The Outcome Standard
Anyone can promise a result.
We put it in the contract.
Our position on how professional services should be bought and sold — and what we are prepared to sign our name to. Our fee is pledged to the result.
Every organisation that has ever hired an agency knows the feeling: the deliverables arrived, the invoices were paid, and somewhere along the way the result quietly went missing. The deck was delivered; the audience didn't grow. The strategy was presented; nothing changed. Nobody breached the contract, because the contract never mentioned the thing you actually wanted.
We think that's a design flaw in how this industry sells — not a law of nature. So we are rebuilding our practice around a different standard. There is an old principle of commercial law in this region for it: al-ghunm bi-l-ghurm — whoever takes the gain bears the loss.
The principle
Our fee = an agreed share of independently verified value.
Where the work qualifies, that is the deal we prefer — payment funded by results both sides can audit, not by effort one side reports. Saudi procurement regulations already provide for exactly this: performance-based service contracts that link payment to measured performance. Almost nobody in this market sells that way.
The discipline
Six tests before we put our fee at risk.
Outcome contracting done casually is worse than honest hourly billing. These are the conditions we check — openly, with the client — before proposing one.
The result is a number or a verifiable event — not an impression of progress.
A credible starting point exists, so improvement can be separated from noise and seasonality.
We control, or co-control, the actions that produce the result. We don't take risk on other people's work.
What we need from the client is written down, owned and dated — approvals, data, access, decisions.
Quality and compliance guardrails ensure the metric can't be gamed at the expense of the mission.
Verification and payment happen on a calendar both sides can live with — no infinite audit tails.
When an engagement doesn't pass these tests, we say so — and price it conventionally. An outcome fee is an instrument, not an ideology.
The instrument
How the contract works.
One framework agreement sets the rates and the payment formula once. Each phase of work is a service request with its own targets. Part of the fee is fixed; the rest is paid against the results.
- Framework agreementSigned once: rates, the payment formula and the standing terms.
- Service requestOne per phase: scope, team days, fee and weighted targets.
- Weekly reportThe running count against each target, with proof for every result counted.
- Achievement scoreEach result divided by its target, multiplied by its weight, added up.
- SettlementThe fixed part at the start; the rest at the end, against the score, with the calculation attached.
A worked example
One phase, fee SAR 100,000: half fixed and invoiced at the start, half paid against the results at the end.
| Measure | Weight | Target | Result | Score | Score × weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qualified leads | 60% | 400 | 360 | 90% | 54% |
| Campaign assets accepted | 40% | 12 | 12 | 100% | 40% |
| Achievement score | 94% |
| Fixed, invoiced at the start | SAR 50,000 |
| Paid on results: 50,000 × 94% | SAR 47,000 |
| Held back, paid when leads reach 400 | SAR 3,000 |
- No thresholds. 94% achieved pays 94% of the results part — not zero, not a cliff.
- Catch-up. A target reached later releases what was held back.
- Nothing is lost. Results above target count toward the next phase.
Not a slogan
We've already signed for it.
2022 · Retail e-commerce
Zero setup fee. 8% of sales.
We built and ran the online sales channel for a Jeddah retail chain with no build fee at all — our compensation was a share of the revenue it produced. The channel's sales are measured in the client's own POS system.
Current mandates
Half fixed. Half on results.
Our active growth mandate runs phase by phase under one framework agreement: each phase's fee is half fixed and half paid against a weighted score of the results it sets — supply built, orders completed, targets met.
Institutional work
Framework agreements, not padded scopes.
Our chamber and institutional engagements run on framework agreements: capacity and standards fixed, work drawn down against real need — so nobody pays for activity invented to fill a retainer.
What it means for you
Alignment you can take to procurement.
Our incentives point at your result. When part of the fee exists only if the outcome does, "strategic advice" stops being decorative.
Value funds the fee. In shared-value structures, payment comes out of results that have already landed — verified savings, verified revenue, verified delivery — not out of hope.
The metric can't eat the mission. Every outcome structure we sign carries quality guardrails, because a number achieved by damaging the institution isn't an outcome. It's an excuse.
The commercial machinery behind this — pricing structures, baselines, verification design, contract clauses — is the core of our advisory practice. We'll walk any serious counterpart through it in the room, on your numbers, not in the abstract.
Have a result in mind?
Tell us the result. We'll tell you honestly whether we'd contract on it — and show you the nearest thing in our record.
Bring us an outcome