What was said
What this says
Current to 11 Oct 26On 27 Feb 2026 Dana Whitaker said adoption was slow, only two sources were connected and her boss had asked what the money was buying. Hamza Akhtar set a plan to land the tenant history question.
What happened: Dana opened by saying she was concerned, as the contract was signed on 2 Feb 2026 and only she and one regional lead use the brain. Two of eight connectors are in use, and access requests stalled with IT.
Customer view: She still believes in the product but cannot yet show value. An overdue invoice, stuck on the customer side, led her boss to ask what they were getting.
Commercial: Hamza put the Growth subscription at fifty thousand a year and flagged renewal on 2 Feb 2027. Dana's success test is property managers using it unprompted before renewal calls.
Watch: The call recorder was promised for the following week and SharePoint the week after, subject to access. Elena and Jordan were to be told about the invoice.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Who was there
BB-Demo
Them
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Hamza to book an hour with the customer's systems administrator on Tuesday or Wednesday for the call recorder.
- Hamza to flag the overdue invoice to Jordan, the account owner, and Elena, the customer success manager, and send the data note for general counsel.
- Hamza to send Dana a weekly note with questions asked, people active and records indexed.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Dana's boss has questioned what the subscription delivers, and the renewal on 2 Feb 2027 will turn on that answer.
- Usage is limited to Dana and one regional lead, with the team in lease season and short of time.
- An invoice flagged overdue by the customer's finance team remains open.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- Three or four leasing managers as first users could make the tenant history question land.
- Six unused connectors on Growth leave room to deepen the brain once access is granted.
Transcript
- Hamza Akhtar NoneHello Dana, can you hear me alright? Good afternoon from London, or good morning for you, I suppose.
- Dana Whitaker NoneYes, loud and clear. It's still morning here, just about. I've been back to back since early so forgive me if I'm a bit scattered.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneNo, no, that's fine. How's the weather treating you? I saw Chicago on the news and it looked grim.
- Dana Whitaker NoneBrutal. Wind off the lake, everybody walking sideways. Honestly I'd swap you for a drizzly London afternoon any day.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneHa, you wouldn't for long. Right, so this is the onboarding session. I've got about forty minutes with you, and what I'd like to do is look at where we are, what's connected, who owns what on your side, and then agree what happens in the next couple of weeks. Does that suit?
- Dana Whitaker NoneYes. And I'll be honest with you up front, Hamza, I'm a bit concerned. We signed on Monday 2 February 2026, it's the end of the month now, and I don't feel like we've moved as fast as I thought we would.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOkay, thank you for saying that straight away. That's useful. Tell me what you're seeing.
- Dana Whitaker NoneSo, I log in, and I can ask it a few things, and it's fine. But I'm one of maybe two people in the building who've even opened it. The rest of my operations team haven't touched it. I sold this internally as the place where tenant tickets, lease-renewal calls and service contracts all sit together, and right now I can't point at a single person and say, go and ask the brain.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneMm. Right. And that matches what I see on my side, to be fair. Usage is very light, it's basically you and one other person. So you're not imagining it.
- Dana Whitaker NoneThat's the other person, yes. One of my regional leads. He tried it twice, I think.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneYeah. Can I ask, before we get into the plan, what do you think has been the blocker? Is it that people don't know about it, or that they've looked and it's not useful yet?
- Dana Whitaker NoneBit of both, honestly. Mostly they don't know. I haven't had the energy to do a proper launch because I didn't want to put it in front of forty people while it's half empty. And what's in there, it's thin. The tenant tickets are in, but the lease-renewal calls aren't, and the service contracts, no. So if somebody asks a question about a renewal, there's nothing to say.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThat makes sense. So the order is wrong. People can't get value until the sources are in, and you can't launch until there's value. We're stuck in the middle.
- Dana Whitaker NoneExactly that.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOkay. Let me share my screen, hang on. Can you see the connector list?
- Dana Whitaker NoneYes. It's small, but I can see it. Two lines.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneTwo connected, that's right. The helpdesk, which is where the tenant tickets come from, and one of your shared folders, which has a handful of documents in it. You're on Growth, so you have room for eight connectors, and we've used two. Six are sitting there unused.
- Dana Whitaker NoneSix. Right. That's a bit embarrassing, isn't it.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneNo, not at all. It's normal at this stage, it's just that we're a few weeks in and I'd have liked it further along. Part of that is on us, to be fair. I sent you the access checklist and we didn't chase it properly.
- Dana Whitaker NoneNo, it's not on you. The checklist went to me, I forwarded it to IT, and then it sat. One of the folks in IT was off for a bit. I should have pushed.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOkay. So who in IT is the right person? Not the name, I don't need the name, just the role.
- Dana Whitaker NoneIt'd be our systems administrator. He looks after the Microsoft 365 side and most of the access. He's good, he's just stretched, it's a small team.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneFine. And is Microsoft 365 where the lease documents and service contracts actually live, or is that somewhere else?
- Dana Whitaker NoneContracts are in SharePoint. Mostly. Some of the older ones are scanned and sitting in a folder on a drive that, honestly, I'd have to ask about. The lease-renewal calls are recorded, we use a call recorder, the property managers use it when they talk to tenants about renewals. That's the one I really care about.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneGood. So that's actually three things we can name. SharePoint for contracts, the call recorder for the renewal calls, and the helpdesk, which is already live. Which of the two new ones gives you the most value fastest?
- Dana Whitaker NoneThe calls. No question. When a lease is coming up, the property manager's already had two or three conversations with the tenant, and none of that is written down anywhere useful. If I could ask what has this tenant said about renewing, that's the thing that would get people using it.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneRight. Then let's make the call recorder first. SharePoint second. What do I need from you to make the call recorder happen?
- Dana Whitaker NoneThat's the bit I don't know. Someone has to be an admin on the recorder, and I'm not. I'm a normal user.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOkay, so we'd need an admin on the recorder to approve the connection, and somebody who can say which teams' calls should be included. Is it all the property managers or only some?
- Dana Whitaker NoneHmm. Not all of them. I'd say only the leasing side to start with. The facilities people use it as well but for different things, and I'd rather not pull in a lot of noise.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThat's sensible. Start narrow, widen later. We can filter by team when we connect it, so that's not a problem.
- Dana Whitaker NoneGood. Because one thing I do worry about is privacy. Some of those calls have, you know, tenants talking about their finances, their business.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneYes, and it's a fair thing to worry about. I'll be clear on how it works, because it matters. The brain runs inside your own Snowflake account. The data doesn't leave it. So the calls land in your environment, under your controls, and you decide who can query what.
- Dana Whitaker NoneOkay. That's what I told our general counsel, but it's good to hear you say it again. She'll probably want that in writing.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOf course. I'll send a short note you can pass on. Not a sales document, just how the data sits and who can see it.
- Dana Whitaker NoneThank you. That'd help.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneNow, let me ask about something else, and tell me if I'm stepping out of line. Is there anything outside the project that's been making it harder to give this attention? You mentioned it's busy.
- Dana Whitaker NoneNo, you're fine. It's lease season, basically. A lot of our office portfolio comes up at the same time, so my team's been working flat out. It's not that they don't care, they just have no room to learn a new tool. That's a worry for me, because if I'm asking them to try something right now, they'll say no and mean it.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneUnderstood. So the launch has to be tiny and obviously useful. Not a big rollout, not a lot of training. One question they can answer faster with the brain than without it.
- Dana Whitaker NoneYes. Yes, exactly. That's the thing.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOkay. So what's the question? If you had to pick one question that a property manager asks every week.
- Dana Whitaker NoneHmm. Let me think. What's the history with this tenant before I phone them. Open tickets, what they've said on calls, when their contract is up. That's basically the whole job before any renewal conversation.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThat's a good one. That uses all three sources. The tickets already there, the calls, and the contracts. So the tenant history question is the target. When that works, you've got your launch.
- Dana Whitaker NoneRight. And how long is that going to take? Because I need to be able to tell my boss something.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneFair. I don't want to overpromise. The connectors themselves are quick once access is there, it's the access that takes the time. If your systems administrator can give me an hour in the next week, I'd expect the call recorder to be loading shortly after. SharePoint could follow within the fortnight.
- Dana Whitaker NoneSo the call recorder, next week. And SharePoint, the week after.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThat's the plan, subject to access. I'd rather say it that way and be right.
- Dana Whitaker NoneNo, I appreciate that. Honestly, I've had too many vendors say next week and mean next quarter.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneHa. Yeah. I'll try not to be one of them.
- Dana Whitaker NoneCan I raise something else? It's a bit awkward.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneGo on.
- Dana Whitaker NoneOur finance team flagged an invoice from you as overdue. I wanted to say, I know about it, it's not a dispute as such. It got stuck on our side. But it came up in a meeting and my boss asked me what we were even getting for the money, and I didn't have a great answer. Which is partly why I'm being so blunt on this call.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOkay. Thank you for telling me. I don't handle invoicing, so I can't speak to the detail, but I'll make sure Jordan and Elena know, so nobody's surprised. Jordan's your account owner and Elena is your customer success manager. Would you rather I let them pick it up with you, or with your finance team directly?
- Dana Whitaker NoneFinance directly is probably cleaner. I'll tell them to expect it. I'll chase it on my side as well, I don't want it hanging over this.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneGood. I'll flag it today. And on your boss's question, what are we getting for the money, I think that's the right question. At fifty thousand a year for the Growth subscription, you should be able to show something concrete soon. That's what this plan is for.
- Dana Whitaker NoneYes. And that's the thing, I do believe in it. I saw the demo, I thought it was impressive. I just need it to land with my people.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneUnderstood. Then let's make it land. Can I suggest a few specific things, and you tell me which are realistic?
- Dana Whitaker NonePlease.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOne. You name an owner on your side for the data, someone who can answer, is this the right folder, is this the right team. Doesn't have to be senior. Two. Your systems administrator is named as the admin and sets aside an hour next week for the call recorder. Three. You pick three or four people, not forty, who'll be the first users. Ideally property managers who do a lot of renewals. Four. We do a short session with just them, around thirty minutes, on that one tenant history question.
- Dana Whitaker NoneThree or four people. That I can do. I know who I'd pick, actually. There's a couple of the leasing managers who complain loudest about having to dig through old emails. They'd be good.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneBrilliant. The ones who complain loudest are always the best first users, because they know what they want. And if it works for them, the others hear about it from colleagues, which is far better than hearing it from you or from me.
- Dana Whitaker NoneThat's true. That's very true.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOn the data owner, who'd that be? Have you got someone in mind?
- Dana Whitaker NoneHmm. It'd probably be my operations coordinator. She knows where everything is, she's organised the contract folders for years. I'd have to ask her, she may say she's too busy as well.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneWould it help if I framed it as a small ask? Maybe an hour here and there over the next few weeks, mostly answering my questions.
- Dana Whitaker NoneThat would help, yes. If it's an hour, she'll do it. If it's an open-ended project, she won't.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneUnderstood. I'll write it so it's clearly bounded. Okay, let me go back to the screen for a second. There's one other thing I want to show you, because it might help with the boss question. This is the usage page, can you see it?
- Dana Whitaker NoneYes. That's a very flat line.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneIt is a very flat line. And it's useful, actually, because it's an honest baseline. We'll look at this again in a month, and if I've done my job, it won't be flat. Questions asked, people active, records indexed. Those are the three I'd watch.
- Dana Whitaker NoneOkay. Can you send me that page regularly? Even weekly? I'd like to be able to show my boss that the line moves.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneYes, I can send you a short weekly note while we're in onboarding. Nothing fancy, just those three numbers and what changed.
- Dana Whitaker NonePerfect. That would honestly help a lot.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneNow, licences. You have forty users on the Growth plan. I'm not worried about that number, you're nowhere near it. But when you do roll out, think about who should have a seat. Don't give it to everyone by default, give it to the people who'll use it.
- Dana Whitaker NoneRight, I'd planned to give it to the whole operations team eventually. Is there a problem with that?
- Hamza Akhtar NoneNo problem at all, forty is plenty for an operations team. I'm just saying that a seat nobody uses makes the usage line look worse than it is. Start with the few, then add.
- Dana Whitaker NoneThat makes sense. Okay.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneLet me ask you about the contracts, because that's the one I'm least sure about. You said some are in SharePoint and some are scanned. How messy are the scans?
- Dana Whitaker NoneMessy. Some are proper PDFs you can search. Some are photos of paper, honestly, taken on a phone. Those I wouldn't trust anything to read.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOkay. So we'd want to be honest about that. The brain can only answer from what it can read. If a contract is a blurry photo, it'll either skip it or get it wrong, and I'd rather we skip it and tell you which ones were skipped.
- Dana Whitaker NoneYes. I'd much rather it said, I couldn't read this one, than guess. Because if it guesses wrong on a lease date, somebody's going to lose a tenant.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneAbsolutely. That's the right instinct. So for the first pass, we only take the contracts that are clean. Your operations coordinator can help us sort which are which, and we list the rest as a clean-up job for later.
- Dana Whitaker NoneGood. That's pragmatic. I like that.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOkay. What else is on your mind? We've got a bit of time.
- Dana Whitaker NoneHmm. I suppose the thing I keep coming back to is whether I've made a mistake. Not in a dramatic way. But I pushed for this, I'm the one who brought you in, and if it flops, it's on me. I can't shake that.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThat's an honest thing to say, and I'm glad you said it. I'd say two things. First, it hasn't flopped, it's just early and quiet. Second, the reason it's quiet is something we can fix, which is that the sources aren't in. That's not a product problem, that's a plan problem.
- Dana Whitaker NoneOkay. That's a helpful way to put it.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneAnd if I'm honest, a lot of customers are exactly here at this stage. The ones that do well are the ones where somebody like you says out loud, this isn't working yet, what do we do. You've done that on day one of this call.
- Dana Whitaker NoneHa. Well. I'm glad I'm doing something right.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneMore than something. Right, let me get specific on dates. Today's Friday 27 February 2026. What's a realistic date for your systems administrator to give me that hour?
- Dana Whitaker NoneLet me look at my calendar. Hang on. Mm. He's out Monday. Tuesday or Wednesday would be best, I'd say. I can message him as soon as we hang up.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneTuesday or Wednesday works for me, any time in your morning, which is my afternoon, so I'm flexible. If you ask him which he prefers and send it over, I'll book it.
- Dana Whitaker NoneDone. I'll send you a time by end of day.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneLovely. And the short session with your first few users, can we aim for the week after the call recorder is loading? That way there are actual calls in there when they try it.
- Dana Whitaker NoneYes. Yes, that's right. No point showing them an empty brain.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneExactly. Okay. Another thing I should mention, so you're not caught out. Your contract runs to 1 Feb 2027, and renewal falls the day after, 2 Feb 2027. That's a long way off, but it's worth having in your head, because the question the business will ask next January is whether it was worth it. I'd like us to have a good answer well before then.
- Dana Whitaker NoneYes. Understood. And I'd rather know that now than be surprised. Okay.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneSo let's work backwards from a good answer. What would you want to be able to say to your boss in, say, three months? What would make you feel it was working?
- Dana Whitaker NoneHmm. That's a good question. I think, if a property manager told me unprompted that they'd used it before a renewal call. That would be the thing. Not me asking them, them telling me.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOkay. So that's the real measure. Somebody using it who you didn't ask to. I like that. And a number, maybe, to go with it. How many people asked something that week.
- Dana Whitaker NoneYes. Even if it's a handful, as long as it's a handful that's growing.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneRight. A growing handful. I'll write that down as the first target. Is there anything blocking us on your side that I haven't asked about? Security review, procurement, anything like that?
- Dana Whitaker NoneSecurity, our general counsel will want to see the note I mentioned. Other than that, I don't think so. Procurement is done, that's all signed. It's really just getting people's time.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOkay. Then let me try to summarise, and you stop me if I've got anything wrong. Is that alright?
- Dana Whitaker NoneGo ahead.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneSo. The brain has two sources connected, tickets and a folder. The aim is the tenant history question, which needs the call recorder, SharePoint and the helpdesk together. Call recorder first, with your systems administrator, Tuesday or Wednesday. SharePoint after that, with your operations coordinator helping us sort the clean contracts. You pick three or four first users, mostly leasing managers. We run a short session with them once the calls are in. I send you a weekly note with the usage numbers. And I send a short data note for your general counsel.
- Dana Whitaker NoneThat's it. That's exactly it. And the invoice, finance will chase on my side, and you'll flag it to Jordan and Elena.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneYes, thank you, I nearly forgot. I'll do that straight after this call.
- Dana Whitaker NoneGood. Look, can I say one more thing?
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOf course.
- Dana Whitaker NoneI came into this call a bit fed up, I'll admit. Not at you, more at the situation. But I do feel better. It's useful to have an actual list. Before this it was just a general sense that things weren't moving.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThat's good to hear. And honestly it's on me too to keep it from drifting. If you don't hear from me by Thursday next week and the call recorder isn't loading, push me.
- Dana Whitaker NoneI will. Don't worry about that. I can be quite annoying.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneHa, I'd say that's a feature. Right. Is there anything else you want to cover? We've got a few minutes.
- Dana Whitaker NoneMaybe one small thing. When the first users try it, what should I tell them to expect? I don't want them to ask something silly and get a bad answer and decide it's rubbish.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneGood question. I'd tell them to ask it the way they'd ask a colleague. Plain words, a tenant's name, a thing they want to know. And tell them it'll sometimes say it doesn't know, and that's good, not a failure. If it ever gives an answer that looks wrong, they should tell you or me, because that's how we fix it.
- Dana Whitaker NoneOkay. Plain words, and tell us when it's wrong. I can say that.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneI'll put it on a half page you can forward to them, so you don't have to remember it.
- Dana Whitaker NoneThank you, that would be brilliant. Less for me to write.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneAnything on the helpdesk side? That one's been live a while. Are you happy with how the tickets look in there?
- Dana Whitaker NoneMostly. I haven't seen a problem. It's just, when I ask about a particular building, it's good, but it's only tickets, so it only tells me half the story. That's why I want the rest.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneYes, that's the half-the-story feeling. We'll fix that. Okay. I think that's what I wanted. Let me check the time. We've got a little left. Is there something that's still unclear?
- Dana Whitaker NoneNo, I think I'm clear. I know what I'm doing today, which is message the systems administrator, ask my coordinator about an hour, and pick my first users. And talk to finance.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThat's it. Four things, all small. And from me, the data note, the flag to Jordan and Elena, the one-page guide, and the first weekly usage note.
- Dana Whitaker NoneGood. Lovely. And if the systems administrator says he can't do Tuesday or Wednesday?
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThen tell me what he can do and I'll move. The only thing I'd ask is that we don't let it slip past the following week, otherwise the whole sequence slides.
- Dana Whitaker NoneUnderstood. I'll hold the line on that.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThank you, Dana. And thanks for being direct about it. That's what makes this possible.
- Dana Whitaker NoneNo, thank you. It's been more useful than I expected, to be honest. I'll be in touch by end of day with the time.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneBrilliant. Speak soon. Enjoy the rest of your morning, and wrap up warm.
- Dana Whitaker NoneHa, will do. Cheers, Hamza. Bye for now.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneBye, Dana.