Harcastle Environmental / BG-Demo – Onboarding
Callcompleted
Harcastle Environmental · 1 May 2025 11:30
Onboarding call on 1 May 2025 for Harcastle Environmental. Routing and helpdesk are loading, finance is held back, and usage is about one person a day against 40 licences. Nicola expects a business case to be asked for.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Onboarding call on 1 May 2025 for Harcastle Environmental. Routing and helpdesk are loading, finance is held back, and usage is about one person a day against 40 licences. Nicola expects a business case to be asked for.
What happened: Imran Hussain has routing loading nightly and the helpdesk on a service account. He left finance off because of inconsistent invoice dates.
Customer view: Nicola Brearley held back from rollout wanting the data clean first. She accepted a North East pilot of six to eight account managers.
Commercial: Laura Penhaligon put the Growth plan at £40k a year, signed 11 Apr 2025, with the term to 10 Apr 2026 and renewal on 11 Apr 2026. The evidence does not show the renewal outcome.
Watch: Usage is about one person a day against 40 licensed users. A value case needs real questions asked before renewal.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Low usage before renewal
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
mixed
Voice
champion
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Imran Hussain finishes finance testing and builds the first customer mapping, with the id list due by Friday.
- Nicola Brearley picks the pilot names early next week and chases the required site field on tickets.
- Laura Penhaligon sends the onboarding plan, drafts the training and books a follow-up in a couple of weeks.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Usage is about one person a day against 40 licensed users, which makes a value case hard before renewal.
- Customer ids do not join across routing, helpdesk and finance, so answers may be incomplete or blank.
- The finance connector is switched off until the invoice dates are sorted.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- A North East pilot of six to eight account managers on their own customers could build the value case.
- The Growth dashboards builder can show missed collections by depot and round once the mapping is in.
Transcript
Laura PenhaligonHello, can you hear me all right?
Nicola BrearleyLoud and clear. Morning, Laura.- Laura PenhaligonMorning. Imran, are you on as well?
Imran HussainJust joining, sorry. The camera's being awkward. There we go.- Laura PenhaligonLovely, that's all three of us. Thanks for making the time, I know it's a busy week for you.
- Nicola BrearleyDon't. Worst complaint of the week first, because it's relevant. A café chain in Leeds had a missed collection on Monday, got told it would be sorted Tuesday, and then it was missed again. Two in a row. The account manager rang them on Wednesday with no idea about the first one, and the customer said so, loudly.
- Laura PenhaligonOh no. Which depot was that?
- Nicola BrearleyWhich depot, which round, yes, that was my question as well. A driver was off, the round got merged with another one, and the ticket went into the helpdesk but the account manager never saw it. It's sorted now. But that's the whole reason we bought this, so they see it before the customer has to tell them.
- Laura PenhaligonRight, and that's a good way to frame today, actually. What you've just described is the helpdesk tickets and the collections sitting in the same view as the customer record. So here's what I'd like to get through. Where the connectors are, the question of customer records, who's going to be using it and when, and then who does what before we speak again. Does that work?
- Imran HussainYes. Can I go first? I've changed a few things since last time and I'd rather you heard them from me than found them.
- Laura PenhaligonPlease do.
- Imran HussainSo the routing connector is loading nightly now. I tested it for a week before I switched it on, against a copy, and I checked the row counts matched the export I'd normally run by hand. The helpdesk one I've set up with a service account, not my own login, so it won't break if I'm off or if my password changes. And I've left the finance one switched off for now, because I wasn't happy with the invoice dates.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's sensible, and thank you for the service account, it's exactly what I'd have asked for. What was wrong with the invoice dates?
- Imran HussainSome of them come through as the date the invoice was raised and some as the date it was posted, depending on which team keyed it. It's only a handful, but if an account manager sees an invoice dated after the complaint, they'll think the data's wrong. I'll test it before we switch it on.
- Nicola BrearleyAnd that's the one I care about, honestly. The invoices next to the complaints. If a customer's disputing a bill and has also had two missed collections, I want the account manager to know both before they pick up the phone.
- Laura PenhaligonCompletely. So, just to ground us on the contract. You're on Growth, forty licensed users and eight connectors, signed on Friday 11 April 2025, and it's £39,600 a year.
- Imran HussainHow many connectors have we got left?
- Laura PenhaligonRouting, helpdesk and finance makes three, so five left.
- Nicola BrearleyI'd want the CRM and the call recorder next. Account managers keep their notes in one and their calls in the other, and half of what we promise customers is said on the phone.
- Laura PenhaligonGood, that takes you to five in use and three spare. I'd keep a couple of those back, because something always turns up. A second helpdesk queue, a contract store, that kind of thing.
- Imran HussainMm. I'd rather add them one at a time anyway. New sources without breaking the old ones.
- Laura PenhaligonYes, one at a time, and each one on a test copy first, same as you did with routing. Which brings me to the customer records, because I think that's the real work in this phase.
- Imran HussainYes. That's the one that's been keeping me up. So we've got about thirty thousand business customers, and a lot of them have more than one site. The routing system has its own id for each site. The helpdesk has an id for the company. Finance has an account number that's different again.
- Laura PenhaligonAnd nothing joins them.
- Imran HussainNothing joins them. Not reliably. Some are matched on postcode, some on a name that someone typed by hand, and some are just wrong. Which customer id is that, is the question I ask myself about forty times a week.
- Nicola BrearleyLet's see it from the customer's side. A customer with five sites thinks of themselves as one company. They ring up and say my bins at the Doncaster unit weren't emptied. The account manager needs the company and then the site, not five unrelated records.
- Laura PenhaligonRight, so two levels. The company, and the site underneath it. The brain can hold both, as long as there's a mapping that says this routing id, this helpdesk id and this finance account are the same thing.
- Imran HussainA mapping table.
- Laura PenhaligonA mapping table, yes. It lives in your Snowflake account, so you own it, and we read from it. You'd keep the original ids alongside, nothing overwritten.
- Imran HussainGood, because I won't delete anything I can't restore. If we keep the old ids as they are and add the mapping on top, I can live with that. And I can undo it.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's the safest way to do it. Can I suggest you don't try to match everything in one go? Start with the customers where all three ids already agree, or nearly, and flag the ones that don't. Then you can see how big the awkward pile actually is.
- Imran HussainLet me share my screen, actually, I've got a rough count from last week. Give me a second.
- Laura PenhaligonOf course.
- Imran HussainRight, can you see that? So this is the export from routing, and this column is the helpdesk id where I've managed to match it. You can see the blanks. Those blanks are the ones I'm worried about.
- Laura PenhaligonYes, I can see it. So most of that column is filled in, which is better than I'd feared. What's going on in the blank ones? Is it a pattern?
- Imran HussainMostly the smaller sites. A customer rings about a site that was never set up in the helpdesk as its own thing, so the ticket gets filed against the head office. It's a data habit, not a system fault.
- Nicola BrearleyAnd that's the habit that causes the Leeds thing. The ticket goes on head office, the round gets the miss, and nobody joins the two up.
- Laura PenhaligonSo it's worth saying out loud, I think. The brain will only be as joined up as the ids you give it. It can't guess that a head office ticket is about a particular site, not with any confidence.
- Imran HussainNo, and I wouldn't want it to guess. I'd rather it showed a blank than a wrong match. I'd rather someone had to look.
- Laura PenhaligonAgreed. We can show unmatched tickets as their own list, so they're not lost, they're just waiting for someone to link them. Then it becomes a daily job for whoever owns it rather than a one-off clean-up.
- Nicola BrearleyWhat's the fix and who owns it? Because if it's a daily job it needs a name against it. I'm not having it fall to whoever's in first.
- Imran HussainI'd take it to start with. I can do the matching. But the people who file the tickets will need to be asked to pick the site, not just the company.
- Nicola BrearleyThat's mine. I'll talk to the helpdesk team lead and get the site field made a required one. Give me a week or so to do it properly.
- Laura PenhaligonPerfect. So that's one action each. Imran builds the first version of the mapping, Nicola gets the site field required on new tickets.
- Imran HussainOkay. Sorry, let me stop sharing. Can you still hear me?
- Laura PenhaligonYes, fine. Right, let me move us onto the people side. At the moment the average number of people using the brain on a normal day is about one.
- Imran HussainThat's me.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's you, yes, and it's what I'd expect at this stage, so please don't hear it as a criticism. But you've got forty licensed users, and the value of this is in the account managers asking it questions, not in the admin checking that it loaded.
- Nicola BrearleyNo, that's fair, and that's down to me. I wanted it clean before I put it in front of anyone. I've seen what happens when you roll out something half-right, and people stop trusting it after day one.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's a reasonable instinct, I'd just not wait for perfect. I'd suggest a small pilot. A handful of account managers, one team, with routing and helpdesk data they can already trust, and the invoices following once Imran's happy.
- Nicola BrearleyWhich team, which patch. Let me think. The North East one has the most complaints, so they'd feel it most. But they're also the most sceptical. Which is perhaps no bad thing.
- Laura PenhaligonSceptical is useful. If it works for them, you've got your case. And the ones who are keen will tell people anyway.
- Nicola BrearleyRight. North East pilot, then. I'll pick the names.
- Imran HussainHow many are we talking? Because I'll need to set each of them up, and I'd like to check their access doesn't show them anything they shouldn't.
- Nicola BrearleySix, maybe eight, I'll confirm. Not more.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's about right for a first group. And what I'd do for them is a short training session where we don't show features, we show their own customers. Ask it which customers have had more than one missed collection this month, and which of those have an open invoice query.
- Nicola BrearleyOh, they'd like that. Do it with real names, not made up ones. They'll switch off if it's a demo.
- Laura PenhaligonReal names, on their own data. That's how we do it. And I can sit in on the first couple of days afterwards so they've got someone to ask.
- Imran HussainBefore we put them on, can I ask about the dashboards? Because Nicola mentioned wanting missed collections by depot and by round.
- Nicola BrearleyI did, yes. A weekly view, depot, round, number missed, how long till it was fixed. So I can see the pattern, not just the complaint of the week.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's included on Growth, the dashboards builder. I'd do the first one with you so it's built on the matched data, otherwise you'll be building it twice. Once the mapping's in, that's an afternoon.
- Imran HussainMm. So the mapping first, the dashboard after.
- Laura PenhaligonMapping first, yes. Everything else sits on top of it.
- Nicola BrearleyWhile we're on the contract side, can I ask a straight question? When does the first term run to? I know it's a year but I never keep dates in my head.
- Laura PenhaligonIt runs to 10 Apr 2026, with the renewal falling on 11 Apr 2026. Plenty of time. But I'd say that's exactly why I'd like usage up early. When the renewal comes round you'll want to be able to say what it's been worth, and that's much easier with six months of real questions behind you.
- Nicola BrearleyFair. Nobody's asking me for a business case yet but they will, so yes.
- Imran HussainOne more thing from me, if there's time. Refresh. When do the account managers see yesterday's data?
- Laura PenhaligonThe nightly refresh should be finished by seven in the morning, your local time, on working days. So by the time they're at their desks it's there.
- Imran HussainGood. Some start early, so I'll tell them not to look before seven.
- Nicola BrearleyThey'll look at half six and then ring me.
- Laura PenhaligonHa. Well, tell them it'll show them the previous day until it's done. Right, shall I read back what I've got, so we all agree before we finish?
- Nicola BrearleyPlease. Lists of three, if you can.
- Laura PenhaligonThree for Imran. First, finish testing the finance connector and sort the invoice dates before it goes on. Second, build the first version of the customer mapping, matched customers only, with the old ids kept alongside. Third, send me a list of the id fields from the routing, helpdesk and finance systems, so I can check we're reading the right ones. By Friday, if that's realistic.
- Imran HussainFriday's fine for the list. The mapping will take longer, probably a couple of weeks to do it properly, and I'll tell you if it slips.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's honest, thank you. Three for Nicola. Pick the North East pilot group, six to eight names. Get the site field made required on new tickets. And let Imran know who they are so he can set up their access.
- Nicola BrearleyNames by early next week. The site field I'll chase this week.
- Laura PenhaligonAnd mine. I'll send you both the onboarding plan as we've just discussed it, with the connector order. I'll draft the training session around your own customers. And I'll put a follow-up in the diary for a couple of weeks from now so we can see where the mapping's got to.
- Imran HussainCan the plan show the connector count? So I can see how many we've got left at a glance.
- Laura PenhaligonYes, I'll put a line at the top. Eight in total, three in use, five free, and it'll update as we go.
- Nicola BrearleyGood. Anything else from you, Laura? Or are we done? I've got a depot manager waiting.
- Laura PenhaligonNothing else from me. Thanks both, that was really useful. Imran, thank you for testing everything first, it makes my job much easier.
- Imran HussainNo problem. Speak soon.
- Nicola BrearleyThanks, Laura. Bye both.
- Laura PenhaligonBye, enjoy your lunch.
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