Thembi Tabatha has seen South African post-school education from more than one angle. Before joining Vaal University of Technology (VUT) as Director of Procurement, she served as CFO at TVET colleges, working in both Gauteng and the Eastern Cape.
Across those roles, one problem has stayed constant: systems that do not talk to each other.
"The systems are not integrated. They're still working in silos," she says. "It can cause frustration, because the data you process on one system might not be available in another. It can affect the analysis of data, data mining and just good-quality decision-making. There needs to be integration in the systems."
She is not alone. At Nelson Mandela University, which serves 34 000+ students a year, Deputy Director of ICT Customer Services Sydney Maqoqa points to gaps in the applications the university relies on, and to limited funding. "A lot of automation is needed, especially at this time," he says.
Knowing student needs before they ask
Tabatha believes the sector needs to use data far more actively, particularly to understand students.
"We need to pay more attention to data mining," she says. "Try to collect as much data about students as possible, so we can respond proactively, instead of waiting for something to happen."
If institutions better understand how students think and what interests them, she argues, they can design both their course offerings and their systems around those needs.
Speed is part of the challenge too. "When you want to be innovative, you need to know what is going on and respond quickly enough," she says. "Sometimes you're not able to respond quickly enough to innovations that are coming, and that does affect teaching and learning. It affects the product offering."
Strategy at the centre
Asked what she expects from a new ERP provider, Tabatha's answer is clear: alignment to strategy.
"Everything we do must talk to what we're trying to achieve," she says. "We don't have an ERP system that aligns strategy to everything else, and it's difficult to manage that alignment manually."
She wants a system that starts at the strategic level and breaks down from there. "If it's procurement, procurement must align to strategy. If it's a trip you're going on, it must align to that. That's what we need currently."
PSET's Governance, Risk and Compliance module is built around this kind of link. It includes strategic planning tools to define objectives, track performance indicators and monitor progress against institutional priorities.
Sourcing at the cutting edge
As a university of technology, VUT aims to stay ahead on tech. But Tabatha says that creates its own procurement headaches.
"A lot of the technologies we want, to be innovative and lead, are not in South Africa," she says. "You have to source a lot of them. You must respond quickly enough, you have to source them well, and there are the legalities of sourcing. You have to source the right way, but also make sure you beat your competitors, so that you stay relevant to your students."
Value of PURCON
Tabatha describes PURCON 2026 as a high-quality conference, "like every year". She valued meeting service providers to see what is available and spot gaps in her own institution, as well as catching up with colleagues.
"It's always nice to debrief with them," she says, "and find out where they are and where you are in the line."
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