Services
What KuTh does, and how it is paid for.
Five commercial service lines, plus training and facilitation and a procurement standard still in development. Nothing here is split by sector — the method is the same whether you are a business or a non-profit; what differs is what is being protected and who it is reported to.
Two ways an engagement is funded
Paid from what we find
Zero upfront financial risk. The fee comes out of the waste and savings identified, never from your operating budget. This is how the commercial optimisation and recovery work is structured.
Scoped against the problem
Where the work is to design and govern a solution rather than recover value — systems, process, training — there is no saving to fund it, so it is scoped and charged against the problem’s complexity.
Service lines
Five areas of commercial and operational work
Each line carries its own published evidence. Where a mandate exists, it is linked from the service that produced it.
Commercial Disputes & Recovery
Where a supplier relationship has gone wrong and normal channels have stopped working — reconstructing the evidence, quantifying the prejudice and escalating until something moves.
- Contract reconstruction across accepted quotations, addenda, schedules and acceptance certificates
- Billing reconstruction and line-level reconciliation against what was actually delivered
- Claim quantification with each mechanism stated separately, so components can be reviewed independently
- Escalation architecture — identifying which function can answer which question, and which can authorise payment
- Recovery control after acceptance, because a favourable finding is not the same as money received
Procurement & Sourcing
Rebuilding what an organisation actually buys, establishing where products are genuinely comparable, testing the market and designing a buying model people can use.
- Spend reconstruction from invoices, cash and card records — not supplier summaries
- Product normalisation, so a price comparison means something
- Market testing, supplier challenge and negotiation inside the client’s governance rules
- Exception governance — documenting where a change should not be made, as carefully as where it should
- Tender design, supplier qualification, due diligence and evidence-based evaluation
Property & Lease Optimisation
Treating property as a complete occupancy-cost position rather than a rental rate — then converting it into defined alternatives management can choose between.
- Lease reconstruction across original instruments, addenda and live invoices
- Total occupancy-cost modelling: rent, municipal charges, parking, escalation and term together
- Market benchmarking against comparable arrangements
- Commercial negotiation of the whole structure, not one rate
- Decision architecture — stay, extend or relocate, each costed on a common basis
Published evidence
Travel Management & Mobility
Travel as one governed operating category — sourcing, policy, traveller profiles, supplier agreements, servicing and reporting — with delivery available through HerTho Travel.
- Travel-data reconstruction across air, accommodation and vehicle hire
- Supplier agreements and preferred programmes negotiated on real production history
- Travel policy, traveller profiles, approval routing and cost-centre control
- Refund, change and no-show exposure analysed rather than absorbed
- Reporting on realised and missed savings, so contracted value is actually captured
Published evidence
Systems & Operational Improvement
Where the operating problem needs process design, data architecture and implementation governance — retained professional work, charged against the problem rather than funded from savings.
- Diagnosis of the operating problem before any platform is chosen
- Requirements translation, workflow design and data architecture
- Provider and platform evaluation, with solution routes compared openly
- Security and access design around role, purpose and information sensitivity
- Implementation governance through testing, training, go-live and data migration
Also from KuTh
Two things that sit outside the mandate work: a training practice, and a procurement standard we are still building.
- Procurement standardIn development
The KuTh Seal of Approval
A proposed procurement qualification standard for printer and office-automation contracting — moving the control point to before signature, rather than after the damage.
Read more - Learning and working sessions
Training, Facilitation & Capability Building
Executive workshops, management training, facilitated working sessions and capability programmes built from problems KuTh has actually had to solve.
Read more
Procurement standard · Concept in development
The KuTh Seal of Approval
A proposed procurement qualification standard designed to improve commercial transparency before a contract is signed.
Current status
The Seal is a concept in development. It has not been implemented. No supplier has signed, been certified, or currently holds the Seal, and no supplier should be described as approved. Earlier working material referring to awards or subscriptions is superseded by this position.
Repeated reviews of printer and office-automation contracts showed a recurring problem: customers can enter entirely lawful agreements whose combined pricing, escalation, minimum billing, service and exit terms create severe commercial imbalance — and that imbalance often only becomes visible once the contract is already in force. By then the customer may have very little practical leverage.
The Seal is KuTh’s attempt to move that control point upstream. Instead of asking how to rescue a customer after a difficult contract has been signed, the framework asks what minimum commercial standards a supplier should meet before being eligible to compete for certain procurement opportunities.
How it is intended to work
Market access as the incentive, not enforcement
- Suppliers would voluntarily commit to defined transparent commercial parameters at national or governing-body level.
- Organisations using the framework could incorporate those standards into supplier-prequalification or tender requirements.
- Where the standards are adopted as a qualification criterion, a supplier that elects not to meet them may make itself ineligible for that procurement opportunity.
- The Seal would not be sold. KuTh does not propose taking commissions or supplier remuneration for qualification.
- The initial focus is printer and office-automation procurement, where KuTh’s contract reviews identified repeated inconsistency in commercial structures.
This is not about accusing suppliers or policing an industry. It is about using market access and procurement qualification to encourage fairer, clearer and more balanced contracting.
Proposed areas of commercial assurance
Seven things a standard would have to make visible
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| Area | Intended standard |
|---|---|
| Pricing transparency | Clear separation of rental, usage, service and other charge categories. |
| Escalation | Visible, predictable and expressly accepted escalation mechanics. |
| Minimum billing | A defined method that prevents minimum revenue from becoming an unexplained duplicate charge. |
| Service obligations | Clear inclusions, response expectations, consumables and performance remedies. |
| Ownership and finance | Transparent equipment value, finance position and title-transfer mechanics. |
| Exit | Clear consequences for non-performance, cancellation and end-of-term transition. |
| Invoice clarity | Charges presented in a form the customer can verify and reconcile. |
Where the idea came from
From contract rescue to contract prevention
The concept grew directly out of KuTh’s work resolving entrenched printer contracts after customers had already exhausted conventional options — including an engagement in which a client was released from an arrangement that had already survived two High Court challenges.
That work established the cost of correcting a decision after signature: litigation may fail, operational dependency deepens, and settlement and future-income mechanisms can make exit more expensive than the original dispute. The Seal applies the same commercial learning earlier — before leverage transfers through signature.
Scope
What participants would gain — and what the Seal is not
Participating buyers
- A pre-contract control rather than a post-dispute remedy.
- A common basis for comparing commercial terms across competing suppliers.
- Visibility of escalation, minimum billing, service obligations, finance and exit before signature.
- A qualification mechanism that rewards suppliers willing to accept clearer baseline standards.
Participating suppliers
- A clear route into procurement pools that recognise the standard.
- A way to demonstrate commercial transparency without paying KuTh for endorsement.
- An opportunity to compete on service and value once baseline contractual issues have been normalised.
What the Seal is not
Would this be useful to your organisation?
The Seal is still an idea, and whether it is worth building depends on whether the organisations it is meant to serve would actually use it. There is a short survey — four questions.
Tell us what you thinkOperational Improvement & Business Solutions
Training, Facilitation & Capability Building
Practical learning and facilitated working sessions built around real organisational decisions.
KuTh combines facilitation, organisational problem-solving and specialist subject knowledge to help boards, executives, managers and operational teams work through real decisions — not sit through generic training content.
The service is deliberately not built around a catalogue of presentations. Sessions use the client’s own operating context, documents, decisions and risks, so the learning applies to the work participants actually have to do. Where the objective requires it, a session can combine learning with decision-making: participants work through a contract, procurement problem, strategy question, process, data issue or governance requirement while building the capability to handle similar issues afterwards.
Where appropriate KuTh uses pre-work, facilitated discussion, evidence review, breakout activity and structured follow-up, so the session produces a usable output rather than ending with slides.
Core training services
Six areas, each flagged with the practice behind it
Strategic Planning & Organisational Alignment
Structured retreats and working sessions connecting changes in the external environment, organisational reality, sustainability, priorities and execution.
Leadership, Team Effectiveness & Accountability
Practical sessions on leadership behaviour, communication, decision ownership, preparedness, urgency, accountability and how teams work together.
Governance & Executive Oversight
Board, executive and management workshops on roles, accountability, oversight, decision discipline and implementation governance, aligned to the organisation’s governance framework.
Commercial Contracts, Suppliers & Negotiation
How to read the commercial position, identify obligations and renewal exposure, manage suppliers, prepare a negotiation and escalate a dispute without losing control of the underlying evidence.
Procurement, Cost Control & Commercial Assurance
Supplier evaluation, price and scope comparison, exception control, invoice checking, savings validation and the controls needed to preserve value after negotiation.
Process, Data & Management Reporting
Process mapping, workflow control, data quality, management information, reporting discipline and designing practical controls around systems and operational data.
The provenance label is deliberate. “Delivered / evidenced” means the supplied archive documents sessions actually run; “built from consulting practice” means the module draws on mandates KuTh has completed rather than on a training syllabus.
Specialist workshops
Narrower sessions, commissioned against a specific need
- Organisational Sustainability, Stakeholder & Partnership Strategy — sustainability pressures, resource efficiency, funding and partnership thinking, external positioning.
- POPIA & Practical Information-Governance Awareness — staff awareness, responsible handling of personal information, internal controls and role-based responsibilities.
- Donor CRM, Donor Data & Section 18A / IT3(d) Administration — donor-record quality, relationship information, receipt data and reporting discipline.
- B-BBEE Procurement & Supplier-Compliance Awareness — practical supplier-document, recognition and procurement-control issues.
How an engagement is structured
Format follows the decision, not the other way round
Scroll table sideways →
| Format | Best suited to | Typical output |
|---|---|---|
| Executive briefing / workshop | Board, Exco or senior-management issue requiring concentrated working time | Shared position, decisions, priorities and action points |
| Half- or full-day workshop | A defined capability or operating issue | Practical framework, working tools and action points |
| Facilitated strategic retreat | Strategy, sustainability, organisational alignment or major transition | Strategic themes, choices, priorities and an implementation framework |
| 30/60/90-day programme | Behaviour, culture, implementation or operating change needing follow-through | Workshop sequence, practice shifts, action ownership and review |
| Bespoke in-house session | A client-specific commercial, governance or operational issue | Programme designed around the client’s own documents, context and objectives |
Programmes can be delivered as once-off workshops or as a staged process with implementation support.