Lakefront vs Other Consultants
Lakefront was founded by consultants, because of this we have a unique perspective on the data consulting industry. We understand the trappings of bad habits that can happen when management takes their eye off building a quality business that supports its employees ability to deliver quality work.
In traditional consulting models a consulting firm will sign a contract with a client for a set amount of hours or period of time and charge a specific rate to that client. They would then staff that client project with 3 - 6 employees who are all on salary, and have them dedicate a portion of their week to that client. Lakefront has a similar model, but we put guardrails in place to make sure that we don’t fall into several traps that this model can lead to.
Client Focus:
Our consultants work on a maximum of 3 clients at any given time, other consultants split their employees time between double that many projects, sometimes asking employees to work on 10 or more projects at a time. That means they are giving you, the client, less than 1 hour a day of their time. We limit the clients that we allow consultants to work on to 3 so that they can focus their time and energy on solving your business needs and not on switching between too many clients in one day.
Employee Driven:
At Lakefront each consultant we are fostering an environment that is truly employee driven. Each employee that works with a client makes between 80% - 90% of a projects hourly rate. Other consultants pay 30% - 40% on average. Also, every person that works at Lakefront is expected to work on at least 1 client, ensuring that they stay connected with what we do as a business and can walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Our consultants are expected to work between 20 - 30 hours a week for clients reserving 10 - 20 hours for personal projects, research, and internal training.
Extreme Ownership:
Because we focus our consultants on only 1 - 3 clients at a time we naturally have smaller project teams of 1 - 3 engineers. Typically with one member of the team operating as the project manager and the other two operating solely as engineering or data science resources. This leads to teams with extreme ownership of their work and reduces the “townhall” effect that some consultants can have on a project when they overstaff them and ask a dozen people to attend weekly meetings and needlessly bill time.
