Developed by TUT Enterprise Holdings (TUTEH), the commercial arm of the Tshwane University of Technology, the launch of TRes follows extensive user testing and obtaining inputs from user groups.
A team, all of whom are under thirty years of age developed TRes, which is available and accessible to all students and accommodation providers. Set to meet the needs of all those involved, there are several additional features already in further development.
Student accommodation has been problematic for many years. It is no secret that the University annually faces challenges with long queues of students seeking accommodation at the beginning of the year.
According to TUTEH CEO, Nicholas Motsatse, TRes is a digital platform built to enhance the quality of life for students in student accommodation while providing appropriate tools and support to accommodation providers.
“The design and functionality of the platform aim to create on-going interaction between students, accommodation providers and University administrators in a spirit of cooperation and mutual respect. The core idea behind TRes is that student accommodation is not only big business, but also about human dignity - it is about the total experience of being a university student, which is a critical contributory factor to student performance,” says Motsatse.
TRes is a digital platform with very strong cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) features. In partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the development team opted for a serverless development, hosted on leading AWS cloud platforms. AWS made their online tools available and devoted professional time towards improving development time and quality of the platform.
Aligned to the African proverb: “it takes a village to bring up a child” it took a “village” of technology-savvy organisations to collaborate in developing TRes. Students were core to the process of creating a product for them that they could be proud of.
Through an alliance with TUT’s Faculty of Information and Communication Technology (FoICT), TUTEH recruited a team of recently graduated technology students who were part of FoICT’s Informatics Community Engagement Programme (ICEP) and gave them the responsibility to lead the development of TRes. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Agile 42, a specialist project management firm, also supported the project.
In adopting a modular approach, the team will continue adding features that will further enhance the value of TRes to its users, students and accommodation providers.
One of the unique features in the student accommodation space is that students are now able to rate the quality of their accommodation daily, which then translates into the prominent display of those highly rated residences on the landing page of TRes, which increases transparency.
Motsatse adds that TRes’ modular development makes it adaptable and responsive to a rapidly changing environment. To this end, TRes now has three features related to Covid-19:
- In compliance with the law, it displays the banner of the official coronavirus;
- It is a source of relevant, up to date and student-specific information on Covid-19, through a dedicated process of de-cluttering the news and repackaging it for students;
- It has a Symptoms Assessment and Hotspot Identification (SAHI) feature, which enables the development of hotspot heat maps.
“In essence, TRes is the one-stop-shop for student accommodation and soon to be one-stop-shop for student living,” Motsatse adds.
For more information, please visit our website: www.t-res.co.za or follow the link below for a short, detailed video demonstrating the functionality of the platform.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgTFc5v4sr_AaZ9MfcAa-g