Enterprise Growth
Services
Helping entrepreneurs change lives
Case study: Developing the African Partner Pool, Ghana
Helping entrepreneurs change lives
EGS helps entrepreneurs change lives in low-income countries.
It extends EY’s long-standing commitment to championing
entrepreneurship as a key to sustainable growth in local economies.
As our corporate social enterprise, EGS brings the best of our people,
services and experience to organizations that wouldn’t ordinarily be able
to work with us.
Our teams help job-creating small businesses, and social entrepreneurs
who use the power of the market, to improve health, education and
access to energy in their communities. We’re building a better working
world in areas of real need and giving our people experiences that last
a lifetime.
Developing the African Partner Pool in Ghana
Accessing the markets offered by multinational corporations (MNCs)
is a challenge for many small businesses across Africa. They often lack
information about tenders and have few chances to market themselves
to MNCs. These missed opportunities hamper business growth and job
creation. On the other side of the equation, large corporations keen to
access credible local suppliers often lack the means to do so. Invest In
Africa (IIA) — a non-profit organization committed to African business
and investment — was determined to address this information gap with
a practical, market-based solution: the African Partner Pool (APP).
broad-reaching socioeconomic development; improving links with
big buyers gives small businesses more reliable sources of revenue,
encourages them to improve their productivity and reliability, and,
crucially, creates jobs for Ghana.
The vision for the APP was clear: a sustainable, non-profit business acting
as an intermediary between accredited, local small/medium enterprises
(SMEs) and MNCs operating in Ghana. An online portal would provide a
forum for suppliers to register and display their accreditation, and for
MNCs to advertise their supply requirements. The result: sustainable,
For many people in emerging markets,
a reliable job is the most effective means of
escaping poverty. It allows families to plan
beyond the next meal, to keep their children
in school, and to begin to afford medical
care and a better standard of living. Steady
jobs change lives.
How to set up a new business in four months
The challenge for IIA was how to design and set
up this business quickly and cost-effectively.
That’s where EY was able to help, through our
EGS program. A team drawn from EY’s offices
in Ghana, Sweden and the UK was assembled
and quickly got started, working alongside the
APP management team. With the APP’s vision
and value propositions agreed upon with its
steering group, their first task was to define
the APP’s detailed business model. How would
it be financed? Based on predicted levels of
growth and the need to be accessible to small
suppliers, how much would MNCs and SMEs
need to pay in registration fees for the APP
to break even?
With the business model defined, the team
turned their attention to the APP operating
model. Which sectors of Ghana’s economy
would it operate in? How would suppliers be
1
Design
• Design operating model
• Design business model
• Define detailed launch plan
• Support IIA in sourcing software developer
• Implementation of core and supporting processes, roles, templates,
targets, reporting arrangements, etc.
2
Implement
• Confirmation of buyers’ commitment
• Supplier recruitment workshops
• Support for web portal design, build and test
• Supplier registration tracking
• Preparation for launch, including marketing and PR
3
Sustain
• Support recruitment of new IIA employees
• Coaching and support for APP team during initial operations
• Detailed 100-day post-launch planning
2 | Enterprise Growth Services • Case study: Developing the African Partner Pool, Ghana
attracted and accredited, and their data securely maintained? How
would the APP be managed and overseen, and how would its back office
function? From first principles to detailed design, the joint team quickly
developed a workable blueprint for this brand new business. In parallel,
EY worked closely with the local Ghanaian software chosen to develop
the web portal, which would be the APP’s public face and underpin
its operations.
Clarity on requirements, rigorous project management and careful
testing during the software development process would help ensure that
the portal worked the first time and every time.
With the blueprint established, the team began to set the APP up as
real business, operating from a small office in Accra. Detailed planning
began for the launch and the withdrawal of the EY consultants, leaving a
fully operational APP in the hands of its permanent management team.
Secure foundations, sustainable future
“As a result of EY’s contribution, I am
convinced that the APP has the solid
foundation it needs to grow and achieve its
long-term goals in Ghana and other African
countries with the potential to deliver a
lasting legacy.”
Throughout the project, pace, focus and communication were maintained
with regular status reports and steering group meetings. Collaborating
closely with an initial 11 MNC buyers, the EY and APP team achieved
impressive results:
• 400 suppliers attended supplier awareness workshops
• 250 suppliers had initiated registration to the APP before launch
Will Pollen
Invest In Africa, Programme Director
• 500 suppliers have been on-boarded to the APP before the year end
(achieving the 2014 goal); the APP plans to grow this number by
80% to 100% during 2015 and 2016
EGS is a heavily subsidized and sustainable extension
of EY’s core business — working at accessible rates
for smaller, socially impactful clients.
The APP is now on track to meet its three-year target of 2,000 accredited
local suppliers, with powerful “network effects” predicted to quickly
accelerate its growth. Over the longer term, the intent is to replicate
the APP model in other African countries, creating opportunities
for thousands more small businesses to join the supply chains and
distribution channels of the continent’s largest corporations.
EGS’s corporate social enterprise model means
it is scalable and prevents costs from falling
disproportionately on the local teams that
contribute participants.
• EY absorbs the costs of the program’s
management team and participants’ overheads.
• EGS participants from mature markets voluntarily
reduce their salaries to emerging market levels
during their time on EGS.
• EGS clients pay fees that are a small fraction of
our normal commercial rates in both mature and
emerging markets.
Bringing the best of EY to small businesses
EY’s team leader was Emma Eyers from the UK. Reflecting on the
project, Emma says: “By deploying the team through our Enterprise
Growth Services program, we were able to make EY’s services
accessible to a non-profit organization which has the potential for
huge socioeconomic impact. We combined international and local staff
with the right skills to support IIA, to make the project a success and,
ultimately, to support the country’s local content agenda and contribute
to Ghana’s sustainable and inclusive growth.”
Jane Nelson, from EY Ghana, reflects on how EY worked together to
ensure a successful engagement was delivered: “EY was able to provide
skills from the Ghanaian office which would not otherwise have been
available to the project particularly around project management and
technical quality assurance. It was rewarding to see the solution develop
and to be part of delivering a working solution from a local company.”
Eyers says: "I have learned things personally and professionally that
I would not have without this leap into the unknown. I leave Ghana with
a heavy heart but happy memories, good friends and a full tummy! I
truly believe that what IIA is doing is going to be hugely beneficial to the
Ghanaian economy and that IIA is the only organization out there that
can make it a success. I cannot wait to see what the team does next and
I am proud to say that I was a part of it.”
Enterprise Growth Services • Case study: Developing the African Partner Pool, Ghana | 3
“Your work has been fantastic. I offer a huge
accolade to EY and the progress we have
made in the past month thanks to your drive
and knowledge — it has been exactly what
this project needed.”
Will Pollen
Invest In Africa, Programme Director
Experiences that last a lifetime
Emma and her colleague, Michaela Erlandsson, from EY Sweden, took
temporary 50% salary sacrifice cuts — a feature of EGS’s low-cost/lowfee model for its European participants. Michaela said, “For me, and
I think Emma would agree, this was not a sacrifice. It was a chance to
develop my career further than I would have in four months at home.
I used my skills in a way that challenged me more than ever. Engaging
with senior leaders, and becoming a trusted advisor, gave me such
confidence — and a chance to look at the world in a very different way.”
Kojo Konu from EY Ghana reflects on his experience as follows: “The
APP goes a long way to create avenues for local business patronization
and investment. Ultimately, this will help pave the way to job creation
that Ghana and the developing world desperately need. Contributing in
some way to that, however little, has been self-fulfilling for me.”
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For more information on Enterprise Growth Services,
please contact:
Jon Shepard
[email protected]
+ 44 7919 691 916
Abi Smith
[email protected]
+ 44 7768 733 693