Enterprise development used to be the stepchild of empowerment factors, but during the past year an increasing number of companies have been going out of their way to support small, black-owned businesses.
Judging by this year's listing, the practice of large corporations offering operational assistance to emerging businesses is rapidly becoming commonplace.
It was not always this way. Empowerdex said last year that companies did not seem to have a clear understanding of what enterprise development was, and that they were slow to take up the opportunity to earn empowerment points.
As a result of this lack of understanding, companies that were already providing this kind of assistance did not account for it in their submissions.
"These opportunities have now been capitalised on," says Steven Hawes, a researcher at Empowerdex.
According to Hawes, one of the reasons companies are taking enterprise development more seriously is because the department of trade & industry has increased the weighting of enterprise development from 10 to 15 points in its codes of good practice on empowerment.
Companies that see empowerment as a core part of their make-up have not been shy to report the assistance they provide to emerging black businesses. The companies that make up the top eight on the overall empowerment ranking are the same companies that make up the top eight on the enterprise development listing.
Enaleni Pharmaceuticals led the way, followed by placement group Adcorp Holdings and hotel chain The Don Group.
Hawes is especially pleased that all of the top 10 companies in this sector received the maximum points for their contribution to supporting black-owned businesses. "There are no lo sers in this sector," he says.
Since all of the top 10 received maximum points, they were ranked according to their placement in the overall empowerment rankings.
Hawes says there are some aspects of the enterprise development listings that are not properly reflected. One of them is the success and the failure of the businesses they are providing assistance to. Another is the scale of the support they have provided.
In some cases, large corporations are providing support for mostly strategic reasons. A company might want to have a small business provide it with some kind of specialist support but does not particularly want to hold a stake in it.
In such cases it makes sense for the company to help set up the small enterprise and provide the owner with support.
This strategy is common among some transport companies that have decided to treat their truck-drivers as subcontractors.
They help the drivers to access financing to buy their own trucks and also educate them on the ins and outs of running their own business.
This way the corporation gets to reduce its overheads and the driver gets to be his own boss.
