Michael Brophy, CEO, Certification Europe

What’s the most distinctive thing about your business?

We provide auditing and inspection services, assessing organisations against standards and certifying them if they comply. Maybe it’s an awful thing to say about your profession, but it’s a very staid and conservative type of business.

If you say the word auditor, most people think of someone with a clipboard, ticking boxes and then adjudicating at the end whether you’ve passed or failed. That’s the exact opposite of what we do.

I’m not saying we’ve managed to make the profession sexy yet, but that’s certainly what we’re setting out to do, to try to bring a bit of a “wow” factor. We’re very much focused on working with the client, making sure they achieve what they’ve set out to achieve rather than standing aloof and casting judgment upon them.

What’s the best piece of business advice you ever received?

As an entrepreneur, you think no one can do it better than you – I would have tried to meet every client and be involved in everything at the start.

After doing that for a few years, somebody pointed out to me that I employ very good people and they are far better able to do things than I am. Standing back and letting the team get on with it took a while to learn.

What would be the biggest mistake you’ve made in business?

It was probably acting like a small company and having a small company mentality, rather than thinking big – feeling that there were certain pieces of work or clients that we couldn’t take on. Once we began to think and act like a big company, very quickly people accept that.

Any major successes to date?

What I take most pride in is always bringing new and innovative services to our clients, often years ahead of our competitors. As soon as a new standard is being developed, we’re working in the background to make sure we can offer it to clients.

We’ve had a couple of European firsts in the area of electronic signatures certification and even a world first in bringing an energy management certification to the market.

Who do you most admire in business?

People have very strong views about his management style but, for me, it’s Michael O’Leary. What he’s created and the fact that it’s profitable year on year despite everything is staggering.

Do you think the banks are open for business to SMEs at the moment?

If you are a profitable growing SME with a strong balance sheet and clear prospects, then yes they are open for business. We’ve had the support we need. Unfortunately, the vast majority of SMEs don’t fit that description. They need support and its certainly lacking from the banks.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had to face?

Getting a proper work-life balance – the company is growing rapidly, we’ve taken on over 20 staff in the last nine months and we’re opening offices overseas. A solution is just to steal that time you need from being at home. The challenge is to try and stop doing that.

If you were to give advice to Government to stimulate the economy, what would it be?

If, as a business, you are making huge losses year on year and your expenditure is greater than your income, you either raise revenue or cut costs. I think the Government has pushed revenue raising as far as it can go, so it’s high time that expenditure was significantly cut to balance the books.

If Ireland was a Plc, the shareholders would have been in long ago to demand far more radical change and on a quicker timescale than is happening.

How do you see the short-term future of your business?

My goal now is recruitment. We’re trying to recruit another three staff and we find that quite difficult, particularly in the information security field.

We’re desperate to get staff in. We’re opening another office in October with five more staff. My short-term goal is to get the very best people we can.

We’re looking for a three-fold growth on 2011 revenues. One year into that and we’re doing very well.

What is your business worth and would you sell it?

We’ve been approached four times to be acquired. In terms of company valuation, they all came up with different figures, so it’s a very hard one to say.

The fact that we’ve been approached that often and haven’t bitten tells you we’re very committed and very happy with what we are doing here.

In conversation with Joanne Hunt