Quennell Harte / BB-Demo – Discovery
Callcompleted
Quennell Harte: documents · 2026-04-15 14:30
Discovery call on 15 Apr 2026 with Quennell Harte's MD and operations manager. They reconcile CRM, project system and Outlook by hand and want one view. Interest is real; price was not discussed.
What was said
What this says
Current to 11 Oct 26Discovery call on 15 Apr 2026 with Quennell Harte's MD and operations manager. They reconcile CRM, project system and Outlook by hand and want one view. Interest is real; price was not discussed.
What happened: Sophie Ling ran discovery on 15 Apr 2026 with Simon Harte and Ellie Rowcliffe. Ellie described pulling client history from three systems by hand.
Customer view: Unbilled time across projects would take Ellie an hour or two to answer. Simon wants to show referral clients similar past projects quickly, since the firm grows by referral.
Commercial: A consulting team of about fifteen and CRM, project, email and accounting sources point to Starter, and four weeks matches Starter implementation. The evidence does not show a tier being agreed.
Watch: Sophie described a monthly subscription, whereas tiers are sold annually, quarterly on request. Cost was deferred to the proposal.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Theme
Manual data reconciliation pain
Importance
neutral
Sentiment
positive
Voice
decision-maker
Who was there
BB-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Sophie Ling to send demo times and the proposal to Simon Harte and Ellie Rowcliffe by end of that week.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Sophie described a monthly subscription, which does not match annual or quarterly billing and could confuse the proposal.
- Pricing was deferred, so the evidence does not show how the customer will react to cost.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- A Starter subscription with implementation over four weeks fits a lean team of about fifteen.
- Referral-led growth gives a clear use case: showing similar past projects and retrofit expertise on demand.
Transcript
Sophie Ling NoneHi Ellie, hi Simon, thanks for taking the call. How are you both?
Ellie Rowcliffe NoneGood, thanks for joining us.
Simon Harte NoneYeah, hello. Looking forward to learning what you do.- Sophie Ling NoneGreat. So today I want to understand your world a bit: what you're trying to do, where it's hard, what systems you use. Then we can see if the brain might help. Sound OK?
- Ellie Rowcliffe NoneYeah, that works for us.
- Sophie Ling NoneOK, so Quennell Harte does building-services engineering consulting: schools, hospitals, landlords, right?
- Simon Harte NoneThat's right. We manage projects across the UK, anywhere from feasibility studies to full building-systems design.
- Sophie Ling NoneAnd from a business perspective, who does what? How's the work tracked?
- Ellie Rowcliffe NoneSo Simon's the MD, I run operations: that's project tracking, timesheets, resource planning, invoicing. We use a CRM for the client side, and a project-management system for the work itself. And we've got Outlook for emails.
- Sophie Ling NoneAnd those three systems don't talk to each other?
- Ellie Rowcliffe NoneNot really. If I want to see: say, how many projects we've done for a client and what they've spent, I have to go into the project system, pull that, then go to the CRM to see the relationship, then check Outlook to see the latest conversation. It's manual.
- Simon Harte NoneWhich means when someone calls: a prospective client, Ellie or I have to do a bit of hunting to say, here's your history with us.
- Sophie Ling NoneRight. So you'd love to see all of that in one place: the client profile, projects, fees, conversations.
- Ellie Rowcliffe NoneExactly. And ideally, who we are in terms of expertise. Like, we've done three major retrofit projects: they're spread across multiple projects and clients, but if someone new calls looking for retrofit expertise, I can't easily surface that.
- Sophie Ling NoneOK so it's partly about client knowledge, partly about your own internal expertise and capacity.
- Simon Harte NoneYeah. And the other thing, we grow by referral. So when a client calls, if I can quickly show them three other similar projects we've done, it helps sell the next piece of work.
- Sophie Ling NoneThat makes sense. And on the finance side, do you invoice per project, per month?
- Ellie Rowcliffe NonePer project, usually. Time-and-materials on some, fixed-fee on others. So invoices are scattered across the project system and the accounting system, and we have to manually reconcile them.
- Sophie Ling NoneAnd if someone asked you, what's the unbilled time across all projects right now, how long would that take?
- Ellie Rowcliffe NoneHonestly, I don't think we could answer that without a full manual dig. Maybe an hour or two.
- Sophie Ling NoneRight, OK. And your team size?
- Simon Harte NoneConsulting team is about fifteen. Ellie and I on the ops and commercial side.
- Sophie Ling NoneSo pretty lean. You guys are the business brains as well as running operations. So if you could get time back from data-hunting, that'd free you to focus on growth and delivery.
- Ellie Rowcliffe NoneYeah, that's the idea.
- Sophie Ling NoneSo what we do is build an AI layer over all your systems, CRM, project management, email, accounting if you use it, and let you ask questions in plain English. Like, show me all projects for this client, show me unbilled time, show me retrofit expertise. The brain pulls from all your systems and answers in seconds.
- Simon Harte NoneAnd it sits in our systems, or is it cloud?
- Sophie Ling NoneIt lives in your own Snowflake account, so your data never leaves your infrastructure. And it refreshes every night from your systems.
- Ellie Rowcliffe NoneOK, that's good from a security perspective. And do you need to build connectors to each system, or is it plug-and-play?
- Sophie Ling NoneWe handle the connectors. You'd tell us which systems to connect, CRM, your project system, email, accounting, and we build those and test them. Then you get instant access to unified data.
- Simon Harte NoneSounds interesting. What's the implementation like?
- Sophie Ling NoneWe'd do a discovery with you on which systems and fields matter, build the connectors, get your Snowflake set up, and go live. For a setup like yours, probably four weeks. We'd provide the implementation fee up front and then a monthly subscription for the brain itself.
- Ellie Rowcliffe NoneAnd what's the rough cost?
- Sophie Ling NoneI'll send you a proposal with pricing, but let's have a proper demo call where I show you the brain on a similar customer's data, and we can talk numbers then.
- Simon Harte NoneThat'd be good. When's a good time?
- Sophie Ling NoneHow about next week? I'll loop back to you both with a few options.
- Ellie Rowcliffe NoneSounds good.
- Sophie Ling NoneGreat. Thanks both, and I'll be in touch by end of week with demo times and the proposal.
- Simon Harte NoneThanks, Sophie.
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