About us

We are KTC

We are a technology solution provider dedicated to delivering business value to clients through an understanding of the client's business needs, an appreciation of what presents true benefit to the business, and a clear definition of all the pains the customer experiences in their business.

Gain creators

KTC’s philosophy revolves around creating business value, which per definition, means that our clients should benefit by our offerings in some way in order for us to realise this philosophy.

Businesses in today’s technology market are driven by a need to draw more value out of the information they possess, while reducing the volume of information they store as a result of regulation such as the CPA, POPI, etc.

Due to the substantial volume of business information (whether transactional or historical), these organisations typically end up investing in resource-intensive ERP solutions which do not necessarily fit their business models properly. Crippling development costs often place the business in a vulnerable situation, which, at that point has usually generated such large expenses that abandoning projects no longer feature as an option, forcing them to continue developing and expanding the very solutions that cripple their budgets and simply does not seem to come to light.

KTC aspires to address this very problem by changing the way businesses think: Instead of trying to shoe-horn the business into so-called industry solutions, we believe in the value of guiding our clients in understanding their true business situation before considering design options. By advising our clients, we believe we can empower them to identify existing processes and procedures which do not add value to their operations, find ways to isolate and improve those that do not provide optimum value or performance, and spot new opportunities for scalable, sustainable growth.

Depending on the level of engagement with our clients, at this stage, we have the option to either help them develop an RFP that makes sense and talks to their actual business needs in order to call for proposals from vendors, or we may actually conduct the business analysis with the client in order to ensure that not only we, but also they themselves truly understand the requirements that remain and need to be addressed by whom-ever they choose to develop the solution.

During functional analysis and technical design, KTC carefully balances reduced time in analysis with optimizing face time with the client in favor of quality. We understand that many organisations are frustrated by lengthy analysis blocks with very little return on investment, but we also believe that delivering quality to our clients is impossible without understanding their world. In order to reduce the cash-to-cash cycle for our clients, KTC favors an agile approach as our clients start reaping the benefits sooner, and in this way, realise ROI faster. We further believe that this approach also drives change management within the organization. Smaller, more manageable chunks are delivered faster, continually improving our clients’ confidence in our ability to deliver, and driving quality by ensuring mis-understandings are realized and remedied sooner rather than later.

KTC’s agile approach to projects offers more value to clients thanks to the shortened delivery cycles. Our clients gain the opportunity to get a feel of our solutions sooner, and this, in turn, allows them to work with us to fine-tune our solutions to their business needs. Working closely with clients give us the opportunity to deliver solutions that the clients want and not what we anticipate – a classic frustration in lengthy projects where clients are not involved often enough.

Part of our delivery cycle includes a rigorous testing regime. To KTC, however, testing is not an action or a process, it is a design constraint considered during analysis and formalized during design already. The benefit of this approach is that testing during the implementation phase is focused, and considers all the agreed-upon criteria which would ensure a successful delivery. The testing programme is not one-sided, however, thanks to the fact that our analysis and design workshops rely on client involvement.

Testing takes place in three cycles:

Unit testing (internal): Modules written and changed are tested and confirmed defect free;
Regression testing (internal): All other affected functionality is re-tested and confirmed defect free; and
User acceptance testing (UAT) (external): All functionality is tested and confirmed defect free by the client.

KTC believes in the importance of training, but also realizes that training requires time, a commodity which not all clients will appreciate offering. For this reason, our agile approach flattens the learning curve by reducing the chunks of functionality users are introduced to, meaning less time is required to empower users and get them back to work. We further prefer a train-the-trainer approach as this allows clients to nominate smaller groups of trainees at a time, while we benefit by introducing trained champions which drive better adoption.

Promoting best practice, our training (as well as training material) combines standard/vanilla product functionality/content, although we custom-develop matching content for the client-specific functionality we add to the solution. This approach ensures that our clients are au fait with standard, supported functionality which complies with the standard software designs, making upgrades easier and ensures compliance for support purposes.

Once a solution is delivered, KTC does not simply disengage. Our budgets and project plans usually include at least an initial support period following implementation during which our clients have the peace of mind knowing that they will have dedicated support during early days. This confidence allows our clients to embrace the new solution sooner knowing that we provide the safety net, should problems occur.

Ultimately, the measure of our success lies in the elimination of comebacks and re-work. From our clients’ perspective, a scalable solution able to cope with the daily workload and fulfilling their business expectations with minimum down-time confirms the quality we deliver.

The following table briefly summarises how our principal services create value for our clients:

Service/Offering	Value created
Service/Offering	Savings	Improvement
RFP development	Clearer, more concise RFPs mean leaner responses, typically by more qualified vendors. Expectations also measured better, resulting in less time and costs invested in the recruitment process.	RFPs address actual system problems rather than re-engineering existing problems using new technology. By understanding problems better, clients may define requirements much clearer.
Functional analysis	Agile approach reduces time to delivery, users work on solution sooner, identify and remedy problems earlier, all reducing costs of re-work and defect resolution.	Thanks to the fact that users are involved, focused testing allows realistic evaluation of performance and functionality, and since they work on the solution faster, adoption is driven internally and champions naturally emerge in favor of change management.
Technical design
Project implementation
Training	The train-the-trainer approach employed reduces the number of trainees. Less hours spent in training workshops, and less productive time spent by staff in these sessions.	Training built on standard and best practice functionality, and product-specific material included. Custom functionality is covered in purpose-built content, so all aspects are covered.
Post go-live support	Initial post go-live support included in project plan, but clients may choose on-going support agreements that best suit them going forward. Clients have the ability to gauage their support requirements and choose an option that best suits their needs.	Two-tiered support offered as a standard. KTC offers a first-line support which strives to deal with issues as close as possible to the point of call. Issues not resolved by KTC referred directly to Microsoft (or the solution vendor). KTC facilitates interaction and drives priority resolution.
Solution upgrades	KTC designs follow best practice, and implementations adhere to best practice, therefore upgrades should be seamless. Solutions typically cloud-based, therefore the need for intervention is minimized. Where necessary, however, KTC approach upgrades as mini-projects, ensuring a seamless progression with the minimum amount of downtime.
Advisory service	KTC’s advisory service allows clients access to our experience in the industry. Where-ever we can advise clients based on best practice or our experience, we collaborate with our clients and advise them on the best way possible. Where our experience or range of services do not answer the question, we have the benefit of our own partner network to lean on to source our clients the expertise they need to make informed decisions.

Pain relievers

KTC believes in the value of understanding our clients better than our peers. Often, technology providers believe that technology (albeit software, infrastructure, connectivity, etc.) is the key to solving our clients’ problems. For this reason, most providers offer a common set of products and services which clients are forced to accept in an attempt to have their problems alleviated.

Our drive to understand our customers allow us to focus on what the clients’ need, without the bias of having to push a specific product or platform into their business. Instead, by taking time to understand our clients and their business, we may identify possibilities to rectify problems by adjusting existing business and processes, and thereby offer a less invasive solution to their problems.

When we do develop solutions, our key aim is to do so without having to re-invent the wheel: we rather review our customers’ processes and guide them along tried-and-tested industry standards where possible; while at the same time keeping technology platforms within the confines of supported designs and best practice to ensure longevity, scalability and most of all stability at all times.

For this reason, KTC’s toolkit is different to our competitors. Whereas our peers typically offer a rigid consulting service following a standard implementation model, we rather offer our clients a tool-kit: in addition to all the conventional offerings they have come to expect from providers in our industry, we also offer them advisory services and deeper analytics, and the freedom to choose any part of the delivery package as a unit, should they only wish to involve us at that stage. We are so confident in the quality of what we deliver, that we believe our clients’ natural choice at the end of any stage would be to keep with our team, allowing us to prove them right, time and again.

We carry this philosophy further by also delivering our solutions in a milestone fashion. Every milestone reached offers a fully functional solution, and, should our clients wish, they may stop development (or choose a different provider), although again, we believe that they will stay with us!

With that philosophy in mind, we feel that we ultimately solve two main problems which are often overlooked when our clients engage with providers:

Understanding the actual problems: Both provider and client needs to understand the true nature of the problems experienced. Instead of simply working off a check-list with problems our clients wish to solve, we engage with them, and on this journey together discover and document the issues that really trouble their business; and
Obtaining a solution that solves their problems as opposed to obscuring the problem behind a solution: KTC does not believe is simply going through the motions of deploying platforms and solutions to solve client’s problems. Instead, with the problems properly documented, we spend time mapping gaps with functionality that not only addresses, but actually solves problems.

Understanding our customers allow us to better understand their needs, and based on the true need, we can work toward providing them solutions which satisfy them. These needs may take various guises, including:

Solving actual business problems hampering growth, e.g. fixing under-performing solutions, eliminating difficulties and challenges, eliminating risks, etc.;
Improving performance and streamlining operations, e.g. through automation, addition of missing features;
Addressing common mistakes, e.g. inefficient operations, redundant processes, slow communications, information bottlenecks, etc.;
Reducing risk and costs and increasing profit;
Improving accessibility for users and customers;
Providing and improving convenience and utility;
Improving relevance and gaining competitive advantage; and
Reducing costs.

Depending on the specific client in their unique situation, KTC then evaluates and prioritises these needs and works together with the client to provide the best possible solution.