An innovative solution to streamline the business registration process earned Tando Luyaba the Trailblazer of the Year award for 2020, at the CPSI Public Sector Innovation Awards.
Luyaba who was born in Tsomo Eastern Cape is a solution architect at the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC), where he now works at the Innovation and Collaboration Unit. His innovation Bizportal also earned the CIPC the Most Innovative Project of the Year award for 2020.
Bizportal was also announced the winner of the overall Innovator of the Year award at a ceremony held in Gauteng on Friday, 26 February 2021.
So, what earned Bizportal so much approval at the CPSI Public Sector Innoavation Awards? Luyaba said before Bizportal the process of registering a business was not very simple. So Bizportal offers paperless online solution that drastically cuts the time it takes to get a business registered and compliant.
“On Bizportal we offer services to make it as easy as possible for customers to do business, that’s the main intention. On the old system, which is still being used concurrently, customers had to print out some forms that had to be signed by all directors. Then upload and send to CIPC.”
Luyaba said Bizportal further simplified the process by putting a range of services business owners must do to be compliant on the same website.
“Previously our customers had to go to CIPC to get a company registered. Once it’s registered, they’d have to go to UIF to get their UIF number and then go to compensation fund. They would then go to some accountant to get a BEE certificate. So, I thought there had to be a way to put all those things together, so that’s how Bizportal came about.”
He added that CIPC set the tone on using automation to improve the ease of doing business, to the extent that a unit for innovation where Luyaba now works in a team of six was set up.
“I actually started after hours at home and within a few weeks, I was done building it. I showed it to my commissioner, and he was happy. I’m grateful for this award because it means someone out there has recognised the effort that I have been putting in personally and as part of a team. I do a lot of work even beyond my job description. I even go as manage our Bizportal social media after hours. So I am hoping this award will inspire my colleagues in public service to strive to contribute to effective service delivery,” said Luyaba.
World Bank rankings on ease of doing business rate South Africa at 139 out of 190 countries on the Starting a Business category, he said. “And that’s just not good, the president mentioned that at SONA last year that he’d like to see South Africa ranking in the Top 50. Overall SA is ranked in the 80s when taking other factors.”
The World Bank rankings rate several categories on the extent to which regulations of different countries make it easy to do business in that country. The overall ranking for South Africa averages 84 when considering nine other metrics including protecting minority investors (13th), paying taxes (54th), and resolving insolvency (68th).
“Basically, with Bizportal we’ve drastically reduced the days (World Bank) say it takes to open a business from over 40 days, now it’s probably less than 10. It actually takes a couple of hours to get your business registered on Bizportal, you can even get a bank account on the platform. But we can’t yet say it takes a day to get the entire process done yet because the VAT process is a bit complicated, and it takes about a week,” said Luyaba.
Luyaba went to school in Queenstown and completed matric at the age of 15. He is a former student of University of Port Elizabeth (now Nelson Mandela University) and Fort Hare.
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