About
Aldermere Labs is a 640-person software consultancy. They design and build products for other companies, alongside staffing and team-augmentation work. Headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island, they keep studios in Lisbon, Austin and Medellín, plus a wide distributed bench.
Results with Perigee Hours
- Grew the team from 68 to 640+ people over three years
- Won retained work with logistics and financial-services clients
- Outperformed competitors by bringing Perigee Reports into pitches
- Held retention at 91.4% through accurate compensation and itemised billing
“Perigee Hours gives us the chance to outwork our rivals. When we pitch new business, we bring our Perigee Reports along and show the level of visibility we can actually provide.”
Challenges
Aldermere Labs has used Perigee Hours since week one. “Everyone on the team logs time here — including the people who never touch a billable line,” Dara Whitcombe, the firm's CEO, told us.
When the founders first put the company together they were essentially three freelancers with an oversized plan. But they were disciplined about recording their hours and showing the work behind them.
“Plenty of the older shops in our industry bill by the day, the week or the month. They'll tell a client, 'we'll put three engineers on it.' And that's the finest resolution anyone ever gets,” said Whitcombe.
So a client might see that an engineer logged 40 hours, but never learn what those hours went into, or whether that person took two days off in the middle of them.
Meanwhile, every time Aldermere pitched, they brought time reports with them. They could show what each engineer touched, when, and for exactly how long. “We treated that gap as our opening,” Whitcombe said.
And open it they did. Aldermere has grown roughly ninefold in four years. Their clients get an itemised report every working day.
“Our clients get a description of every hour they're invoiced for, while competitors send blind statements with no task detail on a monthly cycle.”
They also bill strictly for time worked — if somebody is on leave, or puts in six hours instead of eight, the client isn't charged for the difference.
It's that attention to the small print that let them win retained work with mid-market logistics groups and two national insurers. They've been able to hire steadily, building out their reporting habits as they went.
Solution
“Today we run a fairly heavy delivery process that folds Perigee Hours into Corvid. We work two-week sprints across every project, and we track time around all of the development,” said Whitcombe.
Time tracking sits inside each day of the sprint. Stories are assigned to engineers, work is planned, and every story carries an estimate before anyone starts.
At the close of each sprint they can look back and ask whether every person got through what they signed up for. It has made blockers easy to name early, and easy to unblock.
And clients can see as much as they want. Aldermere's in-house bot talks to the Perigee API, pulls a report each evening and posts it straight into the client's channel.
“At the end of it, Perigee Hours runs how we bill and how we forecast revenue.” With profitability and revenue projections per engineer, Aldermere has the numbers to prove their effort turns into value for the client.
The short version? “It helps us win more business,” said Whitcombe.