What was said
What this says
Current to 11 Oct 26Demo on Brackwell sample data with Liam, Aisha Rahman and Dean Hargreaves. Both users were positive, a second admin is needed, and signing is still pencilled for 17 Nov 2023 at the Starter total of twenty-five and a half thousand pounds.
What happened: Tom Ashdown and Tobias Renwick demoed the account page, chat and pages to Liam Doherty, Aisha Rahman and Dean Hargreaves on 6 Oct 2023. Liam said the account page is what he keeps trying to build in a spreadsheet.
Customer view: Dean would use the account page if it is not slow. Aisha could see it replacing manual Monday work but needs a second admin, which Liam agreed to arrange.
Commercial: Tom restated the Starter deal total as twenty-five and a half thousand pounds with implementation included. Liam said signing depends on IT and on this call.
Watch: Starter has a hard four-connector limit and no proactive alerts, which Dean noticed. Security has not yet been briefed.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Who was there
BB-Demo
Them
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Tom sends the recap, one-pager, itemised figures, refresh wording and support response times today.
- Liam introduces Tobias to a colleague in IT this week for the security conversation.
- Liam agrees a second admin in setup, and Aisha sends her admin handover notes.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Aisha is the only admin so far, so a second admin is a condition for her comfort.
- Signing depends on IT, and security has not yet seen anything in writing.
- Starter gives no proactive alerts, so depot managers must ask rather than be told.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- A larger tier could follow if asking becomes a habit and alerts are wanted.
- A finance connector later would exceed the Starter connector limit.
Transcript
- Tom Ashdown NoneMorning all. Can everyone hear me? I'll give it a minute for the stragglers.
- Liam Doherty NoneMorning, Tom. I can hear you fine. Aisha's here, Dean's on his way, last I saw he was at the depot gate.
- Aisha Rahman NoneHi, morning. Sorry, I've just got the audio working. I tried the other browser first and it wouldn't share the sound, so I've switched. Is it me or is there a bit of a delay?
- Tom Ashdown NoneNo, I think it's a touch laggy this end as well. It'll settle. Tobias is on too, he's our technical lead.
- Tobias Renwick NoneGood morning, everyone. Before we start, to be precise, I'd like to know what your security team will need to see, because it might change what I show you today.
- Liam Doherty NoneGood question. Mostly where the data sits, who can read it and how it's controlled. They'll want that in writing at some point, but nothing's gone to them yet.
- Dean Hargreaves NoneSorry, sorry, a driver's just reversed into a bay and the whole yard's stopped. Anyway, I'm here. Morning.
- Tom Ashdown NoneMorning Dean, sounds like a day already.
- Dean Hargreaves NoneIt's gone odd again, but it's fine. Go on.
- Tom Ashdown NoneRight. So what I'll do is share my screen, and what you're going to see is built from the sample data you sent over, so it should look like your world. Tobias will tell you where it all lives. Stop me whenever, I'd rather you interrupt than sit there politely confused.
- Liam Doherty NoneLove that. Go on.
- Tobias Renwick NoneI'll say a few words first about the shape of it, because it matters. The brain is built and run inside your own Snowflake account. The honest answer is that we don't hold a copy of your data on our side. The layer reads from your systems into your warehouse, and the questions are answered there. The trade-off is that it's only as current as the connectors feeding it, and that is a conversation we should have about each source.
- Aisha Rahman NoneSorry, just to check, would I be able to see which connectors are feeding it? I've looked at something similar before and I couldn't tell what was actually being pulled in.
- Tobias Renwick NoneYes. There's a connectors view and I'll show you in a moment. An admin can see what is connected, when it last loaded, and whether it's healthy.
- Tom Ashdown NoneOkay, so here's an account page. This is one of your retail customers from the sample. You've got the account details at the top, then underneath the delivery-exception tickets, the calls, and the emails, all in one timeline.
- Liam Doherty NoneOh, that's it. That's what I keep trying to build in a spreadsheet. One view, that's the point.
- Dean Hargreaves NoneThat's the Warrington one. Is that the real one?
- Tom Ashdown NoneIt's from your sample, so it should be close. Does it look right to you?
- Dean Hargreaves NoneMostly. That ticket's about a short shipment, yeah. I remember that one. They rang me twice.
- Tom Ashdown NoneAnd that's what we want, the phone calls showing up next to the ticket. Because the call recorder's feeding in as well, you can see the call right there, with a summary. So you don't have to remember which one was grumpy.
- Liam Doherty NoneCan you click into the call?
- Tom Ashdown NoneSure. There's the summary, and the transcript underneath if you want it. So you've got the gist in ten seconds, or the detail if it matters.
- Aisha Rahman NoneIs it me or does the summary only show the last call? I can't see the one before it.
- Tom Ashdown NoneGood spot. It's ordered by date, let me scroll. There, the earlier ones are underneath. It's showing most recent first.
- Aisha Rahman NoneAh, got it. Thanks. Sorry, I should have scrolled.
- Tom Ashdown NoneNo, don't apologise, it's a fair question, other people would trip over it too.
- Tom Ashdown NoneOkay, now the bit I think you'll care about. This is the chat. I'm going to ask it a question, the sort of thing Liam said he wants on a Monday. Which retail accounts have had more exception tickets than usual recently?
- Dean Hargreaves NoneHow long's it take? Because if it's slow I'm not using it.
- Tobias Renwick NoneThe honest answer is that it depends on the question, but most of them come back within a few seconds. I won't give you a figure I can't stand behind, so we'll measure it on your data in the pilot rather than quote something from a slide.
- Dean Hargreaves NoneFair enough. Cheers, mate.
- Tom Ashdown NoneAnd there it is. It's come back with a list of accounts and a short reason against each. If I click one, it shows me the tickets it's counting.
- Liam Doherty NoneRight, so that's the thing. That's the Monday list. And I didn't build that.
- Tom Ashdown NoneYou didn't build it. And importantly, you can see why it's there. It's not a black box saying 'trust me'.
- Tobias Renwick NoneTo be precise, every answer links back to the records it was drawn from. That's deliberate. If a depot manager disagrees with an answer, they should be able to see exactly which ticket or call produced it, and challenge it.
- Liam Doherty NoneThat's what killed the last thing we tried. Nobody trusted the numbers. So that matters.
- Aisha Rahman NoneCan I ask something about the admin side? I'd be the one looking after it, and I don't want to break anything. Like, what if I add a user by mistake, or remove a connector?
- Tobias Renwick NoneA sensible question. Let me show you. As an admin, you manage users and you see the connectors. If you removed a user, it removes their access and nothing else. If you paused a connector, the brain stops loading from that source, but the source system itself is untouched, because we read from it. So you can't damage your CRM or your helpdesk from here.
- Aisha Rahman NoneOkay. That's a relief, honestly. And if something stopped loading, would it tell me?
- Tobias Renwick NoneIt shows in the connectors view, and you can raise it with us. The trade-off is that you'd need to look, so part of the handover is agreeing how often you check. I'd suggest someone looks at it every morning for the first few weeks.
- Aisha Rahman NoneI can do that. I already check the Tuesday figures before the operations review, so it'd fit in.
- Liam Doherty NoneThat's her thing. Tuesday review has to be right.
- Tom Ashdown NoneThen this is for you, Aisha. Let me show you the page that'd sit behind that review. I'll pull up the accounts by depot.
- Tom Ashdown NoneSo this is the account list filtered to one depot, here Trafford Park. You can see each account, the latest ticket activity, the last call and when it was. And if I search a customer name, it finds it straight away.
- Dean Hargreaves NoneSearch it by a ticket thing? Like a pallet number?
- Tom Ashdown NoneTry me. If it's in a ticket or an email, it'll find it. Let me type a reference from the sample.
- Tom Ashdown NoneThere. It's pulled the ticket, the email that mentions it, and the call where someone brought it up. That's the whole story on one page.
- Dean Hargreaves NoneThat's good. That's me saved ten minutes on a morning. Can someone have a look at the phone numbers though? One of them's wrong on there.
- Tom Ashdown NoneGood catch. That'll be the sample, not the brain, but I'll note it, so we tidy it before the real load.
- Liam Doherty NoneTom, can I ask about the number of systems? We talked about four to start. If we wanted finance in later, where does that land?
- Tom Ashdown NoneSo Starter's built for one team and it has a limit of four connectors, and it's a hard limit. Which is fine for your four. If you wanted more later, you'd either add connectors as an add-on or move up a tier. Not a drama, but I'd rather you knew now.
- Liam Doherty NoneGood. That's what I expected. I'm happy to start with four.
- Tobias Renwick NoneI'd add one thing about connectors. In practice, the one that gives people trouble is whichever system changes underneath them, a field renamed in the CRM for example. So if someone in your team changes a system, let your admin know. It's usually a quick fix once we know.
- Aisha Rahman NoneI'd want to know that. Would I find out if someone in IT changed something?
- Liam Doherty NoneI'll make sure you're on the list for that. That's one for me to sort.
- Aisha Rahman NoneThanks, Liam.
- Tom Ashdown NoneOkay, I want to show one more thing before we get to questions. The pages. You can build a page for a customer, say a quarterly review view, that pulls the account, the tickets and the calls together. Dean, you'd use this one.
- Dean Hargreaves NoneWhat's it for?
- Tom Ashdown NoneSay you've got a meeting with a retailer on Thursday. Rather than digging, you open their page and it's got what's happened in the last few weeks. Tickets raised, how quickly they were answered, who rang. You walk in knowing.
- Dean Hargreaves NoneThat'd do me. Walk in knowing, that's it. Cheers.
- Liam Doherty NoneThat's the whole point. If Dean knew a retailer was unhappy before they rang him, that's the job done.
- Tobias Renwick NoneI should be clear about one limit, so nobody's surprised later. The brain tells you what's in your records. If a conversation happened that nobody wrote down or recorded, it can't see it. So the value comes partly from people logging things, and I'd be doing you a disservice if I implied otherwise.
- Liam Doherty NoneNo, that's fair, and I'd rather hear it. That's on us. I'll push the depot managers to log the calls.
- Dean Hargreaves NoneI'll log them. If it's quick.
- Tom Ashdown NoneIt's a note, Dean, not a form. Honestly, it'd take you ten seconds.
- Dean Hargreaves NoneGo on then.
- Tom Ashdown NoneRight. Pause there for a sec. I'm conscious I've been talking. Anything you want me to go back to, or anything you expected to see and haven't?
- Aisha Rahman NoneI've got a few. I've tried to write them down. First, the nightly refresh, what time is it done by? Because the Tuesday review is at nine and I need it right by then.
- Tom Ashdown NoneIt's meant to be complete by 07:00 UK time on business days. So Tuesday's review should be on that morning's data. I'll put the exact wording in the follow-up rather than lean on my memory.
- Aisha Rahman NoneThanks. Second, who do I ring when it's wrong? I mean, if it looks stale, who do I tell?
- Tom Ashdown NoneYou raise a ticket with us, and there's a response time for your tier. I'll make sure that's in the pack. And you'd have a customer success manager on our side as well, a proper human, not just a queue.
- Aisha Rahman NoneOkay. And third, and this one's maybe for Liam, will somebody else be able to cover me? Because if I'm off, I don't want it to be only me.
- Liam Doherty NoneGood point, we'll get a second admin. I'd want that anyway. I don't want us leaning on one person. We'll sort that in the setup.
- Tobias Renwick NoneI'd endorse that. A second admin is the single most useful thing you can do for resilience, and it costs nothing. Rather than being afterthought, I'd have it as part of the plan from the start.
- Aisha Rahman NoneThank you. I just didn't want to be left on my own with it. Sorry, I know that's a bit daft.
- Liam Doherty NoneIt's not daft. It's sensible. That's why I asked you to come.
- Dean Hargreaves NoneCan I ask something? Does it do the thing where it tells me before they ring? Like an alert or something?
- Tom Ashdown NoneGood question. On Starter you ask it and look at the pages. You can ask it every morning which accounts look unusual, as we did. But it isn't pinging you proactively on this tier. I don't want to oversell it, so I'll say it plainly.
- Dean Hargreaves NoneRight. So I've got to ask.
- Liam Doherty NoneThat's fine, Dean, it's a five-second question. That's still better than what we do now, which is wait for the phone to ring.
- Dean Hargreaves NoneTrue. Fair enough.
- Tobias Renwick NoneIf it becomes valuable to you, we can talk about what a larger tier gives you. But I'd start by seeing whether asking becomes a habit. The trade-off is that features you don't use are just cost.
- Tom Ashdown NoneWhich, for the record, is why I'd rather start small. Get the depots using it, then see.
- Liam Doherty NoneYeah. Okay. So where are we with the commercials, Tom? I know we've talked, but the others haven't heard it.
- Tom Ashdown NoneSure. So what I've got on the sheet for Starter is twenty-five and a half thousand pounds, and that's the deal total with the one-off implementation included, so it's not a yearly price. I'll confirm the itemised figures in writing, I don't like quoting from memory. Discounts, if any, are a separate conversation.
- Liam Doherty NoneYeah. That's what I've taken upstairs. Our leadership wanted to see it before they commit, which is partly why I wanted the team on the call.
- Aisha Rahman NoneI'll leave the contract to Liam, if that's okay. I'd only get it wrong.
- Liam Doherty NoneYeah, that's mine. Don't worry.
- Tom Ashdown NoneAnd timing-wise, I've got Friday 17 November 2023 pencilled for signing. Is that still where you think it lands?
- Liam Doherty NoneI think so. It depends on IT getting back to me, and on this call, to be honest. If Dean and Aisha are happy, I'll feel a lot better going back.
- Tom Ashdown NoneThen let's hear it. Dean, Aisha, honest answer. Does this look like something you'd use?
- Dean Hargreaves NoneYeah. I would. The account page, that's the one. Saves me hunting. Just needs to not be slow.
- Aisha Rahman NoneI think so. I'd like to try the admin bits properly with a proper walk-through, but I could see it replacing a lot of what I do by hand on a Monday. I'd need the second admin though.
- Liam Doherty NoneRight. That's what I wanted to hear.
- Tom Ashdown NoneGood. Tobias, what does IT need from you and us for the security side?
- Tobias Renwick NoneTo be precise, I'd suggest we prepare a short description of the architecture, covering where the data sits, who can read it and how access is controlled, and that your colleague in IT and I talk it through directly. I would rather answer their questions in person than send a document and let it be misread. And I'll be careful not to promise anything on the roadmap in writing.
- Liam Doherty NonePerfect. I'll introduce you to a colleague in IT this week. I'll copy you in, Tom.
- Tom Ashdown NoneBrilliant. Leave the diary invite with me, and I'll get the recap out today, with the one-pager and the itemised figures.
- Liam Doherty NoneAnd the thing on connectors and support response times, you said you'd put in.
- Tom Ashdown NoneYep, that goes in too. Nothing left to chance. Anything else from anyone? Dean, any last thoughts?
- Dean Hargreaves NoneNah. Cheers, mate. Cheers, Tobias. I've got a trailer to sort.
- Aisha Rahman NoneThank you both. It was really helpful. I'll send Liam my notes on what I'd want in the admin handover.
- Tobias Renwick NoneThat would be very useful, thank you, Aisha. Good morning to you all.
- Liam Doherty NoneCheers, everyone. Tom, speak soon.
- Tom Ashdown NoneNo drama. Cheers, all.