Lambert Labs

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO and Founder of Sciurus Analytics, a pensions and actuarial software provider.

Our software enables pension providers, fund managers, and life insurers to efficiently build and share complex financial modelling and analytics. We have a unique blend of industry, mathematical, and software development expertise.

Our product consists of Financial Canvas, a desktop application, which links to Financial Canvas Studio creating a SaaS offering. These are used by hundreds of users at large pension schemes and multinational companies with over 800 schemes and £100bn of assets under analysis.

For what projects/services did your company hire Lambert Labs, and what were your goals?

We hired Lambert Labs as an ongoing partner to support, develop and maintain our technology stack. The main goals were:

• delivering customer solutions
• embedding good software practices
• upgrading solutions to support increased scalability
• support ISO 27001 implementation

How did you select Lambert Labs and what were the deciding factors?

Lambert Labs were chosen because of their proficiency in cloud computing, specifically their expertise in deploying end-to-end production workloads to Amazon Web Services (AWS) according to industry best practices, e.g. the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

Additional skills demonstrated: experience developing web applications in Python and ReactJS.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

• Technical implementation
• Production deployment of a React app with rich interactive visualisations over HTTPS (Certificate Manager) using CloudFront and S3 that has successfully scaled across multiple clients. 
• Production deployment of a backend Flask API over HTTPS (using ACM) using a load-balanced Elastic Beanstalk application, connected to a MongoDB database (AWS Marketplace; Bitnami).
• Security hardening of the API deployment via network and firewall configurations to pass external penetration testing.
• Production deployment of file servers on Windows Server EC2 instances and using AWS FSx.
• Production deployment of CPU-intensive MATLAB workloads on Windows Server EC2 instances triggered via Systems Manager Configuration of Directory Service to add Windows Server EC2 instances to Active Directory domains
• Setup and configuration of SFTP server (Win32 OpenSSH) on Windows Server EC2 instance.
• Development of new features and bug fixes using Python (Flask; PyMongo; custom MongoDB ORM), React (Redux; D3; Bootstrap).
• Technical support to onboard new clients and troubleshoot existing deployments

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

• 1 - CEO and senior developer
• 1 - Senior Developer
• 1 - Junior Developer

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Product has 99.99% uptime across all deployments.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

Lambert Labs operate as an integral part of our team, joining regular stand-ups, and taking a lead in project management of the infrastructure.

George was given free rein to propose and implement changes and has driven many improvements over the last 12 months. In terms of communication tools this included moving us from trello to jira for more robust project management.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

George is always available and prepared to go the extra mile.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Hard to say. We have a healthy tension between me wanting product features and George improving the stack.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CIO and CISO of LOD. We’re a global legal services firm serving clients around the world in multiple verticals. Our sector is called new law, which started 10–15 years ago as an alternative to the big law way of doing things.

What challenge were you trying to address with Lambert Labs?

We had an 18-month digital change program going on and a small technology team handling it because part of our software development team wasn’t available. We needed extra capacity to help move our corporate website to be the digital frontend of our business and integrate with our new digital marketing platform and CRM.

This was all happening at a fast pace so we needed Lambert Labs to come on board and work to help us through software development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Essentially, we’re building everything on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 stack and integrating four businesses that were once separate. The Lambert Labs team didn’t just handle technical projects, they fixed what should’ve been done during the project with a previous partner. Their work also involved winning the hearts and minds of the business and marketing team.

What is the team composition?

I mainly worked with George (Founder) and two of his team members.

How did you come to work with Lambert Labs?

We put out an ad for a developer, George replied, and we started a conversation about their business and model. It was a good fit from the get-go. They went through interviews with our team, and we all had a good feeling about it.

Our objectives were to find a partner that was the right fit from a personality and technical perspective; someone that was not just a partner but embedded with our internal technology team.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project ran from April–October 2020.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The impact has been huge. We’ve recovered the website and it’s in a state that we’re all happy with now. It has helped drive our sales and leads. We’ve seen an uptick in the number and quality of leads coming through the website. This is a direct result of its functionality and UI/UX.

We have a really strong partnership with Lambert Labs. We fully intend to use them as our preferred vendor when we seek development capabilities outside of our internal team. We have a long-lasting relationship.

How did Lambert Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

We handled project management internally. They fitted into our agile methodology. They dropped in and were extremely flexible at all times. George was very accommodating — from getting up early to jumping onto calls late at night. They did an exceptional job of satisfying different stakeholders and building relationships.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their flexibility and accommodation were spectacular. It wasn’t a clear-cut project; it evolved throughout the journey of the six-month cycle. At no point was anything too hard or too much for them. They pushed back when they needed to, which we appreciated. Their team helped coach and discuss so we all came to the right place at the end of the journey.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They do such great work and can engage with small and medium-sized enterprises like us. The challenge for them is how they’re going to scale. I’d encourage George and the rest of their company to think about how they’ll keep that quality and trust as they build up and scale.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior instructional designer at OpenClassrooms. We create learning materials both in the form of degree programs and online courses.

What challenge were you trying to address with Lambert Labs?

We were looking for subject matter experts for a particular program and its courses to collaborate with for the creation of the materials.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started off with requesting some consulting from Lambert Labs. Deliverables for that included trying to translate things into as general terms as possible. We also wanted to create a plan for the degree program based on a map of target skills, for example. 

We also needed to create project materials and professional documents, such as requirement specifications or a code base, all based on a fictional professional problem.

We also did one online course with Lambert Labs, wherein the deliverables were course content like text, screencast videos, and coding exercises.

What is the team composition?

We worked mostly with George (Founder), but also with three of his employees, so four people in total. 

How did you come to work with Lambert Labs?

I don’t remember how we found him exactly, but we’d been working with George individually for about a full year before he suggested the idea of adding his employees to help us with some extra needs.  

How much have you invested with them?

We spent €16,000 (approximately $18,600 USD) in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project took place from February–July 2020.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We were very happy with what Lambert Labs delivered at every stage. We were especially pleased with the attitude of each member of the team: they were very easy to work with and very interested in the project. It was very easy to negotiate the best quality product we could, because we knew they were dedicated to producing that kind of quality, rather than just meeting the minimum. 

All four people we worked with weren’t just technically competent — they were also very creative. That creativity was vital for us since the majority of what they were delivering wasn’t just code. 

Lambert Labs was always going the extra mile to ensure the experience for our end users was going to be optimal. The team was interested in our feedback and responding to any sort of critique that we had while they were delivering to make sure that it would be successful.

How did Lambert Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

Working with several experts rather than just one was a unique opportunity for us. George offered a little bit of intermediary project management in the sense of being on  copy for any communication I had with his colleagues and offering a light supervisory role. 

He made sure that we, as their clients, were consistently happy with what his colleagues were delivering. That made everything quite efficient, and it was easy to be confident that everything was going to be delivered as expected.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Lambert Labs’ soft skills were most impressive. We were confident in what they were able to deliver from a technical standpoint, but we were also impressed with their ability to function creatively. Their communication skills and ability to collaborate was what really stood out.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have any comments to that effect; the process went really smoothly. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open-minded about what you can request of Lambert Labs because they were quite adaptable.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of two founders of an ethical analytics platform. We allow clients to use our data to study user behavior. In particular, user behavior on mobile platforms. We do this in a way that preserves the users’ privacy and anonymity. It’s like a typical analytics business, but it has a focus on privacy first and foremost.

What challenge were you trying to address with Lambert Labs?

At the time, we were an early-stage startup, and we needed development support to help build out our product.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their primary service isn’t a singular piece of work. They offer a variety of services to help build out our product. We test the changes with our clients, and that either leads to more work or changes in the existing work.

We work with them on a part-time basis. Typically three days per week.  Their scope has involved two primary components:

They helped strengthen and build out the various APIs we had built. The APIs allow us to recruit the individuals that provide data for our platform. This means there are interfaces between mobile apps and our backend services. 

They also assisted with our EPO (Exclusive Provider Organization) services, which consists of data extraction, transformation, and loading. That is exclusively backend work, and they use Amazon Redshift and other Python tools.

What is the team composition?
 
There are two specialists providing support. We’ve got George (Founder, Lambert Labs) and one of his senior developers. George is our primary point of contact with their team and project manager.

How did you come to work with Lambert Labs?

We put out an advertisement to hire an in-house developer to join us as we progressed as a startup. We were approached by Lambert Labs to take a slightly different path. They suggested using them as an external agency rather than bringing on a developer full-time. 

George was able to position Lambert Labs in terms of the skill they would bring. (We currently use two developers from Lambert Labs, but they have more available if we need the capacity.)

Looking at the budget of what we could afford, we certainly wouldn’t have been able to bring in two people inhouse. We would’ve been bringing in one, less skilled developer instead.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested $50,000 to $100,000 GBP (Approximately $50,000 to $200,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Lambert Labs in April of 2019, and the partnership is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’ve come to think of them as essential to our business. Not only are they capable of working at a high standard, but they’ve also been adept at picking up any task we’ve thrown at them.

For example, we asked them to take on some skilled Python work that they weren’t knowledgeable about when they originally started. They weren’t afraid to learn new areas while leveraging the core skills they already had in Python.

The quality of the work they’ve delivered has been outstanding, both in terms of the code and the actual features themselves. We’ve found very few bugs. They’ve delivered impeccably in terms of timing. Everything has been on time.

They are incredibly diligent and knowledgeable. They’ve also improved the quality of our own code (we also contribute code alongside them). When they review our own code, they offer insightful, astute solutions. It’s not just their own workers that are delivering to a high standard; they’ve made our work better as well.

How did Lambert Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

We immediately dropped them in our Slack. They were instrumental in setting up Jira, and now they run a development board for us. They are responsible for assigning work and pushing toward the big milestones.

They adapt well to working part-time because they can close a piece of work on Wednesday and pick it up on Monday without losing a step. They are very focused on what they do. They have other clients, but whenever they work with us, they feel like part of the team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The way that they think is quite important. They don’t just take a Jira ticket and run toward it — they actually think through the solution. Many times, they’ve asked us about the specific goal of the feature because there’s a better way of getting to it.

We’re such a small company that we wouldn’t have wanted a developer who is simply capable of ticking boxes and writing code. There’s a lot of thought that goes into the process of writing code. Their ability to figure out the best solution or best product has been hugely valuable for us and saved us a lot of money.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The partnership has been beneficial in both ways as it has allowed them to learn new skills. The majority of the work has been on the data warehousing side, which isn’t a topic they had a lot of experience with in the past. But, they picked it up really well.

They spent a good amount of time studying the subject and figuring out the challenges. This is not a negative comment, but maybe they could consider broadening their horizons into data warehousing, machine learning, etc to win new clients.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Future clients should give George and his team a lot of latitude. We’ve involved them in almost every aspect of the business, even those that are non-technical. We give the team a full picture of what we do, and that’s pretty important (how the data is used and what our clients get out of that data).

That information strengthens our relationship, builds a layer of trust, and adds efficiency where no one is second-guessing the needs of anyone else. They are highly capable of taking non-technical business information and working it into the decision making process.