Purchasing departments and Procurement professionals have always required accurate, reliable and up- to- date supplier information system. With the introduction of the BBBEE codes of good practice the requirement to locate good BEE suppliers has escalated exponentially. Des Heath, Managing Director at EZEE-DEX, told Smart Procurement that their electronic product now includes 8 000 BEE companies that are listed in conjunction to over 60 000 supplier companies that are included in their “Ezee-Dex DISC”.
“With the amazing transformation that has swept through all facets of our economy since 1994, supplier information systems have had to expand their frames of reference to especially identify those enterprises that are Black Empowered.”
“With procurement departments pushing their spend to BEE qualified suppliers, we have upped the ante in research, and have to date accurately investigated over 8 000 BEE-status service providers, suppliers and vendors.”
“Merely having a list of these 8 000 company names is not good enough for the Purchasing Managers who are given the responsibility to increase the BEE spend for their companies. We have researched each of these entities by all their products and services, and then included them into our normal search facility with a special identification icon. Now the buyer can identify BEE options after having searched by the product or service he requires. This is the most meaningful way a company can increase it’s BEE spend”.
“Obviously the boom in the country’s fortunes has meant that the database has to cater for a much wider variety of goods and services on offer and available out there. Heath continues, “We are running a sophisticated electronic system, enabling our users to filter out companies by region, by manufacturers, by BEE status, and many other sorting options, as well as being able to generate electronic ‘requests for quotes’ and e-mails, and yet the front end of the system has been designed to enable even the most basic computer user to simply and easily source for the suppliers of products or services in the most user-friendly system you can get”.
“To produce and maintain a product database of this size comes at a price, and requires a substantial investment on our side in well trained, friendly and skilled research staff. Our back office team now numbers over 90 personnel who are dedicated to thoroughly ‘scrubbing’ and updating the vendor and supplier information to ensure accuracy on an ongoing basis”.
Heath concludes:” We remain committed to the tried and tested formats that best suit our customers. That means that we first focus on the accuracy of the simple parts of the essential supplier and product information, and then add the “bells and whistles”.
Des Heath, Managing Director of EZEE DEX can be reached on Cell: 082 441 8022
