Frances Wright

Frances Wright, who co-owns marketing and communications company Trinitas Consulting, believes one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make in running a business is to understate the importance of the supply chain in its entirety.

“A supplier must know that if they mess up on your business it’s a whole wad of business going,” says Wright, who works with writers and photographers, as well as design and multi-media companies. She maintains that the service her business offers a client is only as good as its weakest link, as she stands to lose out if a supplier she has commissioned misses their deadline on a project.

Wright’s eleven years working in the industry have helped her to identify key suppliers, but she admits that to find a good supplier and one that you can trust is still difficult. What does help however is that she has fixed-term contracts in place with her writers and gets her suppliers to sign a quality standard document as part of their service-level agreement.

The marketing companies she worked at before starting Trinitas never had any documentation in place, which, Wright says, often had a negative impact on delivery. Once she has found a good supplier she says she works on the relationship with them by making regular payments, briefing clients properly before approaching a supplier and by ensuring that suppliers know exactly where they fit into each new project.

Sunet Wagner

When Sunet Wagner, who runs Minimax, first approached private schools with the idea of organising drama and musical productions for them, she admits that she had no idea how to communicate effectively with colleagues and clients. “I didn’t know you had to listen to them,” says Wagner, who came to clients with “pre-conceived ideas” of what they wanted. But this approach did not work well in convincing schools that they should do business with her. “We had to transform our minds to going to them and asking them what they want.”

She also had problems with suppliers such as choreographers not understanding their briefs properly. And when a crisis did emerge she would inevitably place the blame squarely on her suppliers and clients.

Using a personal guide at a business incubator where she is based, Wagner was able to delve deeper into her business relationships. Today she is much more aware of what she puts across to clients and suppliers and is able to take responsibility for her actions, which has helped her to stay in control of her business.

“It was really about buying into the fact that I have to communicate exactly what I need,” says Wagner.

Landiwe Nene

Hiring a dedicated bookkeeper and introducing an accounting software package into her business, Enzani Technologies, has helped Landiwe Nene to manage her finance better while saving time and money. When Nene started her electrical contracting business, her basic financial skills enabled her to cope with invoicing, but the problem came when the business expanded from just doing consulting work to carrying out actual installations.

It was then that she began to battle to match the company’s purchase orders with invoices received from suppliers. She said they would often sit “for days” going through Excel spreadsheets in an attempt to reconcile her accounts. Her suppliers threatened to close her accounts when she couldn’t pay.

“Your credit reputation just goes down the drain,” says Nene who, fearing for her business, often ended up overpaying suppliers because she couldn’t match the invoice to the purchase order. She also landed up shelling out extra in auditing costs when her business converted to a registered company and auditors battled to reconcile her books.

Since hiring an in-house bookkeeper and purchasing accounting software, after advice from her mentor, Nene says things are going much better as she now has a system which allows her to track orders and draw up statements any time.

Frances Fish

Frances Fish, managing owner of M&F Business Furniture, says setting up an empowerment company and donating to charities has helped improve her business’s reputation. “I think clients like the fact that we are so compliant,” says Fish who ran a small furniture retailer with her husband Victor for five years before deciding to team up with another business owner.

They also receive a lot of interest from others in the company’s employee share scheme. When one business partner decided to sell some of his shares, certain committed employees were offered the opportunity to buy shares in the company. The employees now hold a 40% stake in the company and most of the 20 people that work there have shares.

The business also regularly donates to various charities, including the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and Cotlands Baby Sanctuary. In 2008 Fish helped fund a dinner for the Starfish Foundation which she says was also the perfect opportunity to do some marketing, as banners of her business were displayed at the event. Although she never explicitly advertises to clients that she donates to charities, she says giving to charities has helped to create a culture of giving in the company which has filtered down to the way staff deal with customers.

Alan Cogill

Keeping up to date with trends and developments in his industry has helped Alan Cogill, who runs Supreme Cylinders together with Andre du Plooy, to stay ahead of the pack in servicing his print industry clients. Cogill, whose company manufactures tooling for the printing industry, says he subscribes to two local magazines that cover his industry. He has found new packaging clients listed in the publications. “I go through them every month to find out who the new companies are,” says Cogill. He also regularly browses the internet and emails his technical team about any new industry trends and ideas he wants them to look into, while his sales team keeps in touch with any demands from clients on things such as new dyes. Says Cogill: “We kind of keep our mind relaxed so we can stay two steps ahead.”

He also attends business seminars and reguarly visits local as well as international trade expos to keep up to date on the latest technology and services offered by competitors and international companies. The industry association to which he belongs also provides him with contact details of possible clients.

He says as soon as his team find out about a new product that is not being used locally they look into the possibility of taking it up. In monthly staff meetings Cogill also gets his employees to talk about how the business can improve the existing services they offer.

Robert Dennison

Setting up a workflow system has helped Rob Dennison, owner of Trainiac, to spend less time glued to his desk and lead a more stress-free work life. Trainiac produces training content for large corporates. With assistance from the Productivity Pitstop, Dennison was able to streamline his email box in such a way that he is now able to go away on a business trip for three days, and still get back on top of things within an hour of returning to the office. Dennison says the premise of the system is built on the need to catch things as they come in. In this way he has different inboxes for his email, phone and physical papers. He synchronizes his email and cellphone to enable him to access messages all the time.  He also keeps A7 cards in his pocket on which he can scribble any ideas he might have while he’s out of the office.

His email system is divided into two folders: an inbox and one labelled “to keep”. Rather than a lot of different folders, he relies on categories to store and find old messages. He dedicates a certain time of the day to read new emails and at the end of each day he ensures that his inbox is emptied.

Says Dennison: “I’m not looking to work hard. I’ve got a business to run, I don’t want to become an administrator and it doesn’t warrant me getting a PA”.

Martin Brown

Martin Brown, who owns Radical Mobility, a company that manufactures all-terrain wheelchairs, says keeping up to date, with the products and prices his opposition offers, helped his business carve out a niche place in the market. In this way, Brown says, he has been able to manufacture a product that no one else in the market has – a wheelchair for the overly active person – for which there is a great demand. He points to the old saying, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” as all important when running a business. Says Brown: “You can stagnate in your own environment and then, guess what, someone else brought it (your product) out in the market three months ago”.

He says he keeps up to date with his competitors by regularly scanning their webpages, attending annual industry expos and viewing their advertisements in a bi-monthly magazine aimed at the sector. To stay ahead of the market, Brown believes that a business owner has to be that “little bit more niche” than their competitor.

Elliot Mokone

Managing people can be one of the most difficult things for anyone choosing to run their own business. But Elliot Mokone who owns Morena Corporate Services, a company that offers cleaning services, says drawing up employment contracts in which terms are clearly defined, using commission to incentivise staff and involving staff in making business decisions, has helped him to stay on top of managing his people. “When you start from the basics, it’s easier,” says Mokone, who learned the hard way after landing up in hot water with the labour authorities when he couldn’t produce clear and simple employment contracts and job descriptions.

When his employees are failing to perform he first tries to mentor them by assigning them tasks and then following up by calling clients to get the necessary feedback.

He says that, when running a small business, it’s important to get your staff to see the benefit they can enjoy if they help grow the company. He therefore offers bonuses and incentives to those staff that perform well.

Says Mokone: “If you don’t manage your staff (constructively), forget about growing your business”.

Adiel de Bruyn

Putting a quality management system in place has helped Adiel de Bruyn, owner of Sechaba Security Services, to win more contracts and to manage his business better. “You find many large companies don’t want to do business with you if you don’t have a quality management system in place,” says De Bruyn, who was able to implement ISO 9001: 2000. He says it is easier to manage new staff because the certification leaves a clear paper trail. His business also undergoes regular audits which keeps him on his toes.

Before implementing ISO, he said he had to contend with “a lot of loose ends”. However now, with the system in place, it is much easier for him to know where to focus. “You can tell exactly where you went wrong,” says De Bruyn.

Deno Makue

Attending to the work processes and managing people inside his business has helped Deno Makue of Amarillo Retail put in place operational systems that have saved him time and eased the hassle of running his business. “It’s basically the key to survival,” says Makue, who bought a Yankys Burgers brand. His mentor, Gavin Tonks, helped him to put in place the cash-handling procedures as well as HR and stock-handling systems.

With his point-of-sale system he saves time by not having to record each transaction manually, meaning he spends at most two hours in the morning on his stock take, rather than an entire morning. His point-of-sale system also allows him to manage the clocking in and out of his staff better and helps him to guard against shrinkage and theft.