Case study 02 · Fix
The fix was a role, not a system
Brought in to fix the website and marketing. The real bottleneck was one person doing five jobs. Splitting the role cut delivery from two weeks to two days.
2 weeks → 2 daysDelivery time
Operations · Automation
Fifteen years on the receiving end of bad systems. Now I build the ones that work.
I'm Harith Gunewardene. I run operations and build the systems they run on. Latest build: candidate profiles cut from 50 minutes to 15.
Open to remote operations roles with teams anywhere. Available now.
01 · The turn
I was the person the software was built for.
For fifteen years I carried a quota, ran client accounts, owned a P&L and spent hours every week on admin that a better system would have removed.
Most people who build internal tools have never done any of that. Now I build them myself, and only after I have done the job by hand.
02 · Case study 01 · Build
Mankind Recruitment OS
The problem
A small search team was losing about half of every working day to admin: 50 minutes per candidate profile, roughly four hours a day in all. Software was the obvious fix. Instead, I did the job myself for four weeks before building anything.
8 of 18 steps automatic; nothing scraped; no open ports
Read the full case study50 min → 15 min
Per candidate profile
Same move, different domains
Case study 03 · Sell
The pipeline that lived in a spreadsheet
Built a POS sales pipeline from an empty list to 50 locations. It worked because I carried it, which is why it wasn't a system.
~11.7M LKRAnnual recurring revenue
Case study 04 · Analyse
One method, three reports
One method, run twice for a professional services client, from a salary benchmark to a market study across eight software roles.
8 rolesSoftware roles benchmarked
Got a process that needs defining before it's automated?
Book a call (opens in a new tab)03 · The method
You cannot automate judgement.
Do the job manually until you can define “good” explicitly, test adoption for $27 before spending $100,000, and only then scale the tech.
Step 01: Do the work
Find the invisible friction.
Step 02: Fix the process
Define "good" explicitly.
Step 03: Test adoption
Use $27, not $100,000.
Step 04: Scale the tech
Only when behaviour changes.
04 · Track record
Evidence, not headline.
April 2026 to present
Mankind RecruitmentBusiness Development & Operations Consultant
3 new client accounts and a C-suite placement in 6 months
2024 to 2026
OMAK TechnologiesNew Business Development Lead
50 locations across 30+ clients in 23 months (~11.7M LKR ARR)
2022 to 2024
Entrepreneur ConsultantSelf-Employed
Cut delivery for Stripes & Checks from two weeks to two days
2020 to 2022
ActiveBooksManaging DirectorRan alongside The Last Word
Launched a tutor-management SaaS for in-person tutors; COVID closed the market it served
2016 to 2022
The Last WordManaging PartnerRan alongside ActiveBooks
20+ clients served; Kaema.tv grew to 7K subscribers in 6 months
05 · Skills
What I bring
Five areas of work. Core skills in large type, supporting skills in small. The dashed lines mark where one piece of work drew on two of them.
View as a list
Client and account management
- Client account management
- Client presentation and pitching
- Contract negotiation
- Partner and vendor relationship management
- Customer service management
- Recruitment and executive search
- Structured candidate evaluation
Commercial and market strategy
- Business development
- Go-to-market and market-entry strategy
- B2B sales and pipeline building
- Solution selling
- Sales process optimisation
- CRM
- Territory management
- E-commerce
- Brand and content strategy
- Creative direction
- Digital marketing
Research and analysis
- Survey and compensation research
- Market and competitive research
- Data analysis in Excel
- Business analysis
- Requirements analysis
- Strategic planning
- KPIs and performance reporting
Operations and process
- Process design and documentation
- Business process improvement
- Programme and project management
- Change management
- Agile project management
- P&L and budget management
- Build-versus-buy tool evaluation
- Team leadership
AI and automation
- AI implementation in business workflows
- Workflow automation
- LLM prompt and rubric design
- API integration (ClickUp, Claude API)
- AI-assisted development (Claude Code)
- Self-hosted infrastructure (Linux, Docker, Cloudflare)
- Content production with AI tools
06 · Decks
Decks I directed.
Most of these are unsolicited thought pieces, not client work: I picked a problem and worked it through the way I would for a client, using AI tools for the production. One, the Pragmatic Automation Blueprint, documents a system I actually built and run at Mankind.
Deck 07 · Jun 2026 · 11 slides
The Pragmatic Automation Blueprint
Built and running
The method behind the recruitment system I built and run at Mankind. Visuals made with NotebookLM.
Deck 06 · Mar 2026 · 14 slides
Unlocking Colombo
Thought piece
An unsolicited proposal for iDiscover, a unified tourism discovery and booking platform for Colombo. Made with AI tools.
Deck 05 · Mar 2026 · 11 slides
The Heritage Coast
Thought piece
An unsolicited three-phase roadmap to reposition Sri Lanka's southern coast as a luxury destination. Made with NotebookLM.
07 · About
About
I spent fifteen years in commercial roles, mostly in Colombo. Agency work at JWT on multinational accounts, then a digital agency I co-founded and ran for six years, a SaaS product that didn't make it, and a stretch selling POS systems to restaurants and retailers. Different industries, same underlying job: understand what a business actually needs and get it delivered.
The technical side came back late. I studied IT at university, drifted away from it, and only started building again when the admin in my own work got bad enough that I wanted it gone. Now I mostly build the thing rather than write a brief for someone else to build.
What I'm looking for: a remote operations role, wherever the team is based. That could be business, revenue, product or technical operations, a chief of staff or founder's associate role, or leading ops and automation. Full-time, fractional or contract-to-hire, and I'll work whatever hours suit the team.
Outside work I run a home server, print things I've designed myself, and take on more DIY than is strictly sensible.
Book a call (opens in a new tab)
Prefer email? harithgunew@gmail.com. Happy to send a CV.