What was said
What this says
Current to 11 Oct 26Kickoff with Dana Whitaker, VP Operations. Her success test is one question answered in minutes by people other than her. Tickets connect first, then calls, then contracts. She is the only user so far, on a 40-user Growth licence.
What happened: Elena Novak and Hamza Akhtar agreed goals, source order and owners with Dana Whitaker. Tickets come first, then the call recorder, then contracts, with Slack deferred.
Customer view: Dana wants answers in minutes and use by her wider team. She said, "If it only works when I ask it, I've bought a very expensive hobby."
Commercial: Elena confirmed the Growth tier, fifty thousand a year, forty licensed users, term began 2 Feb 2026. Dana agreed and said she signed it.
Watch: Dana is the only user and has told her leadership group to expect something in a few weeks. Permissions on sensitive contracts must be set before contracts connect.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Who was there
BB-Demo
Them
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Dana to send the IT colleague's name and the analyst's name, and Hamza to send the one-page Snowflake note.
- Dana to find the call recording policy and confirm scope with the leasing director.
- Hamza to propose a working session once access is in place, using the boiler question as the first test.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Dana is the only user, so the brain could stay a personal tool and fail her success test of use by the wider team.
- Delivery depends on IT access and the call recording consent question, and Dana has told her leadership group to expect results within weeks.
- Sensitive contracts with pricing could be exposed to regional managers if permissions are not set before connection.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- Forty users are licensed and only a handful of early users are planned, so there is room to widen adoption around the boiler question.
- Slack was named as a possible later source once the first three are right.
Transcript
- Hamza Akhtar NoneHello, hello. Can you both hear me all right? I've got a bit of an echo on my side.
- Elena Novak NoneGood afternoon, Hamza. Yes, I can hear you clearly. The echo may be my headphones, one moment.
- Dana Whitaker NoneHi both. I can hear you. And it's still morning here, just gone ten, so I'm on my first coffee. Bear with me.
- Elena Novak NoneOf course. Good morning to you, Dana. Thank you for making the time. Is the weather in Chicago as grim as the forecast I saw?
- Dana Whitaker NoneWorse. It's been minus something all week and half our building managers are complaining about boilers. So you've caught me in a very operations frame of mind, which is probably appropriate.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneHa, yes, that's the job, isn't it. Well, here it's just grey and wet, so nothing to boast about.
- Elena Novak NoneShall I begin? I sent a short agenda by email beforehand, so to confirm, I will restate it so that we are all looking at the same thing. There are four points. Number one, what Wexmoor wants from the brain and how we will know it is working. Number two, the sources we connect first. Number three, who owns what on your side and on ours. Number four, the shape of the next few weeks and what happens after this call.
- Dana Whitaker NoneThat matches what I have. Can I add one thing at the end? I want to talk about who in my team gets access first, because I know I'm the only one logging in right now and that's not the plan.
- Elena Novak NoneAs agreed, we will take that under number three. Thank you, Dana. Perhaps we start with your goals. In the sales process you described a very specific frustration. Could you say it again in your own words, so that Hamza hears it directly from you?
- Dana Whitaker NoneSure. So we manage office and light-industrial space across the Midwest. Tenants raise issues all day long, a lift is out, the loading dock door sticks, somebody's air conditioning is dripping. Those land in the helpdesk. Separately, our leasing people are on calls with tenants about renewals, months before the lease ends, and those get recorded. And then the service contracts, the actual agreements with the lift company, the cleaners, the security firm, they sit in a shared folder that nobody reads until something goes wrong.
- Dana Whitaker NoneWhat I want, simply, is to be able to ask one question and get one answer. Which tenants in this building have raised the same problem three times, are they up for renewal soon, and is the contractor who should be fixing it actually under a service agreement we can hold them to. Today that's an afternoon of me and two analysts copying things between tabs.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneRight, that's really clear, and it's a good example because it touches all three sources at once. Can I ask, when you say the same problem three times, is that something people tag in the helpdesk, or is it free text and you'd be reading it?
- Dana Whitaker NoneMostly free text. There's a category field but honestly it's used loosely. Half of everything ends up under general maintenance.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOkay, good to know. That's fine, the brain reads the text itself, so we're not relying on the category. It does mean I'll want to look at a sample of tickets with you so we agree what counts as the same problem. Mm, I'll note that for the working session.
- Elena Novak NoneTo confirm, then, the success measure for you is a question like that being answered in minutes rather than an afternoon. Is that correct, Dana? I would like to write it down in those words in the follow-up.
- Dana Whitaker NoneYes. In minutes, and by people who aren't me. That's the bit I care about. If it only works when I ask it, I've bought a very expensive hobby.
- Elena Novak NoneUnderstood. I will make sure that the follow-up states both parts: speed, and use by your wider team.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneFine. Shall I take the sources? So the way this works, and Dana I know you've seen the diagram in the sales deck, is that the brain is built inside your own Snowflake account. Your data doesn't go off to us and sit somewhere else. We set up a space in there, connect the sources, and everything lands in that space.
- Dana Whitaker NoneRight, and that was the thing our IT lead liked. Which, speaking of, I should say, I've asked a colleague in IT to join the next session because she's the one who can actually create things in Snowflake for us.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThat's helpful, thank you. Honestly, that's the first thing I need. Someone with the rights to create a role and a warehouse for us, or at least to approve them. Without that I can't do anything.
- Dana Whitaker NoneOkay. And is that a big ask? I don't want to promise her something that's a week of work.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneNo, it's small. A role, a small warehouse, and a database for us to write into. I'll send her a one-page note with exactly what to run, and she can read it before she runs anything. About an hour of her time, I'd say, plus whatever internal approval you need.
- Elena Novak NoneI will add that to the action list as number one, with Dana's colleague in IT as the owner on your side and Hamza as the owner on ours. Dana, would you please send me her name by email afterwards so I can copy her.
- Dana Whitaker NoneWill do. Today, probably, before I forget.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOkay. Then sources. My suggestion is we don't connect everything at once. You have the three that matter for your question: the helpdesk, the call recorder and the contracts folder. I'd go in that order. Tickets first, because they're the cleanest and the quickest to show you something.
- Dana Whitaker NoneWhy tickets first rather than the calls? The calls are what my leasing director keeps asking about.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneFair question. Mainly because the call connector needs a few more permissions, and recordings have more questions around consent and who's allowed to see what. Tickets are quick, so you see something real early, and meanwhile we sort the calls properly. I'd rather you had a good first week than a stalled one.
- Dana Whitaker NoneOkay, that's sensible. Honestly my leasing director will grumble but I can manage her.
- Elena Novak NoneIf I may, on the recordings. Dana, who is the right person on your side to decide which calls are in scope? Are all leasing calls recorded, or only some of them?
- Dana Whitaker NoneOnly the renewal conversations and the ones where a tenant is complaining, as far as I know. The leasing director would be the one to confirm. I think there's a policy, I'll need to find it.
- Elena Novak NoneTo confirm, that is an action for you: find the policy on which calls are recorded, and ask the leasing director whether anything should be excluded. I will write it as number two.
- Dana Whitaker NoneYep. Got it.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThe third one, contracts. Can I check how they're organised? Is it one folder, a folder per building, or is it chaos?
- Dana Whitaker NoneHa. It's, let's say, partly organised. There's a main folder with a subfolder per property, and then a lot of things that people saved to their own drives and emailed around. I'd say most of the live agreements are in the main folder. Maybe the older ones aren't.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThat's honestly normal. We'll start with the main folder and tell you what we find. When we index it we give you a list of what was read and what couldn't be, so you can see the gaps rather than guess at them.
- Dana Whitaker NoneGood, I like that. I'd rather know what it can't see.
- Elena Novak NoneNumber three, then. Dana, who owns the contracts folder day to day? We will need someone who can say which agreements are current.
- Dana Whitaker NoneThat'd be one of my analysts. I'll nominate her. She knows where the bodies are buried.
- Elena Novak NoneThank you. Please include her in the same email. Now, to number three on the agenda, ownership more broadly. From BB-Demo, Hamza is your implementation consultant and will be hands on for the build. I am your customer success manager and I will look after adoption, the regular reviews and the relationship afterwards. Your account owner remains Jordan Pike, who agreed the commercial terms with you.
- Dana Whitaker NoneYes, Jordan was great. And I know you're based in Amsterdam, Elena. Is that going to be a problem for us, with the time difference?
- Elena Novak NoneNot at all, but thank you for asking. I will make sure that you have a window each week that suits Chicago, and I will answer in writing within a working day. The calls are a little later in the day for me, which is why we are meeting at this hour.
- Dana Whitaker NonePerfect. That's all I needed to hear.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOn the customer side then, we're after four roles, roughly. A sponsor, which is you. A technical contact in IT. A data owner per source, so the helpdesk, the calls and the contracts. And a small group of early users who'll try it and tell us when it's daft.
- Dana Whitaker NoneThe early users I can do. I'm thinking my two regional operations managers and a leasing coordinator. Is that too few? We're licensed for forty.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneNo, that's about right to start. Forty is the licence, you don't need to fill it on day one. Better to have a handful who really use it and shout, then open it up wider once the answers are good.
- Elena Novak NoneI agree. And a point of caution from experience: adoption tends to come from a few visible wins, not from a large invitation. I would suggest that when we widen it, we do so around a real question that your people already ask each other.
- Dana Whitaker NoneThe boiler thing, honestly. Which buildings had the same heating complaint, and what's the contract. That's the question of the week.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThen that's our first test question. I'll write it down. If we can answer that end to end by the working session, that's a good milestone.
- Dana Whitaker NoneOkay. Can I ask about timing, though? I've told my boss, the, well, the leadership group, that we'd see something in the next few weeks. I don't want to over promise.
- Elena Novak NoneOf course. Hamza will give you the technical sequence, and I will put it into writing with owners. One moment on dates: where a date depends on our Finance team, for example anything about invoicing, I will confirm with them before I give you one.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneFor the build, it goes roughly like this. Week one is access, the Snowflake space and the helpdesk connection. Then the first tickets are in and I show you what's indexed. After that the call recorder, which depends on the consent question we just discussed. Then contracts. Then we sit down and tune the answers on your questions. I don't want to give you a day for each, because it depends on how fast the access comes through on your side.
- Dana Whitaker NoneThat's fair. The access is the thing I can influence. So if I get my IT colleague moving this week, we're good.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneExactly. If the role and warehouse are in place early next week, I'd hope to show you tickets in the brain the week after. I'm saying hope, not promise.
- Dana Whitaker NoneHope is fine. Hope I can work with.
- Elena Novak NoneTo confirm the commercial position, since it sometimes helps to say it aloud at kickoff: the contract is the Growth tier, fifty thousand a year, with forty licensed users, and the term began on 2 Feb 2026. Is there anything in that which differs from your understanding, Dana?
- Dana Whitaker NoneNo, that's what I have. Fifty a year, forty seats. I signed it, so I'd hope so.
- Elena Novak NoneThank you. I ask only because I prefer there to be no surprises later.
- Dana Whitaker NoneTotally. Look, one more thing, and then I'll stop. Who sees what? If my regional managers ask the brain a question, can they see contracts that are only meant for the leadership team? Some of those have pricing we'd rather not have floating around.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneGood, that's exactly the right thing to raise now. The brain respects the permissions of the source where it can, and where it can't, we set up groups so that certain folders are only read for certain people. I'd like to sit down with your analyst and list which folders are sensitive. Then I'll build it that way from the start, instead of fixing it after somebody sees something.
- Dana Whitaker NoneYes. Please. Before, not after.
- Elena Novak NoneI will add that as number four: a list of sensitive contract folders, owner Dana's analyst, to be shared with Hamza before the contracts are connected.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneRight. And one question from me, so I can plan. Does anyone on your side use Slack for operational chatter, tenant issues, that sort of thing? Because it would be a natural place to ask the brain questions later on, though not for now.
- Dana Whitaker NoneSome teams do, yes. It's not consistent. I wouldn't connect it yet. I'd rather get the three right.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneAgreed. Three first. Slack is a conversation for later.
- Elena Novak NoneShall I summarise the actions? Number one, Dana sends the name of her colleague in IT, and Hamza sends the one-page note on the Snowflake role and warehouse. Number two, Dana finds the policy on which calls are recorded and confirms the scope with the leasing director. Number three, Dana nominates the analyst who owns the contracts folder. Number four, the sensitive folders list. Number five, Hamza proposes a working session once access is in place. And I will send all of this in writing today.
- Dana Whitaker NoneThat's everything. I'd add the boiler question as our test, if you've got it.
- Elena Novak NoneAs agreed, I will include it as the first test question.
- Dana Whitaker NoneBrilliant. Thank you both, honestly. This is the first time this project has felt like it has edges.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneGood, that's what we're after. Speak soon, Dana. Elena, thanks.
- Elena Novak NoneKind regards to you both. Thank you for your time, and goodbye for now.