Technology Consulting, Custom Software & Automationfor Auburn Hills Small Businesses
Auburn Hills, MI · Oakland County
Oakland County’s corporate & automotive-tech corridor.
IT strategy consulting, custom software and automation for the smaller firms beside Auburn Hills’ giants. Advisory and builds, not help-desk support.
Auburn Hills firms
Systems for Auburn Hills' engineering and automotive-tech firms.
Auburn Hills is a corporate and automotive-technology hub: headquarters, engineering and supplier firms, a university and a major retail centre around I-75. The small firms working alongside those anchors need real internal systems, not a brochure site.
Engineering & automotive-tech firms
Custom internal tools, reporting, and system integrations.
B2B & professional services
Workflow automation that removes duplicate data entry across systems.
Growing startups & founders
Fixed-price prototypes that turn an idea into a working product.
Who builds in Auburn Hills
Engineering and corporate density, and the small firms working in its shadow.
About 25,000 residents but a daytime population several times that, because the I-75 corridor is headquarters, engineering and automotive-technology firms rather than housing. The businesses that call us are the ten to sixty person supplier and professional firms beside the anchors, held to enterprise expectations on reporting and data with none of the headcount.
About fifteen minutes southeast of our Clarkston base.
Auburn Hills Opportunity
Residents
Median household income
Households
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau ACS, via Census Reporter (2024 5-year)
First moves for Auburn Hills firms
Where tostart.
Auburn Hills runs on engineering and automotive technology, so the firms here usually need working internal systems long before they need another brochure page — these two are where that work starts.
Custom Business Software
One place to run your business, built around how you work.
- Real-time operational visibility
- Centralized knowledge and SOPs
- Reduced errors from manual tracking
Custom App Build
Turn your idea into a working product — at a fixed price.
- Working full-stack product delivered
- Clear scope before build begins
- 50% upfront · 50% on delivery
The honest comparison
What else a growing firm pays for.
The real options for engineering and automotive-tech firms in Auburn Hills, described fairly, including when one of them is the right call.
A management consultancy
$15,000+ per engagement
You get a strategy and a deck. Worth it when the direction is genuinely unclear, but nobody builds the thing at the end.
Hiring an internal technology lead
$120,000+ per year
The right answer eventually. Below roughly fifty people it is a large fixed cost for a genuinely part-time role, and the search alone takes months.
Enterprise software licences
$20,000+ per year and up
Built for the anchors, not for you. Powerful, and you will use maybe a fifth of it while paying to configure the rest.
Fractional leadership plus build
$1,500 to $5,000 / mo; builds fixed-price from $3,000
Senior direction month to month and the systems actually get built. You can stop when the problem is solved.
What else we run
More ways we help engineering and automotive-tech firms.
“We truly cannot say enough wonderful things about our experience working with Tony of Marhardt Consulting!”
What Auburn Hills firms ask us.
Do you do IT support or managed IT services?
No. We are not a help desk and do not manage networks, servers or cybersecurity. We decide what software you need, design the systems and build them. If you need someone on call when a machine goes down, a local MSP is the right call, and we work alongside them.
We are held to our customers’ data requirements. Does that change what you build?
It shapes the design from the start. Records stay in the systems you already run, access is scoped per person, credentials never sit in the browser, and anything customer-facing is built assuming an audit. We sign an NDA before seeing anything sensitive.
How does this compare to hiring someone internally?
Under about fifty people, a full-time technology lead is a six-figure cost for a part-time role. A retainer gives you the senior judgement without the headcount, and when you outgrow it we will tell you it is time to hire.
Can you build something we can test before committing?
That is what our prototype work is for. A working version of the idea, in weeks rather than quarters, so the decision to build properly is made against something real instead of a document.
Before you hire anyone
Read up first. No form required.
Auburn Hills firms rarely need convincing that software matters. These are about the quieter version of the problem: the systems that quietly stopped scaling, and the enquiries that die in the gap before anyone replies.
Seven signs you have outgrown your spreadsheets
When to stop, and what real systems look like at small-shop scale.
The real cost of missed calls
Most go unanswered and most callers never ring back. The honest math, and the fixes.
Lead response time: the five-minute rule
What the MIT and Harvard research says about who wins the job, and how to answer faster.
Serving Auburn Hills & Oakland County
Systems that keep up with the work? Start with a free proposal.
Fifteen minutes from Clarkston. Bring the messy version of the problem to the first conversation, that is the useful one.