How SCI Grew Up Quietly
- Nov 27
- 4 min read
As we head toward the end of another busy year, I’ve been reflecting on something that struck me during our recent SCI team meeting. Depending on how you look at it, SCI is still a young company. We are five years old next year. Small. Agile. Built on the energy and expertise of a close-knit team. That’s the external perception.
But inside the team meeting, hearing everyone share their highlights, frustrations, lessons learned, and hopes for the year ahead — something else became very clear to me:
SCI may be young on paper, but it behaves like a seasoned, disciplined, mature organisation should.
Not in a corporate, bureaucratic sense. But in the way that actually matters: confidence, responsibility, clarity, professionalism, the ability to communicate complexity, and a deep understanding of the industries we serve.
I was proud about it, so wanted to write about it.
I’ve spent my career in global businesses — in retail, supply chain, agriculture, and compliance. I’ve seen organisations with 100,000 staff who lack the maturity my current team brings to work every single day.
And the reason is simple: SCI’s strength comes from hiring the right people with the right experience and then empowering them to get stuff done.
Our people may work in a small, agile organisation today, but they all cut their teeth in bigger, more complex settings — and they bring that experience with them but tailor it for the way organisations can work if people are empowered to deliver.
1. A Team Built on Deep, Hard-Won Expertise
Look down our (virtual) table and you’ll see a collective CV that spans: agriculture; horticulture; animal welfare; environment and sustainability; governance and assurance; major retail and FMCG; global auditing and certification; commercial leadership; technology and data-driven transformation... trust me, I could go on.
That’s why we can walk into rooms with the big organisations we work with today and speak their language immediately. We’re not “catching up” — we’re partnering and contributing. In short, we have been there and worn the t-shirt/wellies.
At the team meeting, I listened as colleagues described: building trusted relationships with some of the UK's biggest retailers; navigating highly sensitive animal welfare cases; delivering complex scheme audits under pressure; winning and growing customer accounts; guiding customers through Scope 3 challenges; elevating our brand through podcasts, social content and industry events; supporting each other through difficult decisions and difficult situations.
This is not the behaviour of a young business. It’s the behaviour of a team that carries decades of collective experience — just now applying it in a more agile, personal, responsive environment that enables them rather than thwarts them.
2. KPIs That Work
One of the most revealing moments came when we shifted to KPIs and objectives. In big organisations, KPIs often become a tick-box exercise. Numbers for the sake of numbers. Activity instead of impact. But what emerged from our team was something much more powerful: the desire to build KPIs that genuinely matter — to our customers, to our growth, and to the future of agriculture, food, and sustainability.
People wanted clarity. They wanted discipline. But more importantly, they wanted purpose.
We talked openly about the need to link every individual objective directly to SCI’s strategic goals; focus relentlessly on customer happiness and customer retention; measure the “inputs” that generate our long-term revenue — thoughtful outreach, meaningful contact, proactive support — and avoid confusing busyness with impact.
Create KPIs that stretch us, not just describe our day jobs. KPIs that help move the business forward. We celebrated wins together from 2024 but also identified where things had gone wrong that we could improve. What I heard was a team asking to be held accountable to a higher standard — the standard I yearned for in bigger companies I had worked in but never quite achieved.
That’s maturity.
3. The Cultural Foundation: Humour, Humanity, and High Standards
After lunch, as each person shared their highlights of the year, another theme surfaced: SCI is a genuinely good place to work. People talked about: escaping toxic workplaces; feeling valued for the first time in years; rediscovering confidence; being supported at difficult moments; laughing together — even in the tough times; meeting in person and realising how much stronger we are when we connect.
Culture isn’t a side-project. It’s the operating system of a company.
And ours — built on humour, trust, intelligence, kindness, and a fierce commitment to doing things properly whilst always taking the mickey out of Rob — is now one of our biggest advantages.
4. The Future: Big Targets, Big Opportunities, Bigger Confidence
We were honest about where we want to go next: land the next big customer; lead in sustainability, digital assurance, and Scope 3 intelligence; build the real-time assurance tools businesses desperately need; keep strengthening our reputation; keep raising the bar. All things that are difficult to do.
We’re aiming high. Not naively — but because the evidence of the past 12 months tells us we’re ready.
SCI may only be five years old next year, but the confidence, discipline, and ambition in that room told a different story.
I was really proud of what I saw and so wanted to put pen to paper for the first time in a while. Right... back to the challenge of humbly making sure we are delivering for those customers.
Rob Chester
CEO at Supply Chain In-sites Ltd
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