System mapping
We map how work actually moves through your business, not how the org chart says it does. Where it queues, where it doubles back, and where it waits on you.
Founder led businesses · 5 to 100 people · Scotland and London
If the business cannot run without you, the problem is not effort.
Ashtara is an operational consultancy for founder led businesses. We use operational research to find where your business is actually losing time and margin, then fix the process before recommending a single tool.
Every operation has one constraint. Everything else is noise.
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Enquiry
Quote
Plan
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Bill
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Adding capacity anywhere else changes nothing. Most owners hire, buy software, or work later into the evening. If the constraint sits at the point where every decision waits on one person, none of those three move the number.
The problem
You are the bottleneck.
Most consultants will not say that to your face, because you are the one signing the cheque.
It rarely looks like a problem at first. You approve the quotes because the one time you did not, the margin was wrong. Your operations manager is good and still escalates six things a day. You have not taken a full two weeks off in years without the phone going.
That is not a discipline problem or a hiring problem. It is a process problem wearing a technology costume.
It becomes expensive at a specific moment: when you try to sell, when a key person leaves, or when you reach for growth you have already failed to reach twice.
The method
Fix the process first. Then automate it.
One audit. Three phases. Two weeks inside your business, then a plan you own whether or not you ever work with us again.
PHASE 01
PHASE 02
Data interrogation
We take what you already hold. Invoices, job records, timesheets, whatever exists. Forecasting, capacity modelling and variation analysis turn it into a picture of the operation.
PHASE 03
Intelligence synthesis
The constraint named, quantified, and sequenced into what to fix first, what to fix next, and what to automate only once it works manually.
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A baseline before we start
We measure the current state before any work begins, and again after delivery. You should be able to see what the money bought, in numbers rather than adjectives.
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Implementation is a separate decision
The audit is never bundled with a build. You can take the plan and run it yourself, hand it to your own team, or ask us to deliver it. All three are fine.
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Change management sits inside the work
Adoption is part of the method, not an upsell. A process nobody follows is not a process.
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We will not help you cut your team
Automation here takes the repetitive work so your people can take the valuable work. If headcount reduction is the goal, we will say so on the first call and save us both the time.
The difference
Operational research, applied to businesses that were never offered it.
Large enterprises have used these methods for sixty years. Forecasting, queuing theory, decision analysis, problem structuring. They are how airlines schedule aircraft and how hospitals size wards.
Almost nobody brings them to a business of thirty people, because the analysis has traditionally cost more than the business could justify. That is the gap Ashtara exists to close.
AI is the delivery mechanism. Operational research is the intelligence that decides what is worth automating and how.
Engagements
Selected work.
Delivered
Ceylon Aeronautical Services
Aircraft maintenance operation. Process mapping and automation across the maintenance workflow, reducing the manual handling between engineering and compliance.
Modelled, not delivered
New Pharmacy Holdings
A demand forecasting model built on Holt Winters, developed as a worked case for an Operational Research Society article. The model is real. It has not yet been deployed as a client engagement.
In delivery
Cellogen Lanka
Pharmaceutical manufacturer. Operational review and systems work, currently underway.
We label our work honestly. A model built for research is described as a model, not as a client outcome.
Capability
A small analytical practice with a real delivery bench.
The diagnosis is done by us. Once you decide what to build, delivery runs through an established engineering bench in Colombo covering solution architecture, cloud and DevOps, cyber security, ERP implementation, and custom software.
We are open about that structure. It is the reason we can afford to spend two weeks inside a thirty person business at a price that business can justify.
Aberdeen is the head office. Colombo is delivery. There is a family held presence in Canberra. We travel anywhere in the UK for client work.
Fit
We are selective, on purpose.
We take on a limited number of clients each quarter, because the audit requires real time inside the business rather than a template applied from outside.
This works when
- You own or lead a business of roughly 5 to 100 people
- The business depends on you more than you would like
- You want your people doing more valuable work, not fewer people doing the same work
- You are willing to be told something you did not want to hear
- You have some record of what the business has done, even if it is messy
This does not work when
- The goal is reducing headcount
- You want a tool implemented without examining the process underneath it
- You need a decision this week
- The business is much larger than 100 people, where you need a different kind of firm
Investment
One audit. One published range.
£X,XXX to £X,XXX + VAT
Where you sit in the range depends on headcount and how many functions are in scope. We tell you the number on the first call, before any work begins.
The intro call is free and is not a sales call. If we are not the right fit, we will say so and point you somewhere better.
Questions
Reasonable objections.
Why not just use ChatGPT or Claude for this?
You can, and for some things you should. What a language model cannot do is sit in your warehouse for two days and notice that the scheduler is re watching the same email thread every morning. The diagnosis depends on knowing which analytical method fits which mess, and on having been inside operations before. That comes from an MSc in Business Analysis and Consulting, membership of the Operational Research Society, and delivery experience in manufacturing, aviation maintenance and professional services. The tool is not the expertise. We use these models daily, and we are open about the fact that leaning on them too heavily is a mistake we have made ourselves.
How long does the audit take?
Two weeks from the point we have access to your people and your records. Some of that is on site, some is analysis.
What if we have no clean data?
Most businesses this size do not. We work from what exists, and where there are genuine gaps we use structured estimation rather than pretending to a precision the data cannot support.
Do we have to buy the implementation from you?
No. The audit is priced and delivered on its own. The plan is yours regardless of who builds it.
Are you going to tell us to automate everything?
No. A meaningful part of most audits is finding work that should stop entirely, and work that should stay human because a person does it better.
Where are you based?
Head office in Aberdeen, delivery bench in Colombo, and we work across Scotland and London. We travel anywhere in the UK for client work.
Founder
Founder portrait
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Senura Hatharasinghe
Founder and Director · Member, The OR Society
I started Ashtara because I kept meeting owners who had been sold software when what they needed was someone to look at how the work actually moved.
My background is business analysis and operational research. An MSc in Business Analysis and Consulting with Distinction from the University of Strathclyde, a First Class degree in International Business Management, and a CIM postgraduate diploma. Before Ashtara I worked in operations and projects in Glasgow, and as a business analyst in manufacturing in Sri Lanka.
What I actually enjoy is fixing things. Learning a business, seeing where it jams, and being able to prove the difference afterwards in numbers.
Next step
Find out where your constraint actually is.
A thirty minute call, no charge, no pitch. Tell us what is not working and we will tell you honestly whether this is a problem we can help with.