an idea: Benefits Buddy, a mobile platform that gives employees of HWWA’s clients a single, clear view of their benefits in one place.
The Challenge
HWWA know employee benefits inside out but they hadn’t built software before. Translating a sharp vision into a launched product meant getting four things right at the same time: a mobile experience employees would actually use, a back office where HWWA could keep benefits information current, infrastructure secure and scalable enough for real client onboarding from day one, and a delivery process that gave William visibility throughout.
Our Approach
We ran a focused discovery to lock down what Benefits Buddy needed to be — and, equally important, what it didn’t need to be at MVP. Build started in November 2025 and the MVP shipped at the end of January 2026. Weekly catch-ups kept progress visible and let us adjust as we learned more.
- Mobile apps for iOS and Android: built with React Native via Expo. Employees log in and see their workplace benefits at a glance.
- Web admin for HWWA: Next.js with Tailwind and Preline UI, giving HWWA a fast, modern interface to manage clients, employees, and the benefits each company offers.
- Cloud-hosted on Azure: an ASP.NET Core API backed by SQL Server and Azure Blob Storage, built to keep the platform and the employee data it holds secure. Elastic Mint runs the infrastructure so HWWA don’t have to.
- Weekly delivery cadence: regular demos and conversations meant no surprises, and let William steer the product as it took shape.
Outcome
We delivered the Benefits Buddy MVP at the end of January 2026, on time. HWWA are now bringing customers onto the platform and working through a roadmap of further features as the business grows.
Elastic Mint continues to host Benefits Buddy in Azure and partners with HWWA on roadmap delivery — picking up new work as it’s needed and providing the technical leadership that lets HWWA focus on what their clients value most.
Why it works
This is the kind of work we’re built for: shaping an idea into a launched product, then sticking around as a long-term partner rather than walking away at the end of the build. Benefits Buddy is live and in use, with both the technical foundations and the working relationship in place to keep growing alongside HWWA.
