Smart Business Solutions offers clients options to prevent workplace fraud

NEW HARTFORD — Smart Business Solutions is a young New Hartford–based firm that aims to help its clients develop the strategies necessary to obtain and grow “optimal” profits, according to the home page of its website.

Company president Michelle Tuttle, who has more than 19 years of corporate-management experience, is the sole owner of Smart Business Solutions.

The firm’s offerings include a review to ensure a client complies with certain federal rules regarding identity theft, protected against cyber crime, and complies with rules regarding financial records.

When she launched the company in early 2008, Tuttle conducted identity-theft seminars and discussions with clients and individuals because that was part of her background.

“That … grew into, on its own, this whole other revenue stream for the business,” she says.

Her interest in the compliance area began in a previous job, she says.

Prior to starting Smart Business Solutions, Tuttle served in a marketing role for Rome–based AmeriCU Credit Union.

The credit union’s product-manager position was “dissolved one day,” Tuttle says, and at the same time, AmeriCU had been promoting a series on identity theft that it promised to different businesses.

The series became Tuttle’s responsibility and she had less than a day to prepare for her first presentation, she recalls.

“That’s when I became very passionate about the compliance side,” Tuttle says.

When Tuttle launched Smart Business Solutions, the business initially offered marketing and public relations, website design, strategic planning, budgeting, and needs assessment, and those services remain, Tuttle says.

She didn’t add the compliance services until 2009 and it has generated success for her firm.

“The compliance piece has really taken off,” she says.

Tuttle is now in the process of separating the two parts of the company (Internet marketing/social media/web design and compliance) designating Smart Business Solutions as a limited-liability corporation.

“I kind of want to be able to market them differently and it’s becoming more and more challenging trying to tie all them together,” she says.

Both parts will remain under the name Smart Business Solutions, but the Internet marketing and website design will become a subsidiary, Tuttle says.

Most of her recent marketing efforts have targeted the compliance and cyber crime service.

The company’s reconfiguring is part of Tuttle’s focus in the fourth quarter, she says.

Compliance offerings

Smart Business Solutions can review a company’s operations to ensure it’s in compliance with the Red Flags Rule, which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) created to help prevent identity theft.

Tuttle explained it as a way for companies to make sure they’re not dealing with an identity thief when they’re extending credit.

“The [federal] government says that anyone, financial institutions, car dealers, anyone extending credit has to develop and implement a program and continue to monitor and audit the program and keep their employees trained,” Tuttle says.

The federal government didn’t provide businesses with much guidance beyond that explanation, she adds.

Tuttle’s firm also offers help complying with the Safeguards Rule, which is another FTC regulation that’s intended to prevent identity theft through the protection of “physical, tangible information,” she says.

The rule requires companies to have safety measures in place to protect the information an individual provides for a medical record, a credit application, or a credit-card purchase, Tuttle says.

Tuttle explained it using the example of cloud computing, or operating a program over a several connected computers at the same time.

With all that information sitting in databases somewhere, companies need to make sure they’re compliant and protect that information, she says.

“They have to minimize the amount of people who have access to it,” Tuttle adds.

In addition to the Red Flags and Safeguards rules, Smart Business Solutions also offers a compliance review of stipulations from the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which is part of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Firms, no matter how large or small can’t sell their products or services to anyone that the government has identified as a terrorist, a money launderer, or a risk to the country, Tuttle says.

Business owners risk fines totaling in the millions of dollars, or even imprisonment, if they sell to anyone or company that the federal government has deemed a threat, she adds.

“A lot of these small companies they have no idea that this stuff is out there or how to navigate it or how to set up a program or what they need to do, but ignorance is not an acceptable excuse,” Tuttle says.

Smart Business Solutions’ compliance work generated a revenue increase of 5 percent in 2012, compared to the previous year, according to Tuttle.

About Tuttle

Tuttle is the lone full-time employee at Smart Business Solutions, but Jon Williams, a business consultant and certified fraud examiner, subcontracts his services to the company, she says.

Tuttle would like to add one or two additional full-time employees in 2014.

Smart Business Solutions is a state-certified minority and women-owned business enterprise, she says.

Tuttle earned an associate degree in business management from Mohawk Valley Community College in 1986. From there, she worked in several roles at the the Bank of New York in Oriskany.

She then returned to school at SUNYIT in Marcy, where she earned a degree in professional-technical communication in 2001.

Tuttle’s career also included stints at Dart Communications of Utica and Mountain Media, Inc. of Saratoga Springs.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com