Scott McAuley, owner of MC Squared Technology, received some laughs at the Entrepreneurial Awards ceremony.

In accepting his 2009 award in the technology category—immediately after the couple who won the franchise award had invited everyone to stop by their McDonald’s restaurants and spend some money—MC Squared Technology, Inc. President and CEO Scott D. McAuley remarked, “I also spend a lot of time at McDonald’s and will be dropping by to celebrate later on.”

After trying a number of industries and starting numerous other businesses, McAuley founded MC Squared, an information technology service provider, in 2004. The company manages customer networks, provides help-desk support and designs and hosts websites, using a content-management system, which allows the sites to be deployed quickly, and customers can edit the sites themselves.

MC Squared targets small and medium-sized companies, which were being underserved at the time the company opened. To accommodate this specific clientele, MC Squared had to amortize its costs to a broader customer base, servicing multiple customers at the same time. But this change not only allowed the customers to have a “predictable monthly expense and a full-time IT department” but also allowed MC Squared to have recurring income and the ability to make better business forecasts.

“There’s a very delicate balance that we have to maintain,” McAuley explains. “We’re always looking a few years down the line and how we’re going to be able to benefit customers, but we don’t want to bring new technologies to market before our customers are ready for them. As technology gets more complicated, we want to make it more simple.”
The next big technology evolution McAuley sees on the horizon is Cloud computing. The Cloud system will allow customers to reduce IT costs by moving all of their computing to MC Squared’s new data center. “It removes the need for customers to have expensive servers at their offices, eating up large amounts of electricity and requiring expensive IT support,” McAuley states. It also frees the customers from paying large amounts for the purchase of new computer hardware and software, allowing them to be more cost efficient and to compete with larger companies.

“We will be allowing our customers to do what it is they do best in order to drive revenue in that business.”

Admittedly a high school dropout from a family of dropouts who tended to be entrepreneurs, McAuley knew at a young age that he wanted to have his own business. He says his relatives “always enjoyed what they did, they had the freedom to do just about anything they wanted, [and] they always had a positive outlook on life.”

After serving in the Marine Corps and earning his GED, McAuley first started working in the insurance industry. In 1990, he moved to Michigan to partner with a consulting firm that specialized in vertical software for plumbing and heating, ventilation and air conditioning businesses. He became a partner in the firm for a few years. Then McAuley opened a mortgage business with 12 employees.

Since MC Squared’s founding in 2004, sales have tripled, the company has ten full-time employees and expects to add another 12 to 16 by the end of this year. McAuley has four partners in the business

“This award is very special,” McAuley said in his acceptance speech. “It’s not just for the individual recipient up here; it belongs to everyone on our team. I’d like to thank my partners, friends and support of the businesses here in the Lansing area.” He also acknowledged “Our employees are the reason we have such a great relationship with our customers. There is no way we could be what we are today without them.”

Since founding MC Squared, McAuley has become certified in Microsoft products, a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, and a Microsoft Certified Information Technology Professional. The company regularly sends its staff to training to stay on the cutting edge of the latest technologies.

MC Squared has also been very involved in the community. The company has given over $200,000 in time and services, including the donation of websites, computers and training. McAuley is a member of a number of local professional and charitable organizations, and is on the Web and marketing committee for Lansing’s 150th birthday celebration. It was noted at the awards banquet that he is also a Junior Achievement board member.

As for the current economy, McAuley, like many of the other award winners, remarked that the bad economy “is a state of mind.” He says, “There are companies out there making money, and we know that we’re going to be one of those companies. But it’s still nice to be recognized.”

As for the future of MC Squared, McAuley states, “We love where we are in mid-Michigan and look forward to serving the community in new and creative ways in 2009.”