Africa-Press – Botswana. Women entrepreneurs have been implored to learn and understand emerging trends and business risks for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).
Speaking during a workshop organised by Absa through the Women in Small Business Enterprise Initiative in Gaborone recently, Absa chief credit officer, Mr Maungo Mokotedi said SMEs faced numerous hurdles such as lack access to funding and markets, bettering the quality of products and services as well as making quality management decisions.
As such, he reiterated Absa’s commitment to helping SMEs grow.
Mr Mokotedi advised small business owners to issue corporate guarantees to secure funding for their suppliers, saying it helped to limit supply chains options which could lead to penetrative and diversifiable customer base. Absa Head of Corporate Credit, Ms Neo Pifelo stressed the importance of managing business funds.
“The biggest failure for a business is cash constraints and that cashflow forms an integral part of the business operations and we need to establish core sources of cash for the business and uses of business finances as this helps in synthesising funds for business daily activities,” Ms Pifelo said.
She further explained ways of managing cashflow, imploring small business owners to have updated cash inflows and outflows, as this helped in separating business activities from personal endeavours.
Additionally, she encouraged business owners to control spending by constructing a budget and sticking to it and also investing money into commercial property and equipment to increase business efficiency and profitability, ultimately paving pathways for acquisition of business loans and overdrafts from banks. For her part, Business Development Stakeholder Manager, Ms Lesley Bradley implored entrepreneurs to understand key principles of wealth such as paying oneself at the end of the business month, spending lesser than they earn, investing in properties and avoiding debt, saying this helps to quicken accumulation of wealth.
“As entrepreneurs we need to set several saving goals and envision our work goals as this encourages multiple saving vehicles because many people are one pay cheque from bankruptcy. However, this can be curbed if we ensured all our debts were covered by credit insurance,” Ms Bradley said.
Ms Bradley encouraged small business owners to start depositing business funds into the business accounts, saying this would help banks keep track of their transactions, which aids the acquisition of business loans.
Additionally, she implored entrepreneurs to use available resources to benefit their businesses, saying this helped in easing burden on business directors fostering business growth.
One of the participants, Ms Mmapula Mokgweetsi said in an interview that presentations were helpful as she learnt on how to use money and the prioritisation of more returns than expenses, saying this would help a lot in improvising her business.
The Women in Small Business Enterprise Initiative, housed by Absa, is an empowerment scheme mandated with identifying challenges faced by small business owners.
The initiative aims to develop well-tailored educational workshops that aim to address SME challenges.
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