What was said
What this says
Current to 13 Oct 26Gemma Thorne and Kofi Asamoah saw a demo on a sample of their data. Gemma wants one story across service desk and account managers. The £54k Growth proposal needs her decision-maker, with a target of 18 Nov 2025.
What happened: Anya Petrova demoed the brain on a sample extract in a test Snowflake account. Gemma Thorne said the service desk and account managers should tell the same story, and called the session far more useful than she expected.
Customer view: Kofi Asamoah wants to know what each source needs, how often it loads and who touches it when something changes. He wants one client list matching the leasing system, and an alias table for old trading names.
Commercial: Sophie Ling quoted Growth with implementation at £54k in total, not an annual figure. Gemma cannot commit commercially and the decision-maker has to see the demo or notes.
Watch: The 40-user limit has not been counted, and IT will want a security conversation. Gemma wants the service desk to see a corporate fleet before any decision.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Who was there
BB-Demo
Them
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Sophie Ling sends the written proposal to Gemma Thorne the following week with the figure broken out.
- Anya Petrova sends Kofi Asamoah the list of sources and the access each needs.
- Kofi Asamoah sends a fuller client list and checks how consistently the fleet field is filled.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Gemma cannot commit commercially and the decision-maker on the customer side has not seen the demo.
- IT security review and service desk buy-in could slip the 18 Nov 2025 decision target.
- User count against the 40 included in Growth has not been counted.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- Growth tier with the dashboards builder for account managers, service desk and remarketing.
- Extra users add-on if the count exceeds forty.
Transcript
- Sophie Ling NoneMorning, Gemma, morning Kofi. Can you hear us all right?
- Gemma Thorne NoneMorning! Yes, loud and clear. Sorry, I've got a client review pack open on the other screen, one of our bigger corporate accounts, so I'm half in that. It's why I wanted to see this, to be honest.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneMorning. Audio's fine here. Give me a second, I'll close a couple of things so I'm not distracted.
- Sophie Ling NoneNo rush. Anya's here too, she's going to drive the demo. Anya, you're on mute, I think.
- Anya Petrova NoneSorry, yes. Morning both. Lovely to meet you properly, I've only seen your names on the notes from Sophie's discovery call.
- Gemma Thorne NoneSame. Is it still raining down your way? It's been grim in Milton Keynes all week.
- Anya Petrova NoneDry for once, which feels suspicious. Right, shall we crack on?
- Sophie Ling NoneLet me frame it quickly. Last time Gemma told me the pain is that before every client review your account managers rebuild the picture by hand: fleet, queries from the driver service desk, invoices, and then remarketing comes in at the end. So today Anya's going to show you the brain on a sample of your own data, not a slide deck, and you tell us where it's wrong.
- Gemma Thorne NoneYes, that's it exactly. And what I really care about is that the service desk and the account managers tell the same story. At the moment they don't always. Which client, which fleet, what did the client actually see. That's the question.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneFrom my side, I mainly want to understand what it needs from us. Which source is that from, how often does it load, and who has to touch it when something changes.
- Anya Petrova NoneGood, I'll cover that as we go and then give you a proper section at the end. Let me share my screen. You should see a search bar and a left-hand menu. Can you see that?
- Gemma Thorne NoneYes. Bit small but I can see it.
- Anya Petrova NoneI'll zoom in. So, this is running in a Snowflake account, in this case a test one with the extract Kofi sent over last week. Everything you see sits inside your own Snowflake in the real thing. We don't take a copy of your data off somewhere else.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneRight, that was the first thing our IT colleagues will ask. So it's our account, our access controls.
- Anya Petrova NoneCorrect. We build and run it inside, you keep ownership. Okay, let's start with a client. I picked one from the list at random so I'm not cherry-picking. I'll open its page.
- Gemma Thorne NoneGo on then, I'm braced.
- Anya Petrova NoneSo what you're looking at is one page for that client. Top section is the fleet, how many vehicles, split by cars and vans. Under that, recent queries that came through the service desk, and on the right the invoices. All three are pulled from different systems but they hang off the same client record.
- Gemma Thorne NoneHang on, go back up. That vans number. Is that vehicles on contract or vehicles on the road? Because those aren't the same for us, we've got vans waiting for collection.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneThat's a mapping question, not a bug. It'll be whichever status field we pointed it at in the leasing extract. I'd need to check which one I used. I'd rather say that than guess.
- Anya Petrova NoneYes, and that's a good example. The brain shows what the source says, so we agree the definition with you once and it holds. I'll make a note of that. Vehicles on contract, excluding off-hire. Is that the right default?
- Gemma Thorne NoneOn contract and still with the client, yes. Account managers would want to see the off-hire ones separately, because that's often where the conversation is.
- Anya Petrova NoneNoted. Now the bit I think is more interesting for you. I'll ask it a question in chat, in plain English. Something like, what has this client contacted the service desk about in the last quarter, and have any of those queries touched an invoice.
- Sophie Ling NoneWhile it thinks, Gemma, is that sort of cross-over what your people do by hand today?
- Gemma Thorne NoneCompletely. Someone exports the helpdesk tickets, someone else pulls the invoices, and then they sit with a spreadsheet trying to match a query about a charge to the invoice it was about. It takes half a day for a big client, and then I find out in the review that the service desk had a different version.
- Anya Petrova NoneOkay, it's come back. So it's grouped the queries by theme, and it lists a few about maintenance bookings and a couple that look like billing questions. And under each one it shows where the answer came from, so you can click through to the actual ticket.
- Gemma Thorne NoneCan I click one? I want to see what the client actually saw, not just a summary.
- Anya Petrova NoneSure. There. That's the original ticket thread, with the service desk reply and the timestamps.
- Gemma Thorne NoneThat's useful. Right, that I could put in front of an account manager tomorrow. Let's get the service desk in on this, because they'll want to see it too. I don't want them thinking it's a tool for checking up on them.
- Sophie Ling NoneFair, and that's usually how it lands best. It's the same page for everyone, so the desk sees what the account managers see.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneCan I ask about the names? In the leasing system a client might be one thing, and on the helpdesk the contact has typed it slightly differently. Does it match them up?
- Anya Petrova NoneIt does a reasonable job on its own, but honestly the reliable way is a client list as the anchor. You have one master list, and we map the other systems onto it. In your case that'd be the leasing system's list. Anything that doesn't match gets flagged for you to resolve rather than quietly guessed.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneGood. One client list that matches the leasing system is what I'm after, frankly. Fewer spreadsheets.
- Anya Petrova NoneThen you'll like the unmatched view. Let me show you.
- Anya Petrova NoneSo these are the records in the sample that didn't land on a client. There are only a handful, which is a good sign for a first pass, and most look like typos or old trading names.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneYeah, I recognise a couple of those. Old names after a merger. I can fix those at source or give you an alias table, whichever is easier.
- Anya Petrova NoneAlias table is quickest, and you stay in control of it.
- Gemma Thorne NoneCan we talk about the review itself? Is there a way to build the thing I actually take into the room? A one page view per client?
- Anya Petrova NoneYes, that's the dashboards builder, which comes with Growth. You choose the fields and charts, save it as a template, and then every account manager gets the same layout filled with their own client's numbers. Let me build a quick one.
- Sophie Ling NoneJust to be clear on what's in scope, because Gemma asked last time. Growth covers several teams, so account managers, the service desk and remarketing can all be in. It's up to forty users and up to eight connectors.
- Gemma Thorne NoneAnd forty is enough? We've got the account managers, a good chunk of the desk, and a few from remarketing. I'd have to count.
- Sophie Ling NoneWorth counting. If you're over, there's an add-on for extra users, so it isn't a cliff edge. Better we size it properly now.
- Anya Petrova NoneOkay, so here's the dashboard. Fleet by type, queries by theme for the quarter, invoices open and paid. It's rough, but that took a couple of minutes. If I change the client in the selector at the top, the whole page follows.
- Gemma Thorne NoneOh, that's good. Right, that's the thing. Can you do it by fleet as well as by client? Some of our corporates have more than one fleet under one name.
- Anya Petrova NoneIf the fleet is a field in the leasing extract, yes, it's just another filter. Kofi, is it?
- Kofi Asamoah NoneIt's there, but I'd want to check how consistently it's filled in. I'll look at last night's load and tell you what share of records have it. I'm not going to say it's clean until I've looked.
- Gemma Thorne NoneThat's fair. Thanks, Kofi.
- Sophie Ling NoneAnya, can you cover refresh and what happens when a source changes? I think that's where Kofi's real worry is.
- Anya Petrova NoneSure. Loads run overnight and are meant to be complete by 07:00 your time on business days, on every tier. If a connector fails, you see it flagged in the admin view, and our team sees it too, so you're not the only one watching. The thing that tends to catch people out is when someone changes a system, say a field gets renamed, and the connector keeps running but loads nothing new. We watch for records going flat, not just for errors.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneGood, that's the one I'd have worried about. Which source is that from, is the first thing I ask when the numbers look odd. Will the admin view tell me which source?
- Anya Petrova NoneYes, per connector, with the last successful load and the count of records. I'll show you the admin page next.
- Anya Petrova NoneThere, that's the list. Each source, last load, records indexed, and a trend line. If the line goes flat for a few days you'll see it before anyone complains.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneRight. That's what I'd want. It'd save me checking by hand every morning.
- Gemma Thorne NoneCan I come back to the commercial side, so I'm not caught out later? Sophie, remind me what the number is.
- Sophie Ling NoneOf course. The proposal as it stands is Growth, with implementation, at £53,800 in total. That's the whole deal value, implementation included, so it's not an annual figure on its own. I'll break it out clearly in the written proposal so nobody has to do the arithmetic.
- Gemma Thorne NoneOkay. I can't commit anything commercial on this call, to be clear. It has to go through the decision-maker on our side, and he'll want to see the same demo or at least the notes. But I wanted to know the shape.
- Sophie Ling NoneCompletely understood. We're pencilling Tuesday 18 November 2025 as the date we'd like to have it decided, but that's a target, not a deadline. Tell me what's realistic.
- Gemma Thorne NoneIt's about right if we can get the service desk and IT looked in before then. I'll let you know if it slips.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneIT will want a security conversation. Who do I put them in touch with?
- Anya Petrova NoneMe, to start with. I can answer the how-it-runs questions, and if they want the formal paperwork Sophie will pull in the right people. Since it's inside your Snowflake, a lot of it is about what permissions the service account needs.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneThat's the right framing. I'll pass them your details.
- Sophie Ling NoneThen next steps, as I have them. Anya sends Kofi a short list of the sources and the access each needs. Kofi sends us a fuller client list and checks that fleet field. I send Gemma the written proposal next week. And Gemma, you bring the desk in and tell us what they thought. Did I miss anything?
- Gemma Thorne NoneI'd add one thing. When the desk sees it, can we do it on a client they know? Let's pick one of the corporate fleets and do it properly, a shorter session, and I'll ask them what the client actually saw.
- Anya Petrova NoneHappily. Send me the client and I'll prepare it in advance so it's not me clicking around live.
- Gemma Thorne NoneBrilliant. Thanks, both. This was far more useful than I expected, to be honest.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneYeah, thanks. Cheers all.
- Sophie Ling NoneSpeak soon. Have a good rest of the week.