SMEs urged to view procurement as a revenue opportunity rather than just compliance

At the 2026 SME Funding Summit, procurement specialist Lerato Sebata argued that small firms should stop treating procurement as a compliance exercise and start seeing it as a route to income, growth and, eventually, funding. Her message was that the opportunity sits in plain sight: public-sector purchasing alone now runs into more than a trillion, and that figure excludes private-sector spend, she told delegates.

Sebata, who founded ROI Integrated Group in 2016, has built her ...

work around procurement, supplier development and capability building. The boutique consultancy says it helps SMEs through training, coaching, digital tools and development programmes designed to make them more competitive in tender markets. Her wider career has also positioned her as a familiar voice on market access, with recent industry coverage noting her role in events focused on helping SMEs move from chasing bids to becoming more deeply embedded in supply chains.

Her central point at the summit was that readiness must come long before a tender lands on a business owner’s desk. According to Sebata, the first hurdle is compliance: documentation such as B-BBEE records and Central Supplier Database information needs to be accurate, current and easy to retrieve. Even small administrative mistakes can cost businesses work, including submitting an outdated document when a valid one is already available.

Financial preparation matters just as much. Sebata urged owners to have proper bookkeeping, up-to-date financial statements and a clear grasp of liquidity and profitability before entering the market. That is not simply good housekeeping, she suggested, but part of the due diligence buyers expect. For labour-heavy firms especially, the ability to survive delayed payment is critical, because contracts may require payroll to be met for months before cash comes in. Once a purchase order is secured, she said, it becomes easier to demonstrate revenue projections and strengthen funding applications.

Capability is another gatekeeper. Sebata said businesses should not wait for a live tender to decide how they will present themselves; they should already know their methodology, operating model and distinctive strengths. In competitive bids, where hundreds of companies may chase a single contract, standing out depends on showing why a firm is genuinely capable, not merely available. She also cautioned against outsourcing judgement to artificial intelligence, saying technology should polish a submission rather than replace the business’s own knowledge.

Risk planning, too, has to be built into the process. Sebata said bidders should be ready to explain what could go wrong on a contract and how they would respond, whether the issue is working capital, staffing pressure or reliance on one key individual. That thinking, she argued, should happen before a project begins, not after problems emerge.

Pricing is where many businesses misjudge the real economics of procurement. Sebata warned against focusing only on margin and said companies need to calculate the total cost of ownership, including financing costs, delayed invoices, warehousing, insurance, fuel, rent and other overheads. She also rejected the idea that government work follows a universal profit formula. The proper approach, she said, is to define what the bid covers, what it excludes and which assumptions sit behind the price.

Finally, Sebata urged SMEs to scrutinise their partners and associates. In some cases, bidding rules favour black-owned or female-owned businesses, while larger clients may be looking to diversify their supplier base. But the wrong association can increase third-party risk and damage a bid. Her broader warning to entrepreneurs was clear: procurement can become a revenue stream, but only if the business is ready before the opportunity arrives.

Source: Noah Wire Services