Thirty Percent of procurement intelligence provider Cutting Edge Procurement (CEP) has been acquired by a BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) grouping led by businessman Althaf Emmamally (pictured). CEP provides business intelligence tools for analysing, managing and optimising the procurement environment to some of the largest procurement organisations in the country.
Emmamally, which will now play the role of CFO, says that he chose to acquire a stake in CEP because the company has “a competitive edge in the procurement intelligence market that will take other players years to replicate.”
Pinpointing the cause of delays in service delivery
Emmamally comments on some of the procurement challenges in the private and public sector: “Governments are by far the biggest purchasers of goods and services. As such they have great influence in driving social change through procurement. Take preferential procurement as an example. But there is little in the form of accurate information to make procurement decisions,” he says.
“And the feedback from large private sector buyers are not that different to their colleagues in government. We think that CEP’s Procurement Dashboard and 100’s of predefined reports from tens of millions of transactions, across multiple systems, can assist even the largest of organisations in making intelligent decisions at the most strategic level.”
“For example,” he says “While preferential (BEE) procurement is certainly top of mind for government, another area is that of service delivery.” “Government supply chain management is often a major bottleneck in getting things done.” “With CEP’s systems, managers will be able to pinpoint how long it takes for requirements to be processed and thus where administrative bottlenecks lie.” “The systems can show this at national, provincial, departmental, even at an individual level”, he says.
95% or orders arrive late
James Yates, Chief Operating Officer, says that in some new analysis that CEP had done this month – across some of the largest (and more progressive) private sector companies – more than 95% of orders placed arrive later than the expected dates and times.
According to Yates , some of the country’ largest organisations have already started to use the CEP solution set. “And there are some VERY surprising pieces of info surfacing.” He concludes “You won’t believe how many purchasing transactions are occurring in Blue Chip companies, that procurement doesn’t even know about!” We’d love to start analysing this in government…”
CEP CEO, Johan Grimbeek, says that “Many large companies view procurement as key to achieving competitive advantage. Our new shareholding partners share that view with us. “But their insights from vantage points in both government and the private sector internationally are expanding our view on strategic procurement intelligence to levels we never anticipated!”
