Woodside Quality LLC (Woodside) is a CVE Certified Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) providing performance improvement, project management, and analytics support to federal and commercial clients. Recognised as Best Performance Improvement Consulting Firm 2022 – Virginia in this issue of SME News magazine, we take a closer look at the company.
Woodside Quality LLC is the ground-breaking company with a long-standing track record of excellence in solving the difficult problems. Its consultants are highly educated and experienced personnel with careers focused on transformation of operations through sound analysis. With experience in service, healthcare, manufacturing, defence, finance, information technology, and product development, Woodside Quality LLC is prepared to support its clients’ most complex operations.
Five core values underly the work the Woodside team does. Firstly is knowing its customers – who they are, what they want, and what they need. Next is life-long learning, as Deming once said, “There is no substitute for knowledge”. Systems thinking is about approaching each problem from a holistic view point. Understanding variation focuses on statistical thinking. Finally, every member of the team has an appreciation for the human dignity and inherent worth of each individual.
These core values enable Woodside to help its clients optimise their value chain systems and put measures in place to hold the gains and continually discover opportunities to improve. Of course, as its clients learn from it, it learns from them, growing its knowledge base and skillsets as each new problem is solved. The company’s tagline describes its approach – It analyses the customer’s processes to provide the keenest, most in-depth insight into the cause systems that drive success. This insight enables them to make data-driven, sound business and operational decisions. These informed decisions then ensure customers deliver consistent exceptional results.
Every new client presents different challenges. Woodside’s consultants have worked across the spectrum of manufacturing as well as service industries, from healthcare to software, from hospitality to medical devices, from financial services to telecommunications, and in governmental agencies including the Department of Defence, Veterans Affairs, EPA, and GSA. The diverse experience coupled with its scientific approach to learning in every engagement are what drive the primary factor in Woodside’s differentiation: its consultants’ breadth and depth of knowledge, and its ability to adapt its approach to each client’s unique situation.
Indeed, as a knowledge-based consultancy, Woodside has no success that is not driven by the acumen and competence of each and every person within the firm. In recruiting new talent, it looks for those who share its core values. It looks for people who have an innate sense of curiosity about the world, who want to learn about the systems and processes they encounter in their work to understand the causes of problems. It values humour and patience, and a bias for informed action. Of course, as an SDVOSB, Woodside is proud to support its veterans by hiring veterans wherever possible. It knows that its nation’s veterans have the work ethic and technical ability to be excellent contractors and consultants.
CEO of Woodside, Rip Stauffer says, “Our diverse workforce and the competency of our staff contribute to an internal culture where facts are valued above conjecture, where every opinion is valued (even if it might be challenged). New insights gleaned from engagement often contribute to the success of any other engagement. This snowballing effect has grown our reputation with clients to the point where most of our new engagements have come from previous clients or through word of mouth.”
However, the COVID-19 pandemic made some of Woodside’s processes more difficult (because they required face-to-face action), but it presented the team with a myriad of new learning opportunities, too. The company has picked up new tools and skills for running efficient and effective remote sessions of all types. This remote work has enabled it to hire exceptional talent from across the country, further expanding its diverse mix of experience and knowledge.
Now, it has new headquarters in Ashburn, Virginia, which it has been operating from since June 2022. Not only does this office give employees a comfortable space to work in, but it also enables the hosting of clients and partners for in-person meetings and collaborations.
Woodside President, David Allway comments, “The office gives us a dedicated place to work for the first time since COVID-19 began in 2019.”
Having been beginning its expansion early on in the pandemic, the company has never had a real home to call its own before. Lockdowns and quarantines forced setbacks for working in-person, but as restrictions lifted, the team found a great opportunity to return to working face-to-face for the foreseeable future. Thus, there is truly nothing holding Woodside back now – The world is its oyster, and we at SME News are rooting for it to thrive and succeed.
For business enquiries, contact Rip Stauffer, CEO from Woodside Quality LLC via email – rip@woodsidequality.com or on their website – www.woodsidequality.com
