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On 22 July we hosted Procurement is the New Battleground: The Impact on Supplier Diversity, a hybrid round table run from the SASDC training room and online. We are pleased to share the highlights.
South Africa has recognised the importance of supplier diversity, enterprise development and inclusive procurement for a long time now. The policy is there. The investment is there. And yet many black-owned businesses and SMMEs still find themselves outside the room where purchasing decisions get made.
Our round table opened with a shift in framing rather than a fresh set of statistics. Gary Joseph, CEO of the South African Supplier Diversity Council, put it plainly. Procurement does not merely buy from a market. It creates the market from which it later claims to buy.
Sit with that for a moment and a lot of things rearrange themselves. Every purchasing decision directs revenue, learning, credibility and future opportunity towards certain firms and away from others. Which makes every procurement function an active market maker, whether it thinks of itself that way or not.
Read more: Procurement does not just buy from a market. It builds one.
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