North Labs

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a lead data analyst and account manager for Bluemark. We are a company that makes and manufactures promotional products distributed across the country and globally. In North America, we also act as a last mile delivery service.

What challenge were you trying to address with North Labs?

We were trying to scale up our last mile delivery service into an automated process, but we didn’t have a robust or secure database in order to do that.

What was the scope of their involvement?

North Labs built the software from scratch, and had a working knowledge of Snowflake which was the database that we were using. They made recommendations for good data loaders, and taught us what good visualization tools were. Additionally, they taught us how to structure our data appropriately. 

The technology we used included the Shopify platform, Snowflake, and AWS. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with the CEO, two data engineers, a coordinator from the marketing department, and a sales executive.   

How did you come to work with North Labs?

We ran into them by happenstance and explained our situation and resources, and they offered their services. We called them later on, and very soon afterward we started working together. 

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost $25,000–$50,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them between June–August 2022.

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

The project took a process that used to cost up to 10 hours a week and made it automatic. Before our work with North Labs, we had to upload and download everything manually, and now we don’t have to worry about anything because it’s automated. 

They also introduced us to new technologies like Snowflake. We’re a startup and had limited resources, so having the ability to scale up in a cost-effective manner is very important to us, which they helped us do.

How did North Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management was excellent. We used Slack to communicate, and even though we weren’t all in the same country, they were responsive and communicative.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were very transparent with us, and they acted as a mentor for our company. We spoke with other companies, and we felt like North Labs wanted what was best for us, whereas some other companies didn’t seem to have our best interests in mind.   

They built a solution that we own and that we can manage. The software that they built allows us to take care of issues or upgrades internally, and other companies wanted us to be reliant on their services. 

They offered solutions when we encountered issues, and even extended their services to make sure that we had everything we needed. We ran into an issue with a data loader and we had to transition to another one, and they guided us through the whole process. 

They were also very cost-effective and provided great value. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We wished they would have given us more of a service offering in terms of showing us the partners they worked with, but that was a very minor concern of ours. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Explain your project thoroughly, and talk about your goals. Talk about the difference in cost between hiring them as opposed to another employee. That’s one of the benefits of partnering with their company, and it’s good information to have.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the founders and owners of a SaaS software company. We specialize in venue and management software.

What challenge were you trying to address with North Labs?

We were looking to move away from a local data center in Denver to an AWS.

What was the scope of their involvement?

For our initial project, North Labs basically had to figure out how to get us out of our data center environment and convert to cloud services, which was very different from being in a local data center.

We had all sorts of servers — web, database, task scheduler servers. We worked with North Labs to analyze our environment and find the equivalents in Amazon. They figured a short-term plan, which they called a lift-and-shift.

We then moved on to phase two, which would be really taking advantage of Amazon Services and starting to break things apart from our big, monolithic application. We had 3–4 months of just planning, strategizing, moving assets, and testing before eventually going live.

Since then, we signed an ongoing contract with North Labs. They’re an Amazon partner, so they manage all of our Amazon services on a daily basis. Every 2–3 months, we contract them to work on specific projects, updates, and things we want to do, so we’re constantly working with them.

What is the team composition?

We had about four people working on the initial project.

How did you come to work with North Labs?

I initially contacted Amazon and told them about our needs; they recommended North Labs as the consultant that would best fit them. Thus, I got in contact with North Labs and started talking from there.

I had several meetings with Colin (Founder) just to get a feel of the company and decide if I could trust them. I eventually started talking to John (Director of Engineering), his lead project manager, and then disseminated down to the actual people who worked on the project.

The first reason I picked them was because they were experts in what they do, but most importantly, they understood the importance of the migration for me and my business. They didn’t take it lightly; they were aware of the stress levels that are involved when you move your entire environment and hope it works because it’s your business.

Additionally, I felt really comfortable with them; I felt that they could really do the job.

How much have you invested with them?

Up to date, we’ve spent somewhere around $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We officially contracted them in September 2019. The initial project was done in December 2020, but we’ve been working with them ever since.

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

Talking about hard metrics, the only thing I can compare it to would be what we were spending on a monthly basis at the data center versus what we’re spending with them and Amazon. In total, we’re getting vastly more services at Amazon and overall, we’re saving money.

How did North Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

I communicate with them through Slack on a daily basis. I have a direct line of communication with the people on my team.

The project management side is a bit unofficial; I just ping them and tell them I need something. We then have a startup meeting, usually through Zoom. They take that back, work out a timeline, tell me what to expect, and then we set Zoom meetings to coordinate, check, test, launch, and so on.

They always deliver quality work and never miss a deadline. They listen to me and have my back when something goes wrong. I’ve never had to worry about them, check in, or ask for anything twice. We just talk about it, and they do it, which is incredibly rare.

What did you find most impressive about them?

There are three things that distinguish them. First and foremost, they know Amazon and its environment inside and out. I’ve thrown some fairly complex requirements at them, and they haven’t even batted an eye. Everything has been delivered to that ultimate level of expertise without fail.

Second thing, they’re just nice people to work with. We joke around and they’re friendly, but they never mix that with business.

The third thing is that I never have to worry about a deadline. They just deliver. I say we need a project done, and it gets done.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not really. We're just very happy that we’ve found them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The more time a company spends really thinking about their requirements, what they need or want out of the engagement, the better off they’ll be. North Labs will do what you say you need to get done, and with a third party, sometimes that’s correct and sometimes it’s not. Thus, if you take more time to understand what you need, then they can help you translate that into the Amazon services that would be the best fit for you, and that’ll be a really successful relationship.