Walpole Partnership is not a large corporate enterprise. We don’t have a billion dollar turnover (yet) and we are not listed on any stock exchange at this time. We are, however very used to operating and serving customers who are multinational corporations or large national businesses. In some ways we’re very different to the types of customers we serve but in other ways, very similar.
I have often referred to Walpole as a ‘Global Small Business’. We operate in many geographies, have consultants and customers spread across several continents, and thanks to the power of cloud technology, modern communications and loud alarm clocks that wake us up in the right time zone, we can cross traditional borders and timezones with ease. We are able to take advantage of the exceptional pool of skilled CPQ resources in the Indian subcontinent, and are also able to hire team members who are remote to us, but who are local to our customers.
Showing up for customers when and where they need us is a big part of our success, however, it’s been just as important for us to get the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ right too. When I set the company up, I promised myself I would take the best parts of my corporate experience at Xerox – a strong values and quality-led company – and remove the parts that I felt didn’t serve so well e.g. the politics and the bureaucracy that often seem inevitable in a large and well-established organisation. As we’ve recruited our amazing team over the years, I’ve explained this philosophy in every interview and it’s easy to see that it resonates with so many great people who feel liberated when joining a lean and progressive organisation like Walpole Partnership.
When we show up, our approach to quality – in interactions and in results – shines through. Our challenge internally is to remain agile and strong, so we rely heavily on checklists and versatile processes, which are well-documented and clear. We have a strong ‘Continuous Improvement’ philosophy and mechanism that allows us to action all ‘lessons learned’ and great new ideas from all team members. This helps us build effectiveness and our customers tell us that it shows. It allows us to take the experience of each team member and let them express that for the benefit of our customers and/or their colleagues.
Our challenge is to stay lean while building ever stronger tools and modern techniques, harnessing new technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) including Generative AI for our customers’ benefits, whether in the solutions we provide, or the tools and accelerators we use to deploy them. We regularly ‘clean house’ and challenge each other to minimise ‘Muda’ or waste, as devotees of Six Sigma Lean Manufacturing will quickly recognise.
Where it is business critical we are no strangers to established measures of quality either. With our Cloud Computing basis in the very commercially sensitive area of CPQ, we are proud to have entered our 10th year of certification to the ISO27001 standard for Information Security. I always recall the wise words of Rick Allard, our counsel from ISO Quality Services Ltd, who told me “It’s easier to build quality into your processes when you are building something, than to try to add it later.”
For Walpole Partnership there is no shame in being relatively small compared to our customers, as long as we are strong and well matched on values and the quality of our processes. Our size lets us be more nimble, closer to our area of expertise, and faster to respond to changes.
Like a tugboat working around a prestigious ocean liner to provide towing and pushing assistance for optimal manoeuvrability, at Walpole we can act quickly to respond to changes, accelerate when needed and reach land and harbours that others can’t.
It’s a strong combination.
‘Big Biz, Little Biz’ was written by Walpole Partnership’s Managing Director, Andy Pieroux.
