Business Innovation of the Year Award: ScenePro Digital
Here Mike Peck from ScenePro Digital: Winner of the Business Innovation of the Year Award in 2022 tells us how winning the award and the support they have received after the win has opened up new business both nationally as well as internationally and left the business with a lasting legacy.
What Mike says:
Hi, I’m Michael Peck. I’m the CEO of ScenePro Digital Forensics.
We’re a small Yorkshire based company who has designed, developed and manufactured instrumentation for the use by police forensic collision investigators.
Winning the Business Innovation Award has reinvigorated our focus and helped us to step back and look at a more holistic view of the business and how we’re going to move it forward into the future.
We’ve begun to expand our operations by focusing on the wider markets and the commercial opportunities that are open to us, and to that end, we’ve developed new products and are currently exploring international marketplace.
It was an absolute honor to be recognised by the Business Champion Awards for the work we do here at ScenePro. I think the difference with the Business Champion Awards is that they have true substance.
A lot of the awards that are going around, you get them, and you get a nice little thing to put on the side, and that’s the end of it.
I’m absolutely convinced the way the Business Champion Awards have been run, and the service and development they’ve given us since is going to leave us with a legacy that moves year on year well into the future, and it’s completely changed the direction of our business for the better.
So on arrival at the Wintergarden, we were welcomed with a champagne reception. It was a very glitzy affair, and it was good to see all the people from similar backgrounds to ourselves under one roof.
Entertainment, the evening was high class. It was good to see the other winners, and it was also good to see that there were people that were recognized for second and third places, or silver and bronze award places because it’s not all about the winners. It was about people that were there.
Everybody there were winners, and I’m sure the help that they received as well will go some way to helping them better develop their businesses moving into the future. When it came to the business innovation category, we saw some of the names upon the banners above our heads, and in truth, I’d resigned myself that it wouldn’t be us.
We were talking away and of course, the bronze award winner went up, which was good. But that of course, reduced our thoughts of winning even further.
The silver category was awarded, and when they called our name out, it was absolute disbelief, complete surprise for us all. I was probably still in shock most of the following day.
When we’re interviewed, of course, any interview, formal interview is quite a daunting process. But the judges made us feel at ease, and it quickly became apparent that they weren’t there to catch us out.
They were there to extract the best from us that we could give them, and I was impressed by the abilities of the judges to do that. I think when you have a relatively small business, you tend to become very focused on the actual business of doing the business.
Winning the award, it was a bit of a poke for us to make a step back and look at the wider business, and how we could be more commercial with it, and how we might exploit its potential.
Had that not happened, we wouldn’t have been where we are several months later on. We’re far more strategic and far more professional in our approach to developing this business into the global marketplace.
Mark and I are delighted to win the Business Champion Award because for 16 years we’ve developed this piece of kit in a rather piecemeal way. It started off as a project, and then became a vocational commitment, but it was involved changing hearts and minds of end users and police investigators.
So it wasn’t just simply making a product and saying, “Here it is, you can buy this instead.” It was a complete culture change of technology, and there’s been some very big highs and some very big lows over the years.
Winning the award is recognition that actually there’s a lot of small businesses out there doing a lot of hard work, and that you can truly make it if you persevere, and stick it, and follow your aspirations for success. I think there’s a subtle difference and a rather large difference really with the Business Champion Awards, and that is that these awards are searching in the application process.
It’s not just a case of applying for an award and hopefully you get lucky. The judges are very knowledgeable people. They know what they’re looking for, and they seek to find a story behind the applications. They want to see what adversity you’ve been through, how you’ve stuck at things, and how you’ve persevered to get where you are.
So any winner or anybody nominated for these awards and certainly the finalists, they’ve all had to prove that they really understand their business and what their business is about.
To us, it means an awful lot. We do understand our business. There were aspects of the business we didn’t understand, but the Business Champion Awards has helped us to understand where we’re short, falling short, and we’re all better for it, so yeah.
When my co-director, Mark, suggested we enter the Business Champion Awards, it was just more work in an already busy work environment. I was skeptical as to whether or not it was worth our effort doing it.
What I can tell you is it’s the best decision we’ve ever made in business, and it’s not just about the award itself. It’s actually about the advice and mentorship we’ve had since winning the award from some very informed people that’s allowed us to progress to where we are today.
