Diversified miner Exxaro Resources is collaborating with the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants’ (Saica’s) Enterprise Development (ED) unit to implement a financial excellence programme for the miner’s suppliers.
The programme is aimed at enhancing the financial management systems that are needed to run effective operations and, in doing so, enable the suppliers to become more robust and sustainable enterprises.
Saica ED is part of the Nation Building division of Saica and runs enterprise and supplier development (ESD) programmes – particularly focusing on black-owned initiatives – with the goal of growing the small, medium-sized and microenterprise (SMME) entrepreneurial ecosystem.
To address financial management challenges and embed financial management on a sustainable basis, Exxaro ESD approached Saica ED to assist with and implement several components.
These include finance coaching for the SMMEs; the provision of accounting and back office support for SMMEs; finance bootcamps; and monitoring and evaluation of the impact of the financial excellence programme on SMME performance.
“Our first step is to onboard 29 beneficiaries across the clusters: at Grootegeluk, Belfast Mine, Mafube, Leeuwpan, ECC Mine, Matla and at the conneXXion. Then we get to work pairing them with small and medium-sized accounting practices (SMPs),” says Saica projects head Jameel Khan.
All entrepreneurs will be tracked in terms of their business growth and their success against the initial financial deep dive.
This will be achieved by establishing solid financial recordkeeping practices, as well as coaching the entrepreneur in financial management systems and effective cash flow processes that enhance an SMME’s ability to make effective and relevant business decisions.
“A separate component in our programme focuses on creating youth employment. Thus, we will be allocating accounting graduates to our SMPs, whose salaries will be subsidised, in order for the SMP to obtain an additional resource and for the graduates to gain some much-needed work experience which they will need to enhance their employability after our programme,” says Khan.
To ensure the programme continues to run in an efficient manner, Exxaro is investing more than R3.5-million in the growth of beneficiaries.