Delancey Haig / BB-Demo – Exec Sponsor
Callcompleted
Delancey Haig: documents · 2026-04-14 16:45
On 14 Apr 2026 the CFO and CTO pressed BB-Demo on what Delancey Haig gets for £44,000 a year and what it would hold if it left. A handful of directors use the brain heavily. The CFO committed to nothing.
What was said
What this says
Current to 11 Oct 26On 14 Apr 2026 the CFO and CTO pressed BB-Demo on what Delancey Haig gets for £44,000 a year and what it would hold if it left. A handful of directors use the brain heavily. The CFO committed to nothing.
What happened: Sofia Marchetti hosted the exec sponsor call on 14 Apr 2026. It was called because Kwame Asante asked what the firm would hold if it stepped away and Rupert Lasker asked what it gets for what it pays.
Customer view: Saskia Mendes and Jess Ferrand defended the value for the directors. Jess also said recent call content was not yet in the brain when a client asked.
Commercial: Growth is 40 licensed users at £44,000 a year, and only a handful use it properly. The contract runs to 2 Jul 2026 and the renewal conversation was pencilled for 19 May 2026.
Watch: Rupert and Kwame both raised doing it in house. BB-Demo owes a written handover note, use by person and client team, and a review of the recent tickets.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Theme
Value and exit questions
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
mixed
Voice
decision-maker
Who was there
BB-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Sofia Marchetti to send a written note on what the firm would hold, what stops working and the access model by the end of next week.
- Daniel Okafor to send use by person and client team, and what is behind the recent tickets, by Friday.
- Saskia Mendes and Jess Ferrand to tell BB-Demo what the directors would miss, by the end of next week.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- The CFO says the firm pays for 40 users and uses a fraction, and he is weighing an in-house build to cut suppliers.
- Jess Ferrand found recent call content missing from the brain, which undermines trust in data freshness.
- The CTO wants the data and grounding brief to be the firm's own either way, so handover terms are now part of the renewal.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- Saskia Mendes bought the brain and says losing it would cost the review packs, so she can build the value case.
- Jess Ferrand uses it weekly for client reviews and can show what the directors would miss.
- Bringing occasional users in or reshaping the Growth licence could fit it to actual use.
Transcript
Daniel Okafor NoneHello, can everyone hear me alright? Afternoon, and thank you all for making the time, I know it's late in the day. Let me just check who's joined. Sofia, Saskia, Rupert, and I think Kwame and Jess are on their way in.
Saskia Mendes NoneHi Daniel, hi all. Sorry, I'm in a room with no door, so if you hear the printer, that's me. Quick story before we start. A client rang on Friday sure we'd double-billed them for a contractor, and we had it straightened out in ten minutes because the account director could see the invoices and the timesheets side by side. That's the whole point. The directors need this.
Rupert Lasker NoneAfternoon. How long is this going to take? I have a hard stop.
Sofia Marchetti NoneAfternoon, Rupert. We have the full slot, but I'll keep an eye on your stop and we can cover the money first if that helps. Before anything else, I want to acknowledge why this is in the diary. Kwame has asked what the firm would hold if it ever stepped away from the brain, and Rupert, you've asked what the firm is getting for what it pays. Those are fair questions. Let's be clear about what we're here to do: answer both properly, without a sales pitch. And I own that we should have brought you a proper review sooner.
Kwame Asante NoneThanks, Sofia, I appreciate that. Is the architecture diagram to hand? I'd like to start with where the data lives.- Daniel Okafor NoneI have it. Give me a second to share my screen. Can you see it? Right, there we are.
- Daniel Okafor NoneSo, in plain terms. The brain is built and run inside your own Snowflake account, not ours. Your CRM, the call recorder, mail, the helpdesk and the accounting system feed in on the left. What lands in your account is the raw copy, and on top of it sit the derived layers, which are the tables and views that join a client's vacancies, placements, invoices and complaints together. Then the chat, the search and the dashboards sit over those.
- Kwame Asante NoneWhere does the grounding brief sit in that picture?
- Daniel Okafor NoneJust here, alongside the derived layers. It's the document that tells the brain how your firm talks: what a placement is, how a contractor invoice differs from a permanent fee, which fields you trust over which. It's the part that was written with Saskia's team at the start.
- Saskia Mendes NoneAnd revised since, twice, with the directors. It's not a thing we wrote once and forgot.
- Kwame Asante NoneGood. So here is my real question. If the firm decided to take the derived layers and the grounding brief with it, how would we do that? Practically. What do we walk away with, in what format, and what stops working the day we do?
- Sofia Marchetti NoneLet me answer in two parts, and I'll be careful not to overclaim. First, the layers live in your Snowflake account already, so the tables are yours to read and query. That isn't a favour, it's how it was built. Second, the grounding brief is a document describing your business, and I would expect you to be able to hold a readable copy of it. What I don't want to do is answer the licence and handover detail from memory on a call. Here is what we will do: put it in writing, exactly what you'd hold, in what form, and what would stop working, and get it to you by the end of next week.
- Kwame Asante NoneThat's fair. My team can do that, you understand. Rebuild the joins, maintain the connectors. What's the build-versus-buy case? I'd want it in an options paper, not on a call.
- Sofia Marchetti NoneThen we'll make the paper easy to write. And I won't pretend you couldn't. A capable team can build the layers. The honest question is what it costs to keep them right every night, across every source, when a system changes upstream. That's the part I'd put in front of you with real examples rather than argue it here.
- Kwame Asante NoneMm. Fine. Put the examples in.
Jess Ferrand NoneSorry, can I jump in? I'm late, I've just come out of a client review. Hi all. I'll say this plainly because I know why we're here. I used it this morning. I had the technology client review today and I asked it what the client had said about last quarter's invoices and what they'd complained about, and I had it in seconds. I walked in with it.- Rupert Lasker NoneThat's one person.
- Jess Ferrand NoneIt's one person who does it every week, Rupert. But, and I'll be straight, is this up to date? That's my worry. Yesterday afternoon the client asked me straight out about something from a call earlier in the week, and when I looked in the brain it wasn't there yet. I got it from my own notes. Not a disaster, but I noticed.
- Daniel Okafor NoneThank you, Jess, I'm glad you said it. We've had a few tickets from you all in the last month and a couple were marked high priority, so I've seen the pattern. Just to close the loop properly: I'll go through every one of them, line by line, and come back to you by Friday with what's behind each and what's changed.
- Jess Ferrand NonePlease. I don't mind if it's slow, I mind if I don't know it's slow.
- Sofia Marchetti NoneThat's a good way to put it, and it's a fair thing to ask of us: a plain signal when the data is behind. I'll take that away.
- Rupert Lasker NoneCan I ask my question? What are we actually using? Not what's licensed. We've forty seats, forty-four thousand a year. How many people actually log in?
- Saskia Mendes NoneRupert, I'll take that, because I'd rather you heard it from me. It's not forty. It's a handful who use it properly, the directors who've made it part of their review. Jess most of all. And a few who used it more last quarter than they do now. I won't dress it up.
- Daniel Okafor NoneThat matches what I see. Active use is a little lower than the previous quarter. Not a cliff, but a dip, and the dip is in the occasional users. The heavy users have held up.
- Rupert Lasker NoneSo we're paying for forty and using a fraction.
- Sofia Marchetti NoneYes. That's right, Rupert, and I won't argue with it. Forty licensed users on Growth at £44k a year is what you've contracted, and the invoices match the order form. The question is whether the people who do use it get enough out of it to carry that, and whether the rest can be brought in or the licence shaped to fit. I'd rather show you that by person and by client team than assert it.
- Rupert Lasker NoneRemind me of the annual cost, once more, in full.
- Daniel Okafor None£44,000 a year. That's the subscription. The implementation was a one-off at the start and it's not in that.
- Rupert Lasker NoneAnd what does it replace? Because if it's an extra cost on top of what finance and the account teams were already doing, I have a problem. Can we do this ourselves, with Kwame's people? Fewer suppliers is what I'm after.
- Kwame Asante NoneI'd want to be careful there. I'm not saying it's cheap to do in house. I'm saying I'd want to know, and I'd want the data to be ours either way.
- Rupert Lasker NoneWhich is why I asked.
- Saskia Mendes NoneCan I say something, as the person who bought it? What did the client actually say? That's the question the directors ask, and until we had this, answering it meant three systems and a phone call. If we lose that, I lose the review packs, and I'll have to hire to cover it. I'd rather we fix the adoption than switch off the thing that works for the people using it.
- Rupert Lasker NoneThen show me the adoption. Per person. Not a chart of averages.
- Sofia Marchetti NoneAgreed. Here is what we will do. Daniel will send you use by person and by client team for the last two quarters, with the questions asked, who asks them, and where the data was behind. And I'd like Saskia and Jess to tell us which three or four things the directors would genuinely miss. That's the value case, in their words, not ours.
- Saskia Mendes NoneI can do that by the end of next week. I'll ask the directors one question: what would you do without it on Monday morning?
- Rupert Lasker NoneQuite a good question.
- Daniel Okafor NoneWhile we're on the calendar, the contract runs to 2 Jul 2026, and the renewal date is 3 Jul 2026. We've pencilled the renewal conversation for 19 May 2026. I'd rather that conversation was built on what you've seen in the next few weeks than be a surprise to anyone.
- Rupert Lasker NoneI never take a renewal for granted. And I'm not committing to anything today.
- Sofia Marchetti NoneI'm not asking you to. I'm asking for the chance to show you what you're using and what you'd hold if you left. If the answer to both is not enough, you should hear that from us before you hear it from your own numbers.
- Kwame Asante NoneOne more from me, then. If we did step away, what would that look like? The data first, the licence second.
- Sofia Marchetti NoneThat's in the written note too, and I'll mark it clearly: what's yours on day one, what needs a handover, and what stays with us. I'd rather you read it than take my word for it.
- Kwame Asante NoneI don't take a vendor's word on security either, as you know. So I'd like the access model written down as well.
- Sofia Marchetti NoneUnderstood. It'll be in there.
- Jess Ferrand NoneCan I ask one practical thing? If I'm in the middle of a review pack and the brain is behind, can it just say so?
- Daniel Okafor NoneI'll take that to the team and come back to you by Friday with what's possible, alongside the tickets.
- Saskia Mendes NoneCan we make it simpler, though? Every time we ask for something it turns into a project. A banner would do.
- Sofia Marchetti NoneA banner is a reasonable thing to ask for, and I'll put it to the team exactly that plainly.
- Rupert Lasker NoneI do have to go. Summary please, so I know what I'm waiting for.
- Sofia Marchetti NoneFour things. One, from us, a written note on what you'd hold if you took the derived layers and the grounding brief, in what form, what stops working, and the access model, by the end of next week. Two, Daniel sends use by person and by client team, plus what's behind the recent tickets, by Friday. Three, Saskia and Jess tell us what the directors would miss. Four, Kwame writes his options paper whenever he's ready, and we'll answer anything he needs for it. Rupert, you hold your judgement until you've seen both.
- Rupert Lasker NoneThat's fine. Thank you. I'll wait for it.
- Kwame Asante NoneThanks, all. Speak soon.
- Saskia Mendes NoneThanks both. Talk soon.
- Jess Ferrand NoneCheers, all.
- Daniel Okafor NoneThank you everyone for your time. Best wishes.
- Sofia Marchetti NoneThank you. Goodbye.
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