Who we work with
Mid-market industrial, energy, and B2B-tech companies, including import and export businesses, with significant supplier, customer, distributor, or service contracts.
We work best where a CFO or CEO can commission an audit directly, and where finance, sales, and procurement are ready to act on the findings together.
Serial acquirers. If you run three to fifteen portfolio companies, each with its own contract book, the retainer gives you a lightweight oversight layer across the group.
Our Services
Your largest contracts are your least managed source of EBITDA.
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Your top supplier, customer, distributor, and service contracts typically carry 60–80% of revenue and the cost base.
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Few companies track which of them are underpriced, which have drifted, and where value is lost at each renewal.
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The work sits between finance, sales, and procurement, so it rarely becomes anyone's priority.
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We combine financial measurement and negotiation experience to close that gap, working with your teams, not around them.
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You receive a ranked audit of your top ten contracts in ten working days.
In 30 minutes, you learn whether an audit is worth it for your contract book and what it involves.
Stage 0
Contract Value Check
Are your contracts still working for your business?
Prices, volumes, and delivery requirements change. This short check helps you consider whether your supplier and customer terms still support your margin, cash flow, and operational needs.
Answer eight questions to receive your review priorities and a practical first step. It is free, requires no document uploads, and does not estimate savings.
Ground Truth Partners brings financial measurement and commercial negotiation together.
Stage 1
Contract Value Audit
Delivered in ten working days.
We rank your top ten contracts by the EBITDA impact of a targeted renegotiation, using four levers: price, payment terms, ordering pattern, and volume commitments. You receive a written memo in board-paper format, tight enough to table without rewriting, presented live in a 45-minute session, never only by email.
What you get:
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A ranked table of your top ten contracts with the estimated annual EBITDA impact of each intervention.
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Named counterparty risks (concentration, drift, over-favorable terms, expiring price protections).
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A written recommendation of which three to five contracts to open first, and in which order.
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A written scope and fee for Stage 2 if you want to proceed.
Stage 2
Contract Renegotiation
If Stage 1 identifies contracts worth opening, we run the renegotiations as a shadow-negotiation mandate: we prepare, we rehearse, we sit in the room with your commercial and procurement leads, but they hold the pen.
Your relationship stays yours.
Our fee is an agreed percentage of the annualized savings, measured when the renegotiated contract is signed.
You know the fee on the day you sign.
Stage 3
Contract Portfolio Retainer
After a renegotiation round, contracts start to drift again.
The retainer keeps the gains in place, with a quarterly portfolio review against the Stage 1 baseline.
Monthly 60-minute call with your CFO and heads of sales and procurement.
Same-day counterparty hotline: one hour of advice on any counterparty move, such as a price change, volume push, or terms request, on the day it happens.
Fixed fee per month for twelve months. Renewable by agreement.
Strategic finance and negotiation that show up in your EBITDA.
Ground Truth Partners is a two-person advisory practice for CFOs and CEOs of mid-market industrial, energy, and B2B technology companies. Based in Switzerland, we work across Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific, where our own careers have been built.
We review your key customer and supplier contracts, quantify opportunities to improve profitability, and help your team decide what to renegotiate.
We start with a fixed-fee audit of your top contracts. In a mid-market top-ten contract book, we estimate that 3-5% of EBITDA is typically at stake.
EBITDA is your operating profit before depreciation and amortization, the figure buyers and lenders usually value a business on.
The 3-5% range comes from our own assessment of mid-market industrial contract books, supported by published research on contract value erosion (World Commerce and Contracting, 2025; Deloitte).
Meet the team
Jan Mastny
Jana Zimova
global sales, transformation, and negotiation expert
Strategic finance and boardroom expert
With more than 20 years of executive commercial leadership in the industrial and renewables sectors, including Onamba, LEONI, Studer Cables, and Ernst Schweizer, Jan specializes in global market development with a primary focus on APAC and EMEA. His work moves companies away from transactional, price-driven sales and towards profitable, long-term strategic partnerships.
Now leading an independent negotiation and commercial-transformation practice, Jan owns the commercial and counterparty side of every mandate: the elasticity read, counterparty psychology, negotiation preparation, and rehearsal.
He presents to commercial audiences, leads complex multinational negotiations, and helps clients build revenue that rests on loyal, long-term customer relationships.
Thirty years and forty-seven-plus mandates in finance leadership across Europe and the Americas. Most recently, Head of Investment and Project Portfolio Management for Inter IKEA's global supply chain (EUR 30 billion turnover, 50-plus countries, 20,000 people, about EUR 650 million of active portfolio).
Member of the Boardroom, Zurich. Creator of the CFO as Negotiator program. Executive MBA, Quantic School of Business & Technology. Founder of Elev8 Strategic Finance GmbH.
Jana owns the numbers side of every mandate: the baseline, the financial screen, the measurement, the memo, and the boardroom presentation. She presents to boards and investment committees.
How we work
How we work together:
The two people you meet on the first call are the two people who deliver your mandate. We combine strategic finance and measurement with commercial and negotiation experience. Both partners review the findings and recommendations before they reach you, your board, or your investment committee.
We limit concurrent engagements so both partners give each mandate full attention, and we tell you if we are not the right team.
Four principles we work by
1. The value is already inside your business. The starting point is your contracts, your P&L, and your commercial relationships. We combine financial analysis and negotiation experience to help your team identify that value and decide which contracts to renegotiate first. Your team retains ownership of the relationships and the decisions.
2. Evidence comes before reassurance. We distinguish evidence from assumptions and make our reasoning clear. We welcome challenge and revise our conclusions when the evidence warrants it, not simply to make a finding more comfortable.
3. Clear scope. Agreed fee. For the audit, the scope and fixed fee are agreed before we start. If delivering that scope takes more work than we expected, we absorb it. Renegotiation fees and retainers follow the terms agreed for the engagement.
4. Capability transfer, not dependency. We prepare your people to negotiate and support them through the process. We do not take over their relationships. Our aim is to leave your team with a stronger understanding of contract value and a repeatable approach to future negotiations.