Anglo American's Zimele enterprise development programme secured the laurels at Bignews' first ever Enterprise Development (ED) Awards held at a gala event at Monte Casino, Johannesburg on Tuesday night.
The ED Awards, an initiative of Businessowner's sister publication Bignews, focused on acknowledging programmes that excel at promoting small business growth in South Africa. The initiative was presented in association with Engen, Santam, the Department of Trade and Industry and Business Day.
The Bignews Enterprise Development Awards was launched by Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry Ms Elizabeth Thabethe in July, after which a panel of judges consisting of five independent business development experts identified the winners.
Zimele was judged the Most Outstanding Overall Enterprise Development Programme.
“Zimele performed well because it provides an holistic approach to business development, offering a commitment to sustainable growth by participating beneficiaries, and because it successfully integrates beneficiaries into Anglo’s value chain,” said Sifiso Ndwandwe, convener of the independent panel of judges.
Strict assessment of investments and setting high benchmarks are an important aspect of the approach adopted by Zimele. What further distinguishes Zimele is that it operates as an independent structure with its own resources and capital base.
Zimele was also awarded winner of the category Best Internal Corporate ED Programme.
The winner of the Best Government Programme was the Department of Public Works’ Contractor Development Programme. This programme is a focused and integrated programme which had to overcome a number of obstacles, not least government bureaucracy. The panel of judges were specifically impressed by the way the programme brings together procurement, training, mentorship, access to finance and on site support into an integrated programme.
Comsec was the winners in the Best Not-for-profit ED Programme. While Comsec assists entrepreneurs across all stages of business development, they are able to meet very specific market needs, even including access to business facilities.
The winner of the Best External Corporate ED Programme was SAB’s Kickstart programme. The judges felt the most outstanding feature of Kickstart was its willingness to learn and redesign the competition to assist sustainable and growth orientated businesses through, for instance, mentoring.
The Best Partnership or Chamber Enterprise Development Programme was awarded to the Swiss South African Co-operation Initiative. What impressed the panel of judges most about this partnership programme is the efficient tracking of beneficiaries through the programme’s system to ensure that beneficiaries cover the required development stages. Such tracking of progress is key to evaluation and monitoring of enterprise development initiatives. Judges were also impressed by the use of experiential-based interventions combined with follow-up training and mentoring, which lead to a customised programme very suitable to the market they’re dealing with.
The selection process focused on interventions that perform well on a combination of criteria, said convener of the panel of judges Sifiso Ndwandwe.
“We were looking for focused interventions with clear goals and objectives and that, among others, improve overall performance of beneficiaries in a deep or significant way, that enable improvement in management capacity, strengthen performance management systems, and build growth capacity of beneficiaries.”
“This field of enterprise development is relatively new, so we had to develop criteria that we believed will point toward good practice and the setting of benchmarks. As a result some programmes that entered and did not make it as finalists or winners might be disappointed, but this does not imply that these programmes are not delivering value to their beneficiaries – they might just not have performed that well in all the criteria we employed,” said Ndwandwe.
Small business development is stepping into a new era after the finalisation of the Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment Codes earlier this year and the inclusion of enterprise development as an element representing 15% of the scorecard, says Bignews publisher Christoff Oosthuysen.
“Bignews decided to launch the Enterprise Development Awards because the paper represents the interest of business owners, who are potential beneficiaries of enterprise development initiatives. We hope that the awards will contribute to promoting best practice in enterprise development,” says Oosthuysen.