"Zahid has successfully delivered and deployed HCM within our company."

That's from the client review that landed on my profile this week, for OneHub — the payroll and people-operations platform I built for TechFoundry. Monthly payroll with fiscal-year tax withholding, payslips and tax certificates on demand, expense reports read line by line by Claude, and one reporting layer so the dashboard, the payslip and the certificate always agree.

The word I care about in that review is "deployed". Delivered means the code works. Deployed means payroll runs on it every month, people are paid the right amount, and nobody has to call me.

The thing I'd do differently: the tax rules started out hard-coded. Fine for one country, one fiscal year — until it wasn't. We later pulled them out into a rules engine so the same payroll runs across countries without touching the code. Next time that's day one, not a refactor.

It's also a Contra-verified project — the work was paid through Contra, so the review and the case study are tied to the same engagement. Case study: https://contra.com/p/Y3EgrEUc-payroll-and-people-operations-platform

Shipping a complete payroll and fiscal-year tax withholding engine straight to production is a major milestone! Full-stack execution at its finest.

Sometimes a CRM doesn’t need replacing. It needs restructuring around how the business actually works.

PDW Group already had HubSpot in place, but the existing setup no longer fully reflected their commercial processes or gave the team the visibility they needed.

Over six weeks, I worked with the team to re-onboard and optimise their HubSpot environment, starting with a detailed audit of the existing CRM, data, apps and integrations.

From there, I redesigned the CRM architecture around their day-to-day operations, refined lifecycle and deal stages, created separate pipelines for consultancy opportunities and product orders, and introduced a custom Case Studies object.

I also built and improved automated workflows, strengthened the data structure and reporting, created personalised dashboards, and introduced better product and referral tracking. Alongside the technical work, I worked with the team on adoption so the new setup could actually be used consistently after the project ended.

The project closed after six weeks with 47 deliverables completed and zero outstanding actions.

The result was a more structured and scalable HubSpot environment, stronger visibility across prospects, clients, opportunities and revenue streams, and a team better equipped to use the CRM confidently.

For me, this is a good example of why CRM optimisation isn’t just about adding more automation. The underlying structure has to match the way the business actually operates.