Enterprise Development (ED) is about growing new, and enhancing existing, small businesses.
In South Africa, it is about creating opportunities and access for Black entrepreneurs and Black owned businesses, ensuring greater economic participation and benefit, and in many cases, about complying with the ED element in the B-BBEE scorecard. (link to ED and B-BBEE)
For us it is about identifying those entrepreneurs and businesses that are overflowing with potential, but need support in getting those few steps up along their path to success.
Sometimes these steps are simply about skills development or customer-supplier introductions. Sometimes it’s a bit more complex – like re-organising cash flow or building systems and processes.
Often it’s about increasing productivity, managing impact, securing finance and increasing capacity, being able to compete alongside the companies that have been around forever, and have the benefits of experience, scale, efficiencies and pricing that their longevity and networks have brought them.
Enterpriseroom works closely with these businesses to identify what’s right for them, what’s achievable, and what’s appropriate within their particular context. And then we draw on what we have: knowledge of the best business development specialists and programmes, opportunities available in the market, understanding of small enterprise growth requirements, knowledge of the South African SMME and finance landscape, and extensive contacts and networks to convert the potential into real success.
Enterprise Development and B-BBEE
The Enterprise Development (ED) component of broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) is intended to drive the transfer of skills and resources from large companies to smaller black-run companies. The Department of Trade & Industry's (the dti) Codes of Good Practice rate a company on a mix of monetary and non-financial support of small to medium-sized Black owned businesses as a percentage of net profit after tax (NPAT). Spending the equivalent of 3% of NPAT gets a company 15 of the 100 points on the scorecard.
The motivation behind the B-BBEE ED focus:
