Practical Computer Applications, Inc. (PCA)

Founded in 1992, PCA focuses its consulting and engineering practice on just one thing: custom database solutions that run core business operations.  Located on the Boston 128 Technology Corridor, we are a nationally-recognized database application consulting and design-build engineering firm.   PCA is a privately-held Massachusetts "C" corporation. Read more about what PCA is all about.

Experience + Talent

PCA employs some of the most talented and experienced database and application design and development engineers in the Boston area.  The culture at PCA fosters critical thinking, doing what our Clients need, being flexible, and developing innovative solutions to our Clients toughest challenges.  Every PCA employee is highly trained and fully accountable to our Clients' success.
PCA employs 20+ top professionals in their field — business analysts, application designers, SQL database and .NET engineers, project managers and test engineers. We even have a CPA on staff, since many of our solutions involve complex financials. Each professional at PCA devotes his or her time and talent to achieving excellent results within the complex application design and development practice.  PCA Capabilities Brief.  
PCA is a Gold-Certified Microsoft Business Partner.  Our engineering professionals have fulfilled all of the requirements, and are active in the following Microsoft Solutions specializations and competencies:
     
  • Smart Client .NET Development
  • Database Management
  • Business Process Integration
  • Microsoft Consulting Services
  • Web Development
  • Mobility Solutions
  • Custom Development
  • Office Systems Deployment
  • Business Intelligence
  • Networking Infrastructure
  • Microsoft Certified Consultant
  • AD and Identity Management

Solid Track Record

PCA maintains an impressive list of satisfied Clients — leading Fortune 500 companies as well as smaller, regional businesses.  Some Clients engage PCA to solve a single, particularly difficult challenge, while others continue to rely on PCA expertise to extend systems that we designed 10 years ago — to keep pace with changing/growing business needs.
While our Clients are diverse, most share several important requirements in common — insistence on a high quality outcome, demand for well-structured projects with transparent communication, clear milestones tied to reliable budgets and schedules, and a methodology to insure high fidelity between business needs and the project results.
Our Clients represent a broad range of data- and process-intensive industries — where quality, cost-controls and profitability rely heavily on the ability to create, share and manage large amounts of proprietary information among employees, business partners and customers.  We take great pride in the quality of our services, our solutions, and are extremely conscientious of our Client's time and investments.

Lean and Focused Organization

As a business, we are lean and focused, with senior business and engineering professionals on every Client Project.  We rely on creativity, efficiency and delivering continual value to our Clients for profit — not leveraging under-experienced or outsourced personnel.   PCA Client teams are limited to the minimum essential resources necessary to get the job done properly and on time.  When it comes to custom software development, smaller teams very often translate into better, tighter solutions that are more cost-effective to design, develop and maintain.