I SPENT two weeks in June with Nedbank on their small business seminars presenting an overview of black economic empowerment (BEE) to their small business clients. The speaker before me was Bill Gibson, president of Knowledge Brokers International. Bill’s presentation concentrated on business opportunities, how to identify them and making the most of them.

This got me thinking about BEE and the opportunities it presents. There is little doubt that the effective application of BEE has a financial implication. I believe there are sufficient opportunities within the concept to justify this expense.

Perhaps the question that should be asked (with apologies to JFK) is “ask not what you can do for BEE, but what BEE can do for your company”.

One of the underlying principles of BEE is that of proof, or put another way, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. The codes encourage companies to identify and then quantify activities all in the name of generating points on the scorecard. I don’t think that the trade and industry department could have considered that this process might be to the company’s advantage. The skills development and enterprise development elements are two cases in point.

Code 400 covers the skills development element. Among other things, the code requires companies to spend 3% of their payroll on the training of black people. It is very clear that this spend does not have be on Seta-approved courses only; in fact, there is a suggestion that the training does not have to provided by an external facilitator at all.

It follows that all in-house training must be identified and quantified as well. This kind of training includes on-the-job training, mentorships and internally facilitated courses. Quantifying the training is bound to be a lengthy and involved exercise, but it will give you a good idea of how much time is being occupied in the training of your staff.

You will also be able to understand who is being trained and on what, putting you in a better position to align training programmes and schedules to best suit the business. Part of this assessment must show the amount of time that each employee consumes in the training process – both for trainer and trainee.

Once this process is completed you should then divide the training into two categories: core and critical skills. Critical skills are determined by each Seta and core skills are determined by each individual organisation.

Core skills are more pertinent to this exercise. These are skills that an employee needs in order to best perform his or her job.

Armed with this information, you are now able to tailor courses and programmes for the benefit of the organisation; this might include training for the fast-tracking of black people in the organisation.

To calculate the cost of training you should work out an hourly value for each employee and keep tabs on any raw materials or other costs associated with the training process. It is quite likely that the 3% target is quite easily achieved – and you may be awarded all eight points for that section of skills development.

The preferential procurement element will probably be the most elusive points on the scorecard for a while to come. The process is time- and resource-intensive and will remain so until scorecards become prevalent within the entire economy. However, the very first step in determining eligible procurement is a complete analysis of all procurement.

You might be spending money on goods or services that you either have no use for or you may be able to source them cheaper elsewhere.

These two examples are some of many other efficiencies that exist within BEE; it is only in adopting the scorecard that they will emerge.

Janisch is CEO of Caird Consulting, which focuses on BEE transformation.