Baltimore Consulting
Personalizing Professional Consulting Services

Business technology landscapes change rapidly. Innovative and efficient organizations adapt and evolve. The key is to have a clear strategic vision and a strong technology partner you can trust. With its unique industry-based, consultative approach, Baltimore Consulting (BC) delivers a differentiated value to organizations and helps them develop a secure, flexible and responsive IT infrastructure. Founded in 2004 in Hunt Valley, Maryland, the firm started out as a software development company and has evolved into a professional IT service organization that provides a suite of proven managed services and solutions. In a recent interview with the ownership group, we discuss how the company has evolved with the vision of helping organizations achieve more through the use of their service offerings.

What are the challenges that customers face in the industry?

Industries face a lot of challenges in terms of service, security, and convenience. We hear a lot from new clients or prospective clients that they are just not happy with the level of service from their current provider. How people are accessing data and how they are transmitting it is a huge focus for us, and it is very challenging because these things are constantly evolving. Whether it is malware or viruses, it is difficult to wrap your arms around it, and you need to be fluid. Due to the lack of communication and constantly evolving threats, businesses need to maintain a healthy flow of conversations with respective clients as well as update their security measures with the latest technologies. Security and convenience typically do not go hand-in-hand, the more convenient something is, the less secure it will be and vice versa.

How does Baltimore Consulting respond to these challenges and can you tell us about your solution?

We have a different perspective on how we develop, nurture and maintain our business relationships.

We service our clients with a heavy emphasis on communication and personal engagement and are able to gain a deep understanding of their business models and objectives. Based on the type of industry, we analyze the demographics of a company, risk factors, compliance considerations, business processes, tools and tech savviness to get to the security and process flow aspect. Finally, we recommend to them a level of security and processes that are convenient and secure enough while still allowing them to operate effectively and efficiently at the same time.

We have our own internal support team, so we do not outsource anything. We have three significant components that we provide—strategic consulting and advisory level services, daily operational support services and application development/integration services. We believe most of our competitors typically offer only one or two of those, but not all three. Typically, a client is interested in outsourcing their daily operational support. Depending on the size, we may become their CTO or CIO or simply an augmentation to their existing staff. As the relationship develops and our knowledge of their business expands, we are able to assess and recommend areas that can be automated. This can be as simple as making proprietary software communicate with each other to avoid duplicate data entry or as extensive as developing a piece of software. These opportunities come because of our focus on improving a client’s experience versus doing only what is required.

Can you provide a case study that highlights your solution?

We have numerous success stories in our 15 years of domain dominance. One case that comes to mind is a Baltimore based client who was running a piece of outdated software and using legacy machines. The OS version was no longer supported and they had security incidents where their network was compromised. We took over their daily IT support operations and solidified the network infrastructure to keep them secure. Over the course of a year, we developed a new piece of software in order to move them from a Windows-based software application to a completely web-based online portal.

What does the future look like for Baltimore Consulting?

Because of our business experience and working with business leaders, we tend to approach technology from a more conversational standpoint. Having engaged in a lot of business practices before we became a technology company, we understand what it takes to become more efficient and that sets us apart from other companies. We are growing our staff and expanding into a new corporate headquarters which is indicative of the level and quality of service that we want to offer to our clients.