Archive for category Scorecard points
No more BBBEE Excuses – Why wait for a BEE charter?
Posted by Gavin in Charters, Scorecard points on August 24th, 2009
BBBEE, is a brilliant act. It consolidates, objectively the performance of various elements to determine how compliant a business is. With such a fantastic system many businesses still use the BEE charters as an excuse.
This is an extract from the SA CORPORATE REAL ESTATE FUND Unaudited Interim Results And Distribution Declaration
EMPOWERMENT AND TRANSFORMATION
There are certain elements of the DTI codes that the Fund is unable to comply
with due to legislative restrictions that are placed on the Fund via the
Collective Investments Schemes Control Act. The Fund will obtain an official
BBBEE rating once the Property Sector Charter has been gazetted under Section
9(1) of the BEE Act.
In terms of its internal review and rating process that has taken place, the
Fund has made positive progress, particularly in the category of preferential
procurement.
The BEE scorecard never intended a company to earn all their BEE points (at least at this point in the process), it intendeds them to earn as many as they can and then over the years improve that score. Preferential Procurement governs this in that a supplier is likely to get business if they have the highest score which in some industries is lower than others.
It is a terrible excuse to wait for a Property Charter and not get a scorecard. Why choose not to produce a scorecard. The only practical sollution is, earn as many points as they can and then if the property charter is gazetted show a significant improvement in their score. In any event the BEE Codes of Good Practice are clear, they must use the Code of Good Practice until their property charter is gazetted.
I see this ultimately as an excuse, not to transform, rather than a genuine attempt at true transformation.
I Feel Good After Enterprise Development
Posted by Gavin in Enterprise Development, Marketing, Scorecard points, True Empowerment on August 12th, 2009
Msizi of Mabuya Glass Merchants has now made a few sales after our newsletter talked about his business and the glass white boards.
It is really a great feeling to walk into the office and look over at the fax machine and see orders.
In addition to helping Msizi our business will earn points. A real win win.
A Feel-good ED case study
Posted by Keith in BBBEE Knowledge, Enterprise Development, Marketing, Scorecard points, True Empowerment, procurement on August 6th, 2009
Mabuya Glass Merchants is one of the businesses we help – not because we have to but because we want to. Msizi Ngwenwa is a running mate of mine – (Comrades silver medalist). He is a glazier, and knows all about glass. He tried very hard to get into the building trade, but due to the competition, and lack of cash flow and expertise he never really succeeded, but he has still not given up.
Some time back we needed a whiteboard for our training room, but do not like the standard boards as they tend to stain, and the ink never really rubs out. Instead we asked Msizi to install a glass white board on our wall, and it works perfectly and looks really good. We can write on it with any marker pen, and a bit of windowlene is all that is needed to clean it. We started discussing ideas for Msizi around producing glass whiteboards. We have assisted him with equipment and he has now started production of glass boards: They are beautifully framed in aluminum and can easily be mounted by a DIYer on your wall. It is the most useful piece of office equipment we have.
Msizi is working very hard on the quality of his framed white board – and quality is still a problem, but Msizi wil not rest until he has produced “the Rolls Royce” of glass white boards.
We purchased his first board and our staff love it.
Our role has been a bit of finance for equipment and we have purchased all his “mistakes” which is good enough to us to use perfectly well. We also help him with his accounts, marketing and most of all we are a shoulder to lean on and able to help him with brain-storming. In a few years his product could well become a well-known brand.
Mabuya Glass Merchants is currently producing trial aluminum framed glass boards 80 cm by 60 cm at a price of R299 (excluding packing and shipping and installation which any DIYer can easily do). The size is perfect for every office. I’d love to take orders for him while he perfects his quality. Take this opportunity to support his enterprise, earn BEE points but more importantly help his business thrive.
We have obviously earned both enterprise development points and procurement points from our positive relationship with Msizi (he is level 3 and is a category A enterprise development beneficiary) so there is enhanced recognition on both our ED scorecard and procurement scorecard so we have great BEE benefits.
Moreover Msizi, is about to finally and able to reach his dream of running a sustainable business. He is not a “bigwig”, not being enriched, just a South African who cares and is beginning to feel good about himself. So do we! This is what true B-BBEE is all about!
The link between Enterprise Development (Mabuya Glass Merchants) and procurement (buying glass white boards) works very well, to find out more attend our Procurement and Enterprise Development conference.
Contact EconoBEE on 0861 11 3094 or info@econobee.co.za or Msizi Ngwenwa on 072 263 0130 for more info.
Standards! What standards?
Posted by Keith in Accreditation, Scorecard points, Verification on July 27th, 2009
The aim of verification is to ensure that two different agencies will come to the same conclusion if presented with the same information.
The job of SANAS should be to ensure standards – after all they are an ISO accredited agency whose job is to ensure standards.
In reality we are continuing to see differing standards. We have currently a specific issue where one agency will happily penalize their client by up to 14 points over the decision of another agency. Imagine two verification agencies looking at the same information from the same client: the first one will award 32 points, the second will award 46 points – a difference between level 8 and level 6.
What types of standards are these? We have tried to speak to the dti – they do not respond. We talk to SANAS – they say interpretation is in the hands of the dti. This is not acceptable! SANAS is the organisation ensuring standards are followed. If the codes are not explanatory enough, or are too open to interpretation, then SANAS cannot ensure standardization.
SANAS cannot simply wash their hands off the issue by suggesting the the dti is responsible for writing the codes. Yes, it is true that the dti is responsible for writing the codes, but if the codes are written in such a way that standardization cannot be achieved, then SANAS owes it to the industry by refusing to accredit any agency until such time everyone follows the same calculations to arrive at the same number. SANAS have indicated that their job is to ensure standard methodology, but I think they have forgotten their true mission – to ensure standards in outcomes. If they did their job properly there would not be such a huge discrepancy between agencies.
Sure, SANAS have ensured that all agencies follow a strict methodology – all agencies ask all attendees at a meeting to fill in an attendance register. All agencies worry about filling in al the forms, but SANAS does not care if the agency can do a simple maths calculation or not. SANAS does not care that there is a potential 14 point discrepancy between two agencies, as long as both have a signed attendance register.
As far as I know this is not what ISO wanted to achieve when it was created way back in 1947.
We call on the minister to suspend the verification requirements until such time as there is consistency, and a proper method of obtaining clarity developing a B-BBEE scorecard.
Preferential Procurement
Posted by patience in BBBEE Knowledge, Scorecard points, procurement on July 27th, 2009
Preferential procurement encourages procurement opportunities to be made available to B-BBEE compliant suppliers. It is the immediate reason for companies and government entities to request B-BBEE scorecards from suppliers and potential suppliers and the B-BBEE cascading effect begins with preferential procurement. The self-regulation of B-BBEE is also centered on this element.
Companies can easily earn and continuously improve their points by preferring to procure from B-BBEE compliant suppliers. However in most cases earning points and calculating the preferential procurement score can be an administration irritation. A quick look at the top 200-empowerment companies on the JSE shows that only 1 company out of the 200 companies earned all the maximum 20 points on Preferential Procurement. According to President Zuma’s recent comments on B-BBEE “Access to government procurement opportunities by black firms has been raised as a serious challenge.” This undoubtedly is happening because enterprises and government departments do not have an understanding of Preferential Procurement and also do not have the proper systems in place.
With an understanding of preferential procurement and a system aligned to BEE initiatives, private companies and government entities can begin the kazien or improvement of preferential procurement and the procurement points. Our upcoming Procurement and Enterprise Development Conference can definitely help you in understanding preferential procurement, overcome the administration irritation and ultimately improve your B-BBEE points.
Why Standards Matter?
Posted by Keith in Accreditation, Scorecard points, Verification on July 13th, 2009
ISO (International Standards Organisation) gives this description:
“Why standards matter
Standards make an enormous and positive contribution to most aspects of our lives.
Standards ensure desirable characteristics of products and services such as quality, environmental friendliness, safety, reliability, efficiency and interchangeability – and at an economical cost.
When products and services meet our expectations, we tend to take this for granted and be unaware of the role of standards. However, when standards are absent, we soon notice. We soon care when products turn out to be of poor quality, do not fit, are incompatible with equipment that we already have, are unreliable or dangerous.
When products, systems, machinery and devices work well and safely, it is often because they meet standards. And the organization responsible for many thousands of the standards which benefit the world is ISO.
When standards are absent, we soon notice.”
The relevance? We are still seeing various SANAS (on behalf of ISO) accredited verification agencies that give vastly differing opinions on various aspects of the codes. As a result you cannot be assured that your scorecard will be consistently calculated by different agencies, or even by different analysts from the same agency.
We heard today of an agency that allows a measured entity to choose the inception date of enterprise development spend. The codes are clear, the inception date is the commencement date of statement 700, i.e. date of the publication of the codes (9th February 2007, or up to 5 years before, but definitely not after!).
It means some companies have had to spend twice as much this year to make up for last year’s shortfall, but if they had chosen this particular agency, could have saved their money. Since ED is 3% of net profit after tax, this “saving” could be millions of rands for large companies. On the other hand, any company that chose to use this agency and allow their interpretation stands the chance of their scorecard being declared invalid.
Some standard indeed! It’s about time SANAS, or ISO did something about it.
Financial Year End
Posted by patience in BBBEE Knowledge, General, Scorecard points on July 1st, 2009
Most companies have their financial periods ending February or June and in most cases companies realize it when its too late to carry out any B-BBEE initiatives that can make them earn the B-BBEE points for that period. I recently talked to a company, which is just finalizing its year-end and they already know their score and are now looking at ideas and ways of improving their B-BBEE score in their new financial period. Such a company will surely meet its customer’s needs of a good B-BBEE score and hence improve their chances of getting the much-needed business in the new financial period. However for other companies the B-BBEE quandary continues they are not doing anything and are going to continue to give their customers empty promises of becoming B-BBEE compliant in the next financial period.
Like any other business policy or strategy, B-BBEE requires all the basics of effective strategy implementation – good ideas, organisation, resources allocation, action plan, monitoring and evaluation. Our workshops/conferences and scorecard methodology can help you produce / improve your scorecard and effectively implement B-BBEE.
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