Tarsus Technology Group several years ago embarked on a journey to become South Africa’s leading empowered technology solutions and distribution group.
We have now reached an important milestone with the news that we have received Level 1 BBBEE (broad-based black economic empowerment) recognition.
This represents an improvement of two levels since our last certificate. The group and our subsidiary companies are now recognised as black-owned, black female-owned and black designated businesses under the Amended ICT Sector Codes. Our Group includes Tarsus Distribution, Tarsus On Demand, Printacom, Tarsus Debtors Finance and Tarsus Shared Services.
“This is a tremendous achievement,” says Miles Crisp, group CEO at Tarsus Technology Group. “It reflects our commitment to helping to build a more inclusive ICT industry, creating opportunities for previously excluded people to join the mainstream economy, and building a skills base and business ecosystem that will support socioeconomic development in South Africa.”
What does this mean for the channel?
In practical terms, our new BBBEE status positions us as South Africa’s foremost black-empowered technology solutions partner for the South African channel.
We continue to be recognised as an empowering supplier, and now exceed the targets for the scorecard priority elements of ownership, skills development and enterprise & supplier development.
Our ownership restructuring has enabled us to better our black-ownership and black woman-ownership, and achieve black designated group ownership.
This in turn translates into preferential procurement points being achieved on four levels of our customers’ scorecard including bonus preferential procurement points as procurement from a black designated group.
How we moved up the ranks
Let’s highlight a few of the recent initiatives that have enabled us to move up the ranks in our latest BBBEE scorecard.
- With continued focus on skills development, we placed around 140 young people who completed our technical support learnership programme in jobs within the Tarsus group or at our enterprise resellers. Some 20 people living with disabilities are currently completing technical or business administration learnerships at Tarsus.
- We have further aligned our skills programme closely with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Youth Employment Services (YES) programme, with a view to helping to address South Africa’s youth unemployment crisis and contributing to a brighter future for young people. I am pleased to report that we have 30 young people partaking in this YES initiative.
- Our enterprise development programme has also been a major focus over the past year. We have worked closely with emerging resellers to help them grow their businesses, offering benefits such as rebates for those that meet our criteria. We also place candidates from our learnership programmes with these resellers to help them build up their skills base.
- We have channelled socioeconomic development spending into Siyafunda CTC, a South African organisation working to IT more accessible to the country’s people.
Our journey is by no means at an end. We will continue to strive to exceed our empowerment targets in the years to come, with a particular focus on skills development and helping emerging resellers to build their businesses.
We look forward to working with the channel in the months and years ahead to help grow a dynamic, diverse ICT industry that reflects the vibrancy and potential of our country.
