ITWeb TV Biz: Connecting the lattice that supports SA's economy

South Africa’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs) constitute a significant part of the country’s economy. Both SMEs and enterprises benefit from these interactions, but SMEs often struggle to stand out and attract enterprise clients, while enterprises spend considerable resources vetting and managing SMEs. Hepsy Mkhungo, CEO and co-founder of One Linkage, recognized these issues and sought to create a platform to bridge the gap between the two parties.

Mkhungo, with her background in corporate and consulting, observed that different corporate divisions handle SME interactions through various methods, such as spreadsheets or siloed views. This fragmented approach leads to duplicated vetting, inconsistent data, and a lack of visibility from sourcing to funding, development, and impact reporting. Consequently, proving the value of these programs becomes challenging due to scattered evidence across various divisions and spreadsheets.

To address this issue, One Linkage was developed as a multi-tenant, cloud-based platform that enables both SMEs and enterprises to collaborate securely within separate environments. Its core feature is the SME digital passport, a single, verified business profile that SMEs create only once and reuse across all enterprise interactions like sourcing, funding, procurement, and development.

Every engagement through the platform contributes evidence to the SME’s verified standing, resulting in a richer profile that becomes more bankable over time.

For corporations, the platform offers enterprise and supplier development that runs end to end, with defensible evidence for impact reporting. For SMEs, a credible and growing reputation opens more doors. However, building an enterprise-grade solution at this scale required more than just a good idea. One Linkage required a strong technical foundation that could scale and remain secure, multi-tenant, and adaptable.

AWS Equity Equivalent Investment Programme (EEIP) proved to be a game-changer for One Linkage. EEIP supports Black-owned technology companies, helping them scale with AWS technical skills, certifications, and business capabilities. By focusing on building an enterprise-grade, multi-tenant cloud platform from the start, AWS helped One Linkage create a secure and well-architected solution.

Mkhungo recognized the importance of combining business and technology expertise, leading to the platform’s growth and the development of its team's technical skills.

As the team migrates users to the new cloud-native OneLinkage platform, they aim to extend their services beyond South Africa to SMEs and enterprises across Africa. With a strong entrepreneurial spirit and a trusted partner like AWS, there are numerous opportunities to connect enterprises and SMEs, fostering growth at an individual, organizational, and country level.