Being an owner of a business is no easy task, there are many aspects that need owners’ attention all the time. The CEO needs to prioritize and make choices accordingly, doesn’t matter how difficult it might seem. A leader must make decisions professionally irrespective of emotions attached. A successful entrepreneur always goes through difficult choices and life changing decisions, which can only make a stronger and wiser CEO. Steve Crutchley, Founder & CEO, C2C SmartCompliance, had no idea when he was at the beginning of an IT career that one day he would be running a successful business of his own. The hard work, experience, passion and commitment made sure that he would reach and surpass his goals.
Steve had the opportunity to travel around the world and he spent much of that working in the USA, Europe, South Africa, and the Middle East. During his 40 years of experience in IT, he became familiar with various cultures and differing requirements needed in a global business. In understanding people in different business areas and ways in which business is conducted has allowed him to guide C2C in a positive direction. This experience has giving him a global perspective and approach to develop a common sense solution for organizations of any size and industry that need to comply to regulatory/industry requirements.
C2C SmartCompliance: Providing User-friendly Solutions
Steve founded C2C SmartCompliance with years of GRC auditing and consulting experience in information security, risk, and compliance. The firm is a specialized enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance software and services provider. The C2C methodology aligns an organization’s compliance strategy with specific business objectives. C2C’s products automate the costly manual processes associated with compliance initiatives, performing tasks in hours that normally take days. The team provides stakeholders with a sustainable, business-centric, common operating compliance framework labelled GRC.
Steve offers standard Governance, Risk and Compliance support, and also are unique in two areas. Firstly, they have a comprehensive and unique mapping engine. The company is able to map at any level of granularity and content. They support this with semi-automated mappings making the client lives extremely easy when they need to get a line of sight across their regulatory landscape. Secondly, they have a unique way of creating content (policies, regulations, standards and best practices) and then being able to use it or send to partner solutions. The uniqueness has led Steve’s team to great partnerships and major business opportunities with large organizations.
Growing with Unique Solutions
The C2C SmartCompliance products help busy executives manage complex compliance issues by mapping the relationships among requirement. This may be as few as a handful of critical requirements or as many as thousands that the organization must meet to stay in business.
The strategy Steve has always followed is to work with partners and fully support them.
He believes that when selling direct, C2C provides custom-built solutions, excellent customer service and support. The uniqueness of Steve’s team is that they offer solid advice based on experiences. Their approach to service clients is to listen, understand and provide solutions that best fit, that are simple, that are cost-effective and meets clients needs.
Steve and the team continue to develop new and unique methodologies for providing regulatory content and mappings to the partners and clients. The goal that Steve always had is to continue to grow unabated and continue to provide or exceed the levels of support he has established. “Continuing this will ensure we stay ahead of our competition and remain a force to be reckoned with,” says Steve.
The company is growing with the unique solutions. Moving a business from one level to the next can be challenging, according to Steve. Steve always asks the team to see what’s needed as they cross the bridge. “When a business grows roles do change to accommodate the needs of the organization. Being a realist, I expect my role to change over time for the benefit of the business, but at this point, I am not sure what that will be,” Steve adds.
Learning from the Mistakes
He is grateful having had the opportunity to sit at a table in most positions and having had the experience of being able to then take calculated risks by weighing the risk and benefits before taking action. There were some moments when he didn’t particularly enjoy, but the experience and learning from mistakes helped him shape his career immensely.
Supporting the staff also played an important role, according to him. “Being there when they needed support was paramount, and being able to roll up my sleeves with them made it more fun even when the chips were down,” Steve says.
He had to prioritize and make choices, and luckily the instinct told him to listen to customers and providing excellent customer service had to be at the top of the list. Making sure he had the right people to support clients, and the business was as important, so staff selection and commitment played a major role in the successful journey.
