Robert Spicer

When rapidly developing tech startup vyzVoice couldn’t find the talent they needed, they turned to the IT experts at Lime Consulting to help them bridge the gap and meet their product development goals. By ITnation

Founded in 2010, vyzVoice is an innovative tech start-up based out of the Windhof eco-park in western Luxembourg. It began a major transition to Big Data and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies when current CEO Robert Spicer took the helm three years ago, and now offers its own architecture for highly customizable data monitoring and visualization, known as Chorus. While still in the early stages of planning the platform, Robert Spicer noticed that finding the right engineering talent was proving to be difficult and decided to bring in external resources. It was at this point that he came into contact with Lime Consulting and kicked off a relationship that has seen two Lime engineers fully integrate into the team to accelerate development. “The depth of knowledge and experience that Lime brought was the first thing that I recognized about working with them,” says Robert Spicer.

Lionel Nicot

Lime Consulting is a technology-focused agency that provides both project management and software development for clients across the insurance and finance industries in Luxembourg. Founded six years ago, it now boasts a team of 10 engineers who have technical expertise in Microsoft languages (.NET C# & VB, etc.), Java, PHP, HTML5, mobile development, and many other areas. Its engineers are also well-versed in project management techniques, particularly Scrum and Prince2. The agency prides itself on hiring consultants who not only have high-level technical skills, but also the adaptability to be able to fit into any environment. “It’s how we are recognized now by our clients,” explains managing director Lionel Nicot.

Successful in-house development of a new IoT platform

With the Lime engineers taking the lead on the project, the Chorus architecture was successfully launched in December 2015. It is now used by clients across a range of sectors to develop their own data visualization dashboards, customized to each individual stakeholder. This month, Chorus data visualizations were unveiled in Microsoft’s Innovation Building in Clausen, providing real-time information such as meeting room use, air quality, and waste management, and enabling the company’s Industry 4.0 strategy on the site. By taking on engineers from Lime Consulting, vyzVoice was not only able to successfully meet its development goals, but also gained additional advantages. “They not only helped us transition our own engineers into more sophisticated systems but added the kind of experience and heavy-weight of strong engineers that our team could coalesce around,” says Robert Spicer. “They also provided a lot of the input that we needed to create an in-house engineering process,” he continues.

Bringing more than just technical skills to the job

Robert Spicer particularly highlights the close relationship that was formed between the Lime consultants and his team as the key to the success of the project: “We didn’t have consultants, we had members of the family who participated fully as though they were part of the company,” he says. This closeness is something that Nicot takes great care to cultivate with each company he works with. “We know our clients very well and our clients trust in us, which allows for a relationship of confidence,” he explains. Spicer is already planning on working with Lime Consulting to meet its future needs in terms of hiring and technical development. “Today, when you’re growing a technology company you need speed to market and flexibility. In Lime Consulting, we have a partner we know we can go to and get the resource to get ahead in any particular feature or product we would like to have. As we gain the lead, we then transition in our own engineers,” says Spicer. “They’re now our first point of contact for external resources,” he concludes.