Client perspective · CANSA
Five years of savings, negotiation and problem-solving
A long-term client perspective on what commercial optimisation can deliver beyond conventional cost cutting.
Written about five years into the relationship · Published through SANGONET
The figures describe that five-year period. References to KuTh's availability and to openings in coming quarters were current when written and should not be read as an offer today.
This is a client's account, not KuTh's
It was written by the Chief Executive Officer of CANSA and is published here in the first person, as supplied. The views, the emphasis and the figures are the client's.
It describes roughly five years of work and was written several years ago. Passages about KuTh's availability — the time allocated to the NPO sector, and openings in the coming quarters — were accurate when written and are not an offer being made now.
Introduction
An introduction from CANSA
As the CEO of CANSA SA, I would like to introduce you to KuTh Consultants, a company with whom we have had a close association over a span of the last 5 years.
In these times where things are really difficult, we have been able to get advantages and given information which we were not aware of, and at this point we are benefitting from a small allocation of time which KuTh has allocated to the NPO sector — but in keeping with the fact that they are working with risk, they only want to provide their services to the most professional and ethical organisations.
I know they will have a couple of openings over the next couple of quarters and I wanted to mention this opportunity with all the NGOs.
Savings
We didn't believe it at the time
CANSA SA started working with KuTh around their inception, with a novel idea that they would be able to provide services around efficiency, savings and problem solving in all the different sectors around our business.
At the time we didn't believe it, but since then over the last 5 years we have had various contracts, and the results of these contracts are what I would like to share with you. In the first instance a 23.31% overall saving was achieved. In that, we had refunds culminating in 77%.
A total of 9 repayments were received in addition to the following savings:
Savings by area, as published with the article
| Area | Saving |
|---|---|
| Banking | 21.77% |
| Procurement | 42.53% |
| Printers | 16.38% |
| General insurance | 30.22% |
| IP telephony | 28.95% |
| Mobiles | 30.66% |
| Overall | 23.31% |
Transcribed from the table image published with the original article. The overall figure is not an average of the six rows above it — it is the result across the whole reviewed population, in which the areas carry different weights.
Dispute resolution and credit
Three years with lawyers, four months with KuTh
CANSA had a long-standing problem with a large corporate organisation. In our efforts to resolve this, our staff and lawyers were involved over a period of 3 years, and we were not close to resolving the issue.
However, KuTh took this on and looked at it from a different perspective, and within 4 months this long-standing problem had escalated to executive level of the corporation. KuTh had been able to incentivise them to the problem, which resulted in us getting a repayment of R500k+.
Achievement in negotiation
Results over and above what we expected
The results of their negotiations are over and above what we have expected and have seen. Examples are:
- Discounts being applied on existing contracts.
- Discounts being applied on existing contracts while the supplier had no obligation to do so.
- Refunds based on various observations that we would not have made.
- Cash refunds were made into our bank account.
- Negotiations with the bank resulted in discounts, which we are told is unheard of.
Beyond cost
Not simply identifying a problem, but resolving it
Since then, KuTh have looked at all different aspects of our organisation, one of which is alternative energy, and have been involved in spearheading and correlating all of the data around this.
About this publication
The original article carried a KuTh contact line naming Nomfanelo Dlali, the firm's NPO consultant, as the point of contact for NPO programme enquiries. She is not the author of the account above.
The percentages here are CANSA's own, for their own organisation, over the period described. They are not the figures published in the mandate library, which documents separate engagements under their own evidence and limitations.