Chairman's Report (2015)
The annual PURCO SA member satisfaction survey landed on my desk recently. Of the 15 operational areas monitored, scores improved in 14 and overall member satisfaction rose from 82% to an impressive 90%. Any company would be delighted to receive such a high endorsement from its customers.
PURCO SA has much to be proud of.
PURCO SA makes a growing contribution to higher education supply chain management, and the survey sums up the Consortium’s strong position to play an increasingly important role in the quality of our educational institutes.
That may sound rather ambitious for a body that was originally formed and has proven successful at helping its members save money.
The savings role has become much more important. While, members experience the pressures of a continuous decline in state subsidies and the challenges of a slow growing economy, inflation is eating into the pockets of everyone who needs to find ways to afford the full cost of study.
But over the years PURCO SA has grown in significance to become far more than just an economical way of processing tenders.
Now the organisation is taking the confidence and support of its customers as an incentive to offer more of what members and suppliers need.
One thing our industry sorely needs is better trained employees, and PURCO SA is not afraid to point that out and to actively strive to improve the situation.
The very important role of supply chain managers and officials and their contribution to their institutions emphasises the need for a continuous process of skills development for procurement practitioners.
I hope you will recognise this reality, and support PURCO SA in its new initiatives to upskill procurement staff and, equally crucially, to upskill the contractors who supply our equipment and services.
Because SMEs are key to the country’s future economic growth it is becoming the job of everyone to encourage and employ small and medium sized black empowered traders and suppliers. So while PURCO SA is technically a procurement organisation, I applaud its efforts to run training courses to develop the skills of the suppliers it engages with.
I hope you will also make use of its other new training initiatives to enhance the skills of the procurement staff within your own organisations.
I also share PURCO SA’s hope that Technical & Vocational Education & Training Colleges (TVETs) will soon become its members. Good governance and more efficient procurement will help ensure better cost efficiencies as a result of the application of best practices, transparency and competitiveness with spending within many of these institutions.
TVETs are poised to play a huge role in training the next generation of skilled young people with the practical skills to pick up a toolbag and employ themselves, rather than wait for the increasingly unlikely arrival of a job offer. We need to teach self-sufficiency and entrepreneurism, and those are characteristics that PURCO SA is demonstrating in spades.
On that note, it is pleasing to see that PURCO SA’s own quality and good governance have been reconfirmed by the renewal of its ISO 9001:2008 certification, a sign of existing quality and continuous improvement.
I am delighted by PURCO SA’s ongoing efforts to be a beacon of professionalism and good governance, and I hope those characteristics will continue to influence this sector, which is vital for South Africa’s future success.
On the financial side, PURCO SA channelled a massive R1.36 billion through its tenders in the past year. Most of that is coming from traditional paper and telephonic orders, rather than through the e-procurement system that it is encouraging its members to use.
Although universities should look to the future, many still hang on to the old familiar ways of operating. Installing and integrating an e-procurement system takes time and effort and there are inevitably glitches on the way, but once the systems are installed, buying becomes even more efficient, faster and transparent.
This is another bold move that PURCO SA made to enable our members to be among the leaders, not the laggards.
Finally I would like to thank everyone at PURCO SA for their efforts to aid, cajole and drive our industry into being the best that we can be.
I thank our members for supporting these efforts to go beyond the core mandate of saving you money, and I thank our suppliers for always being willing to partner with us to offer good prices and better service.
Chris Liebenberg
PURCO SA Chairman
Senior Director of Finance
University of the Free State