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SU’s Annual Integrated Report one of the best in the country
Author: Corporate Communications Division
Published: 16/11/2018

​“This award makes me very proud of Stellenbosch University! One can only deliver an integrated report if your institution is managed in an integrated way."

That is how Mattie van der Merwe, editor of the University's Annual Integrated Report, felt after receiving, with Manie Lombard, Chief Director: Finance, an integrated reporting award at a black tie event at the Montecasino in Johannesburg from the Chartered Secretaries Southern Africa (CSSA) and JSE this week, Wednesday, 14 November.

The SU Annual Integrated Report 2017 was one of the reports considered in the Public Sector category of this national competition. The winning report is the University's third integrated report.

The CSSA competition, running since 1956, was for ordinary annual reports at first, but changed to integrated reports in 2013.

The enthusiasm at the event for integrated reporting was pulpable. “An integrated report does not appear out of the blue – years of strategic institutional planning and integrated management precedes the first such report," says Van der Merwe.

“The report contains information collected from all over the University about everybody's activities in realising their environment's goals, managing risks and growing the University into a thriving institution.

“It takes teamwork: from editing and translation, supplying financial and statistical information to taking photographs, doing layout and taking care of printing, where each person's work is done exquisitely, they all contribute to the end product. Even the University's Archives contributed some exceptional photographs," she says.

The University had no intention to enter for the competition until Anne Westwood-Mark of the CSSA saw the University's report, contacted the editor and invited her to enter the University's report.

Integrated reporting is a new development in corporate reporting and an improvement on traditional reporting. It represents a pradigm shift in the way institutions think about their business models. Compiling an integrated report is a process that encourages institutions to set long-term goals, to measure their performance and in this way to manage change towards a sustainable global economy – one that combines long-term profitability with social responsibility and environmental care. Before an organisation can produce an integrated report, therefore, it has to manage it in an integrated and sustainable way.

Since 2000, when the University Council approved A Strategic Framework for the return of the century and beyond, Stellenbosch University under the leadership of Prof Andreas van Wyk embarked on a new direction with the establishment of a decentralised system of responsibility centre management. His successor, Prof Chris Brink, was a strong driver of strategy through future-oriented planning and budgeting. Under the leadership of Prof Russel Botman, the overarching strategic planning was refocused to develop and engage the Universitys strengths to tackle some of our country's biggest challenges by putting science to work. Eventually, the University's Institutional Intent and Strategy 2013–2018, now at the end of its cycle, laid the ideal foundation to build our report on.