South African International Business Linkages (saibl)

saibl is a business linkage program supporting supplier diversity by promoting sustainable business linkages between large corporations and black suppliers, by helping corporations to identify and target more procurement opportunities for certified, competitiveness black suppliers.

What is Supplier Diversity?

In South African supplier diversity is the process of integrating a growing pool of competitive black suppliers into corporate supply chains in a sustainable way, using targeted procurement and enterprise development to achieve this. The process must be based on and supported by a sound business case and rationale.

Evidence from corporations internationally promoting supplier diversity shows the following benefits:

• Increased  supplier competition leading to competitive pricing and improved profitability
• Suppliers contributing to product and service innovation
• Improved brand image in the communities from which suppliers come
• Better market intelligence through suppliers
• Increased market share

In South Africa corporations practicing supplier diversity can also look forward to the following added benefits:

• Access to public and private sector markets through BEE compliance
• An investment in the future and not as a cost of doing business
• Access to a growing black consumer market whose purchasing power is growing rapidly

saibl has facilitated the formation of the South African Supplier Diversity Council (SASDC), as a corporate member-driven non-profit organisation to provide leadership and ownership of supplier diversity as an issue of national importance and to drive the agenda. Corporations joining the SASDC as members will enjoy access to the following services:

• A national database of certified black suppliers
• Business opportunity fairs, networking, and  ‘meet-the-buyer’ events
• Training of Procurement and Transformation Managers on supplier diversity practices
• Supplier diversity case studies, success stories, reference material, bulletins
• Centres of excellence for developing black suppliers within sector and sub-sector clusters
• Leveraging of resources, experiences, lessons
• Assessment of the member’s supplier diversity programmes against the following levels 

Levels of Supplier Diversity and Motives

Level 1	Token programme/CSI	Stand alone programmes
Level 2	BEE compliance programme
Level 3	BEE compliance and competitive supply chain	Programme and process
Level 4	Corporate competitiveness and BEE compliance	Company strategic process
Level 5	Corporate sustainability (brand, image, market share, competitiveness, compliance)

Equation for a Successful Supplier Diversity Development Process