Allovus has recently been awarded the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) certification. It’s a huge honor—and a difficult distinction to achieve.

The WBENC, a national 501(c)(3) non-profit, partners with 14 Regional Partner Organizations to provide its world class standard of certification to women-owned businesses throughout the country. WBENC is the nation’s leading advocate of women-owned businesses as suppliers to America’s corporations. The WBENC is dedicated to advancing the success of Corporate Members, certified women’s business enterprises (WBEs), and government entities in partnership with its Regional Partner Organizations (RPOs).

What does it mean for Allovus?

“Getting this status makes us an official as a women-owned business. The certification will open up additional avenues of business opportunities as well as allowing us to influence and inspire other female entrepreneurs,” Allovus Founder and Principal Hayley Nichols said.

Allovus worked hard to obtain the certification. “It was a very lengthy process to document our business, processes, define and articulate who we are and what we do in a manner that makes sense to people outside our industry.  This has helped us in other avenues of our business as well (banking, new clients, etc) so the effort has been well worth it,” Nichols said. “Working to bring all the documentation together in one place and watching all our departments contribute was fun to watch.”

Alison Grauman, Project Manager at Allovus, helped manage the overall process. “After we submitted the documentation the first time, we learned that they needed additional or slightly different items from us. It felt as though there were an endless number of documents to gather, and just when we thought we had gathered them all, another one was needed. Finally, we got everything submitted to the WBENC’s specifications for their review, site visit to the Allovus office in Gig Harbor followed, and then Allovus was approved!” said Grauman. “The whole process took a lot of perseverance, coordination, organization, and my personal best skill, nagging, but in the end it was really quite rewarding to see all the documentation organized and in one place.”