When it comes to automating and managing global operations, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance is the obvious choice for many medium to large businesses. As ERP solutions go, it’s hard to beat the depth and range of features Microsoft offers its clients.
But even the best SaaS tools need supplementing to overcome country-specific barriers to localization. South Africa’s Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) regulations are an interesting case in point, because they fall just outside the scope of what Finance and Operations is designed to do. This poses a unique challenge to any business operating within South Africa: B-BBEE reporting and compliance should live inside their ERP, but how do they make that happen?
Unfortunately, the answer is usually admin-intensive manual input and reporting that saps time and resources that should be allocated elsewhere. There is a better way (more on that later), but before we get to that, let’s define the challenges faced by transformation officers and HR teams who want to keep their businesses compliant and even exceed the bare minimum requirements.
Steps to compliance: what businesses need to do to stay on track
The Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act 53 of 2003 provides the legislative framework governing transformation in South Africa. The legislation requires public and private sector entities to play their part in redressing economic imbalances and promoting inclusion. It’s often framed as a compliance burden, but it’s also an opportunity to make Africa’s strongest economy more inclusive, more representative, and ultimately more productive.
B-BBEE compliance rests on five key elements. Collectively, these make up the scorecard that an entity’s performance is measured against in order to determine its compliance status. Each of the five elements contains specific reporting and documentation procedures that companies must manage in order to stay compliant.
Here, we’ll consider four of them, and outline the challenges for companies who rely on Microsoft Dynamics as their ERP. We’ll also outline how our solution smooths the way to automated, frictionless compliance at each step.
Socio-Economic Development (SED)
This aspect makes up only 5% of the overall compliance score, yielding a possible 5 points for entities who comply. To earn these points, a business must demonstrate monetary or non-monetary contributions to communities or other beneficiaries. 75% of these beneficiaries must be black. SED contributions can include:
- Professional services rendered for free or at a discount
- Grants or discounts
- Covering of overheads or direct costs for black-owned businesses
Tracking all of this can become administratively heavy, and the small number of available points makes it difficult for companies to justify investing that administrative effort. Fusion the Apps People’s Comprehensive Scorecard App for Microsoft Dynamics turns making a big difference into light work:
The basics: Set up your SED beneficiary list and benefits matrix. Easily process SED contribution invoices for transparent, error-free reporting when it’s time to audit.
Power BI reports and charts: View your SED spend, and compare actual performance against your SED target. The app generates your SED scorecard for you.
Management Control & Employment Equity
Companies can earn 19 points for their scorecard by showing that their hierarchy is sufficiently representative at each level. This comes with very specific data requirements, specifically demographic data relating to race, gender and disability. Multiple data streams are hard to coordinate manually, but not with our simple-to-implement solution:
The basics: Set targets for each level of your organization, and import all the relevant details per employee.
Power BI reports and charts: Get quick access to percentages and visualizations for each level of the hierarchy. Present your management control and equity list reports with the click of a button.
Skills Development
To earn points for Skills Development, companies must invest in skills and training for black employees, calculated as a percentage of payroll. Large companies must earmark 6% for upskilling black staff, while QSEs must allocate only 3%. Relevant data here includes the total spend on upskilling initiatives, and headcounts of trained individuals.
The basics: Our B-BBEE Scorecard allows you to import data about skills development courses, process all invoices pertaining to training, and list beneficiaries and levies.
Power BI reports and charts: Track your Skills Development spend, broken out according to demographic information like race and gender. Each year, generate a comprehensive Skills Development Scorecard and report to demonstrate compliance.
Enterprise and Supplier Development (ESD)
This is a priority element, which means that companies must meet a sub-minimum of points in order to achieve compliance. In particular, they must meet 40% of each of these categories on the scorecard to avoid a B-BBEE penalty. This means keeping accurate records of all suppliers, along with their B-BBEE certification details. This is essential to demonstrating that procurement spend has been allocated to the advantage of black-owned businesses, and that this is recognized as part of a company’s overall compliance efforts.
The basics: Our B-BBEE Scorecard Power App absorbs all the relevant data including vendor certificates, procurement targets and exclusions. Set ESD targets and automatically tally points and bonus points where applicable.
Power BI reports and charts: Your supplier invoices are critical to demonstrating compliance. The system stores these, along with charts that represent your spend, and groups the relevant contributions into a benefit factor matrix. When the time comes to submit documentation, simply download or print your accurate ESD Scorecard and list reports.
Getting started with Fusion the Apps People’s B-BBEE Comprehensive Scorecard
Our app is the first of its kind to cover the entire B-BBEE compliance journey. Where others focus on specific elements, and leave businesses to handle the rest manually, ours equips you with straightforward, end-to-end compliance capabilities that run quietly in the background.
We’re committed to helping enterprises to fulfill their obligations, without having to divert precious time and resources into admin-intensive, error-prone manual reporting. Together, we’re building a more transparent, efficient B-BBEE compliance journey by leveraging best-in-class technology, backed by SIS Global, a Microsoft Gold partner. Find out more about what Fusion B-BBEE can do for your business today.
