Supporting and nurturing small local enterprises is one my passions, both from a personal and a business level. At the level of the Chamber, this focus is even more sharply defined to mean black owned small businesses needing to be the beneficiary of our support and procurement programmes.
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From a support point of view, our efforts are severely hampered by the difficulty in making contact with potential beneficiaries, and receiving timeous responses. I find the trend seems to be to use multiple cellphone numbers and e-mail addresses, which makes it a communication nightmare. Even if one manages to get confirmation of receipt, responses are late or non-existent. What this means is that the sector most likely to benefit from interventions and information sharing sessions are excluding themselves from opportunities to uplift and empower themselves.
Pattern of behaviour
Turning to procurement, a similar situation exists in trying to reach established SMMEs. The use of multiple contact points is not helpful to potential customers. In addition, I am finding a disturbing pattern of behaviour that does not bode well for the building of sustainable businesses. These include:
Late or no response to enquiries
Poorly prepared and incomplete quotations
Unmet delivery dates
Shoddy workmanship or service delivery
The hard fact is that the entrepreneurial world is a tough, dog eat dog environment.
At the level of enterprise development, where we are trying to make linkages between established and emerging businesses, these failings become even more detrimental.
Those established businesses willing to engage in supplier development or outsourcing relate similar frustrations with meetings being missed, unfulfilled promises, and a general lack of professionalism. While most are willing to tolerate some level of this in the early stages, they quickly become frustrated and demoralised.
After matriculating, Vijay Naidoo studied Economics in the UK. Upon his return, hejoined the family construction business as MD for 10 years.
He subsequently joined his sister in their furniture manufacturing business as director for quality assurance and operations. He was responsible for all quality aspects of their products, and led the project to the business achieving an ISO 9000 quality accreditation. As an export focused business, this was important for our international competitiveness.
Mr Naidoo has an abiding interest in quality management and productivity improvement, particularly in manufacturing.
More recently, he has focused a lot of his time on giving back to the community by way of mentorship of small businesses and sitting on the executive of the South Coast Chamber of Commerce. He also sits on the Board of the Ugu South Coast Development Agency.
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