What was said
What this says
Current to 11 Oct 26Delancey Haig's Growth brain has only the CRM connector loaded and about two daily users. The accounting service account is stuck with IT, and one BB-Demo invoice is flagged as overdue by their finance team.
What happened: Callie Brennan ran the 6 Aug 2024 onboarding with Saskia Mendes and Holly Tranter. Only the CRM connector has loaded, so directors see nothing they cannot already get from the CRM.
Customer view: Saskia bought the brain to stop directors reconciling invoices, complaints and vacancies by hand. She told the board it would do that and now needs it to earn its keep.
Commercial: Saskia said one BB-Demo invoice is flagged as overdue by their finance team and that it is not a refusal to pay. Callie, on the implementation side, does not see invoices and passed it to the account and customer success owners.
Watch: The accounting service account sits with IT, and the whole setup rests on Holly as the only admin. The evidence does not show whether the invoice has since been paid.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Who was there
BB-Demo
Them
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Callie Brennan sends the three-line access note and setup note, and messages Priya and Daniel about the overdue invoice.
- Saskia Mendes chases IT on the accounting service account and picks the two pilot directors.
- Holly Tranter sends helpdesk access in writing and asks a colleague about being second admin.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Directors see only CRM data they already have, so adoption stays low on the Growth subscription.
- The accounting service account is held up in the customer's IT queue, delaying the invoice and complaint join.
- Holly is the only admin, and one BB-Demo invoice is flagged as overdue by the customer's finance team.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- Landing the accounting and helpdesk connectors gives directors the single client view they bought.
- Two pilot directors, one keen and one sceptical, can build the first-fortnight question evidence.
Transcript
- Callie Brennan NoneHi both, can you hear me all right?
- Saskia Mendes NoneLoud and clear. Sorry, I'm in a room that is basically a cupboard, the proper meeting rooms are all taken.
- Holly Tranter NoneHi Callie. I can hear you. My camera's off, the laptop is having a moment and I don't want to push it.
- Callie Brennan NoneNo problem at all, audio is what matters. Right, let me give you the plan for the next forty minutes or so, and then tell me if it's the wrong plan. First, where we are with the connectors. Second, what I need from your side is a short list of access items, because that's what is holding the first refresh. Third, who is actually going to be in the brain day to day. And then we agree who does what before we speak again.
- Saskia Mendes NoneThat's the right plan. Can I tell you something quickly first? It's relevant, I promise.
- Callie Brennan NoneGo for it.
- Saskia Mendes NoneSo on Thursday one of my client-account directors goes into a review with a big client. Halfway through, the client says, we've had two complaints about your contractors' invoices and nobody has come back to us. And he had no idea. None. The complaints were sitting in one system, the invoices in another, and the vacancies in a third. He's sat there with a spreadsheet that somebody built the week before. That's exactly why we bought this thing. The directors need this.
- Callie Brennan NoneYeah, that's the use case, honestly. A director seeing one client whole. Mm. So that's a good reminder of what we're connecting towards.
- Saskia Mendes NoneRight. Which is also why I'm a bit twitchy, if I'm honest. Because I looked at the usage page last night and it's, well. Holly, you tell her.
- Holly Tranter NoneIt's basically you and me, Saskia. There's the odd login from somebody else, but on an average day it's barely two people. We've got forty licences and they're mostly sat there.
- Saskia Mendes NoneAnd I'm not going to pretend otherwise. The directors had the demo, they said it looked great, and then none of them has really been back. A couple of them asked me, what do I actually do with it?
- Callie Brennan NoneOkay, that's useful, and thank you for saying it straight. Can I ask what they see when they do log in? Because, from my side, the only thing that has loaded so far is the CRM connector. Vacancies and placements are in. Invoices are not, complaints are not.
- Holly Tranter NoneYes, that's right. So they open it, they see their clients and the vacancies, and that's about it. They can get that out of the CRM already.
- Callie Brennan NoneExactly. So I wouldn't read low usage as them not wanting it. If I opened it and saw only what I could already see in the CRM, I wouldn't come back either. The value is in the join, and the join isn't there yet.
- Saskia Mendes NoneOkay. Okay, that makes me feel slightly better. So what's missing, in plain words?
- Callie Brennan NoneTwo things, and they're both on the list I mentioned. The accounting system, for invoices and anything about contractor payments. And the helpdesk where the client complaints land. Until I have written access to both, I don't start the connector. That's a rule of mine, I'm afraid. Before we switch on the refresh, I want the credentials in my hand, not promised.
- Holly Tranter NoneFair enough. So the helpdesk one I think I can do this week, I'm an admin there. The accounting one is the problem. I can't create a service account myself, it has to come from a colleague in IT, and they've, um. They've had it for a bit.
- Callie Brennan NoneHow long is a bit?
- Holly Tranter NoneA couple of weeks. I asked once, then I asked again. I'll be honest, it isn't high on their list.
- Saskia Mendes NoneRight, so that's mine to fix. Holly, send me the name and I'll go and speak to their lead. Today, not Friday. Can we make it simpler for them though? What exactly are they being asked to create?
- Callie Brennan NoneGood question, and yes, simple. A read-only account, for the brain only, with access to invoices and payments. No editing, no deleting. I'll write it as three lines so your IT colleague can just do it, and I'll attach the same note I give every customer on what we read and what we don't.
- Holly Tranter NoneThat would help a lot, thank you. They always want to know whether it writes back.
- Callie Brennan NoneIt doesn't. Read-only, and the data stays in your Snowflake account, it doesn't go anywhere else. I'll put that in the first line so nobody has to ask.
- Saskia Mendes NonePerfect. Okay.
- Callie Brennan NoneLet me share my screen, give me a second. There. Can you see the connector list?
- Holly Tranter NoneYes. I see it. Some of them are greyed out.
- Callie Brennan NoneThose are the ones in your plan that aren't started. You're on Growth, so you've got room for eight connectors in total, and we're using one properly. I'd like us to land the accounting system and the helpdesk next, then the mailboxes, then calls, in that order. That maps cleanly to what Saskia just described, because the invoice and complaint story comes first.
- Saskia Mendes NoneWhy mailboxes before calls?
- Callie Brennan NoneMostly because the mailbox access is quicker to get and it gives the directors something they recognise: what the client actually said. Calls are richer but they take longer to map. I'd rather you had something good in three weeks than something perfect in eight.
- Saskia Mendes NoneWhat did the client actually say. Yes. That's the question they always ask. Okay, I like that order.
- Holly Tranter NoneCan I ask about the CRM connector? There was a ticket I raised, it's the one from a few weeks ago.
- Callie Brennan NoneThe sign-in one, yes. I've got it here. That was the token expiring on your side and the connector failing quietly rather than telling anyone. It loaded after you re-authorised. What I'd like to do is put a note in your setup document on how to do that, so you don't need to raise a ticket next time, you just do it.
- Holly Tranter NoneThat'd be good. I wasn't sure whether it was me or you.
- Callie Brennan NoneIt's never a silly question. But yes, I'd rather you could run it alone. That's the aim of me being here, really, that Holly can look after this without me.
- Saskia Mendes NoneWhich is, to be fair, my other worry. It's Holly and me, and if either of us is off, nobody knows how any of it works.
- Callie Brennan NoneYes, I'd flag that too. One admin is fine to start but it's thin. Is there a second person who could be named as an admin, even just as cover?
- Holly Tranter NonePossibly someone in my team. I'd have to ask. He's quite good with the data side.
- Callie Brennan NoneAsk him, and if he says yes, send me his name and I'll set him up and include him in the walkthrough. Doesn't need to be today.
- Saskia Mendes NoneOkay, now, I do want to raise something else, because I'd rather say it than have it sit there. There's an invoice from you that our finance team has flagged as overdue. One invoice. I've no idea of the detail, and I want to be clear that it isn't us deciding not to pay you.
- Callie Brennan NoneThanks for saying that. I should be honest that I'm on the implementation side, I don't see invoices or payments, so I can't tell you what's going on with it. What I can do is put it in front of the right people today. Priya looks after the account commercially, and Daniel is your customer success manager. I'll message both and ask one of them to contact whoever in your finance team is chasing it.
- Saskia Mendes NonePlease. And I'll go the other way, I'll ask finance what they're waiting for. I suspect it's stuck in a queue, but I don't know.
- Holly Tranter NoneI could look as well. I have a view of the payables list, so I can at least tell you what status it's in.
- Saskia Mendes NoneThat would be brilliant, Holly, thank you. Then we're not guessing.
- Callie Brennan NoneGood. So that's separate from what we're doing here, but I didn't want it hanging over the call. Right. Back to people. Who are the first users? Forty licences is a lot to switch on in one go, and if you switch on forty people who see only the CRM data, they leave. I'd rather start small.
- Saskia Mendes NoneHow small?
- Callie Brennan NoneTwo directors, ones who will actually tell you the truth. Ideally one who's keen and one who's sceptical. We get the invoices and complaints in, I sit with them for half an hour each, and we see what they ask. The questions people ask in the first fortnight tell us what to build for everyone else.
- Saskia Mendes NoneSceptical is easy. I've got one who thinks all of this is a fad. And the keen one is the one with the review on Thursday, he's been burnt.
- Holly Tranter NoneWould they need training first, or can they just start?
- Callie Brennan NoneNo separate training. I'd do it on their own clients, live, because the thing that makes it click is seeing a client they know. A generic walkthrough is how you get a polite nod and nobody back.
- Saskia Mendes NoneYes. That's the demo problem, actually. It was somebody else's data. Fine, so own clients. I'll pick the two and tell them it's coming.
- Callie Brennan NoneLovely. Let me say it back so we all have the same list. Holly: helpdesk access this week, in writing, and the question to the colleague about being second admin. Saskia: chase IT on the accounting service account, today, and choose the two directors. Me: the three-line access note and the setup note this afternoon, a message to Priya and Daniel about the invoice, and once the access lands, the first refresh for the accounting system and helpdesk.
- Holly Tranter NoneThat's about right. Can you write it down? I will forget the second admin bit.
- Callie Brennan NoneIt'll be in the email. Date against every step, so we can see what slipped. I'd like to talk again in a couple of weeks, whether or not the access has come through, so we're not drifting.
- Saskia Mendes NoneYes, please. I don't want this to be one of those things we bought and then forgot about. I told the board it would stop the directors reconciling things by hand. I need it to earn its keep.
- Callie Brennan NoneI understand. And I don't think it's far off, honestly. One connector in and two or three people using it, at this stage, is a bit behind where I'd like, but it's recoverable. It's the access, not the product.
- Saskia Mendes NoneGood. Then I'll go and shout at IT, politely.
- Holly Tranter NonePolitely, yes. I'll send the helpdesk details after this call, Callie.
- Callie Brennan NoneBrilliant. Thanks both, speak in a couple of weeks. Thanks, Callie.
- Saskia Mendes NoneBest, Saskia. Bye all.
- Holly Tranter NoneBye, thanks.