By Kabelo Mollo
My wife claims I belong to more WhatsApp groups than the average man. She claims that many of them are obscure and strange. I always wonder how she knows this, but I suppose wives know best.
One of the group’s I’m in boasts some of the best creative and innovative minds in the country. Small business owners and service providers for medium to large companies alike. Apart from the regular jokes, banter and chats about sneakers we also regularly engage on serious matters and ways we think might better the country’s economy and deliver a better tomorrow for our kids in this Kingdom.
I posed a question to the group the other day, wondering why small businesses and service providers continue to be paid after thirty days. I asked whether best procurement practice for government was necessarily best procurement process for corporates and privately owned entities.
The bulk of us small business owners who have supplied services to big companies spoke in unison that the practice must be summarily halted, and replaced by a more efficient, more equitable solution. I backed up my argument with my experience across the border where some big brands tiered their service provider list meaning that services rendered by small to medium enterprises were dealt with differently than bigger ones.
Paid more efficiently, and generally encouraged to at least maintain the level of operation, if not improving it. I spoke of two different entities that I know engage a tiered system. Amongst us we also have some pragmatic types with interests less creative than others. There we get the less dreamy, more straightforward side of the spectrum, and we were advised that not only is the30-day standard practice, it also makes sense regardless of the size of the operation. Counter points that made sense.
My question though is this. In the Kingdom where the bulk of domestic suppliers are small to medium (at best) operators, why is the 30-day payment period standard? With the big companies, there is a rigorous vendor registration process that will generally take anywhere from fourteen to thirty days to “on board”. Even once that is completed, hoops will remain a fixture for the small business to jump through. Even with them jumped, companies will prefer to enter in to a service exchange with a small entity. In any economy cash is king. In an economy the size of ours, with the limitations ours has it is even more important, yet it is very seldom agreed to when small creative or soft science companies are negotiating with bigger ones.
When small businesses fail, often the story is about the business owner and his or her inability to run the business successfully, but never is a question posed about the market dynamics that are normalised by big institutions. This does not suggest that it is the duty or responsibility of big business to look after small business, but of course it is in their best interest to create a competitive market for service provision so that they aren’t constantly and consistently paying top dollar to behemoths that are more often than not multinational.
There is so much value that still needs to be unlocked here, and I guarantee the big corporates will benefit most from that value being unlocked. The same is true for government. If our government ever cared to go beyond what is “traditional” or standard, I promise they too would extract great value from an active, dynamic creative and innovative industry.
I was recently invited to make a presentation at a MISA (Media Institute of South Africa) seminar. I spoke with fervour and passion on why in my view it is important that the creative industry be encouraged especially through digital and “new” media. Today I wish to write with the same fervour that small to medium businesses like those in the creative and media industries should be paid more efficiently once they’ve provided a service. They should also be commissioned to do more work than they currently are.
As a broadcaster, and administrator for a media house I’m often taken aback by how exploited our media houses are. Ana entity will be doing something that they want to give airtime to. Said entity will then invite the media to come share this activity or event under the guise that it is news or current affairs, when in reality the entity ought to have purchased air time, or column space or had an online campaign in order to give their thing prominence. Many times as administrators we acquiesce and use our limited resources in order to cover the thing in the hope that next time, there’ll be financial reward. That next time seldom comes.
One day there’ll be an appreciation for what I’m talking about, and what I’m saying won’t sound sour, or like the words of an ungrateful dude trying to make a quick buck. Value is only seen by the valuer. Hopefully, sooner rather than later valuers will see value in these little creative companies.
