A new kind of consulting firm

Steelwind Consulting was founded by Markus M. Van Loan to be a premier technology partner supporting Los Angeles area business clients. Our focus starts with honesty and integrity in our relationship with our clients.

Markus notes, "I have always tried to provide clients with my vision of consulting. Honesty, focused goals, knowledge driven work, and integrity at all levels of the client relationship. It's the type of relationship and high expectations I demanded of my vendors for so many years."

"For clients beset with help desk break & fix chaos, frequently the client needs to consider investing in solid infrastructure with servers properly setup and deployed to bring things current, restore balance and see productivity gains."

Our recommendations

We don't usually recommend the bleeding-edge in software or hardware unless a client clearly understands the potential consequences of being an early-adopter. "Sometimes it makes sense to pay a premium to get the latest and greatest whiz-bang or gadget available. If there is a needed feature this approach can make sense, but the pitfalls are prevalent including interoperability issues with existing and legacy systems, and required learning or training."

For consultants, there is also an important balance related to value for the client.

We can help with many of your vital needs

Take project management and web development for example. "We've worked with many talented graphical designers over the years, so if a client wanted a new website or to revamp an existing one this can setup a conflict for many consultants. Since we know the graphics programs and the web building tools and server back end components - we could do the whole project for our client. There are times when the project scope makes sense and we do just that, work with the client's preferred designer and do the programming and establish the website hosting or e-commerce aspects.

But in other cases, it is a stronger value for the client if Steelwind performs the Project Management role in the project. We aid in definition of the goal and pool and manage the chosen vendors bringing the time line together and performing the vital function of objective program manager on the behalf of our clients." For Markus, this was modeled best by the entire company The Aerospace Corporation (El Segundo, CA). "Congress in Washington D.C. created The Aerospace Corporation for the sole purpose of conducing pure and applied research in chosen higher technology areas. When the Air Force or NASA are in contract negotiations with various vendors, such as TRW, Northrop or Martin Marietta, etc, the Aeropsace scientists would evaluate the work or claims made by these vendors. Similar challenges exist for CIO's and other non-technical executive staff. In technology areas such as, network security/infrastructure, server resources, web programming, or even project management, we see subcontractors will provide some techno-speak reason for delays or cost overruns, or disguise their promises with techno jargon only to redefine their meaning later on. We work to sort these out and make sense of them for our clients - and also to aid in avoiding these issues from the outset.

These are all examples of the many ways that SCG works with clients and works with integrity to bring solid value in the projects we aid or manage. Contact us today so that we can discuss your needs to see if we're the best fit.