What was said
What this says
Current to 13 Oct 26Onboarding call on 6 May 2025. Harcastle agreed a staged connector order and a small pilot group. Nicola Brearley said her worry is being unable to show, in six months, what the brain is worth.
What happened: Laura Penhaligon recapped the Growth contract and agreed a connector order with Imran Hussain and Nicola Brearley: helpdesk, CRM, accounting, routing, then call recorder. A pilot group of account managers comes before any wider rollout.
Customer view: Nicola wants account managers to ring unhappy customers before the customer rings in. Usage is low for now: she and Imran are the only regular users of 40 licences.
Commercial: Nicola named the risk herself, that nobody can say in six months what the brain delivers. The agreed measure is time from missed collection to customer contact, to be baselined once the helpdesk is loaded.
Watch: finance want a whitelist of invoice fields before accounting goes live. A routing export format change would show as flat record counts.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Who was there
BB-Demo
Them
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Laura Penhaligon to send the written plan, checklist and order form dates the same day.
- Nicola Brearley to name pilot account managers and arrange a finance session.
- Imran Hussain to send the CRM field lists, helpdesk volume check and routing export time.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Nicola fears being unable to show in six months what BB-Demo's brain delivers.
- Only two people are using the 40 licences, so a pilot that finds sparse data could stall adoption.
- Finance concern over invoice fields could delay the accounting connector.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- Dashboards builder interest from north east depot managers, once questions are being asked.
- A baseline for missed collection follow-up time gives a measurable value case at the first quarterly review.
Transcript
- Laura Penhaligon NoneHello, can you both hear me all right?
- Imran Hussain NoneYes, loud and clear. Afternoon, Laura.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneAfternoon, Imran. I think Nicola's in the lobby, I can see her waiting. Let me let her in.
- Nicola Brearley NoneSorry, sorry, I'm here. Back to back since lunch and the last one overran. Afternoon both.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneNo problem at all, we've only just started. How's the week been?
- Nicola Brearley NoneHonestly? The worst complaint of the week landed this morning. A customer who has had a missed collection three weeks running and nobody rang them. Which depot, which round, I asked, and it took an hour to find out because the answer was in three different places.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneRight. Which is more or less why we're all on this call.
- Nicola Brearley NoneExactly why. If the account manager had one view they would have rung that customer before the customer rang us. That's the whole point of this for me.
- Imran Hussain NoneCan I start with what I changed since last time? It's short.
- Laura Penhaligon NonePlease, go ahead.
- Imran Hussain NoneSo I've set up a read-only service account on the helpdesk, and I've asked the routing supplier's support team for an export route that doesn't touch the live database. I haven't switched anything on. I'll test it before we switch it on.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThat's exactly the order I'd want. Read-only on the helpdesk is perfect, that's the connector I'd start with anyway.
- Imran Hussain NoneGood. I wasn't sure whether you'd want the helpdesk or the CRM first.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneLet me come to that. Can I just recap where we are, so we're all working from the same page, and then we'll do the connector order?
- Nicola Brearley NonePlease. Imran has the detail, I have the headlines.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneSo you're on Growth. Forty licensed users, and the contract is £39,600 a year. The order form is signed, the implementation is running, and my job over the next few weeks is to get your sources loading cleanly into the brain inside your own Snowflake account, and to get your account managers asking it questions.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneMarcus Bell will be your customer success manager once we're live, and Lewis Kerr is still your account owner on the commercial side. But for the next stretch it's me, day to day.
- Nicola Brearley NoneFine. And Marcus will do the review meetings after that, yes?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes, quarterly reviews are part of Growth, and he'll come to the first one with usage numbers so you can see what's being asked and by whom.
- Nicola Brearley NoneLovely. Lists of three, then. What do we need from today? One, the connector order. Two, who owns what. Three, who's actually going to be logging in.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThat's a better agenda than mine, I'll use that.
- Imran Hussain NoneHow many connectors have we got left, by the way? I've been counting five in my head and I want to be sure I'm not about to run out.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneGrowth includes eight. So if we go with five now, you've got three spare. And you can add more in blocks of five later if you want to, but I don't think you'll need to for a while.
- Imran Hussain NoneOkay. Five is the CRM, the helpdesk, the routing system, the accounting system and the call recorder.
- Nicola Brearley NoneAnd that's collections, complaints, invoices, calls and the customer record. Which is exactly the story I told upstairs when we bought it.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneRight. So the order I'd suggest is helpdesk first, because it's the cleanest and Imran's already done the account. Then the CRM, because that gives us the customer spine. Then accounting. Then routing, which I think is the fiddly one. And the call recorder last.
- Imran Hussain NoneWhy the routing system fourth? I'd have said it matters most to Nicola.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneIt matters most, yes, but it needs the customer ids to be sorted out before it loads, otherwise you get collections that don't attach to anyone. I'd rather do it properly once than twice.
- Imran Hussain NoneMm. Yes. That's the thing I've been worried about, actually.
- Nicola Brearley NoneGo on, remind me, because I only get the symptoms.
- Imran Hussain NoneSo a customer with several sites. The routing system knows the site. The accounting system knows the account that gets the invoice. The helpdesk mostly knows the email address of whoever complained. Three ways of identifying the same business, and they don't line up one to one.
- Nicola Brearley NoneWhich is how we ended up with a complaint that nobody could tie to a round.
- Imran Hussain NonePretty much. One customer record per site is what I want, with the account sitting above it. But today that's a spreadsheet I keep, and I wouldn't call it complete.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThat's actually the most useful thing you've said so far. Can I ask how complete? Roughly. Most of it, half of it?
- Imran Hussain NoneI'd be overstating it if I said more than the larger accounts. The big multi-site customers, yes, I've cleaned those. The long tail of small businesses, no. Those mostly have a single site, so it mostly works by accident.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThat's fine, and honestly that's normal. What I'd suggest is we don't wait for the whole thing to be perfect. We load the helpdesk and the CRM, we build a mapping table inside Snowflake that links site, account and email, and we let the brain tell us which records don't match. Then you fix the exceptions rather than hunting for them.
- Imran Hussain NoneSo the mapping lives in a table I own, not in the brain's own configuration.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes, it's your table in your account. We read from it. You can version it, you can restore it.
- Imran Hussain NoneGood. I never delete a record I can't restore, so that suits me.
- Nicola Brearley NoneWhich is why he's my admin.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneHa. Right. So can we talk about the helpdesk connector in a bit more detail? Imran, what categories do your agents tag missed collections with?
- Imran Hussain NoneThere's a category called missed collection, there's one for late collection, one for damaged container, and then a general one that people use when they can't be bothered to choose. That last one is probably a quarter of the volume.
- Nicola Brearley NoneProbably more than that, if I'm honest. That's a training thing and I'll own it.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThat's useful to know up front. The brain will read the text of the ticket as well as the category, so it can work out a missed collection even if it's filed under general. But I'd still tidy the category going forward, because it helps when you want to count things.
- Nicola Brearley NoneWhat's the fix and who owns it. Me, for the tagging. I'll get the team leaders to brief their agents next week.
- Laura Penhaligon NonePerfect. Imran, one question on the helpdesk. How far back do you want the history to go?
- Imran Hussain NoneIs there a downside to everything?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneOnly time. The first load takes longer, and old tickets are often tagged in ways that don't match how you work now. I'd go for a recent window first, get the questions working, and then backfill.
- Imran Hussain NoneOkay. Two years, say, to begin with? I'll check how the volume looks and come back to you.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneSounds sensible. Check the volume, and tell me the number you land on.
- Nicola Brearley NoneCan I ask something from the customer's side while we're here? When this is working, what does my account manager actually see? Because I'm going to be asked.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneFair. Imagine they open the brain on a Monday morning and ask, what's happened with this customer in the last month. They get a short page. Collections that were missed, which round, the tickets that were opened and how quickly they were closed, any calls recorded, and whether the invoices are paid or overdue. In one place, with the sources linked so they can check.
- Nicola Brearley NoneAnd can they ask it the other way? Show me the customers with more than a couple of missed collections this month and an invoice coming up.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes, that's exactly the sort of question it's built for. It depends on the data being joined up, which is why the ids matter so much. But yes.
- Nicola Brearley NoneBecause that's the one I want. The ones about to be unhappy, before they are.
- Imran Hussain NoneThat depends on the routing data being timely, though. How often does it refresh?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneNightly. It completes by seven in the morning your time on business days. So Monday's page is built from the weekend's activity as long as the source gave us the data.
- Imran Hussain NoneRight. Then I need to find out when the routing export runs. If it finishes at five, we're fine. If it finishes at eight, you'd be reading yesterday.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes, exactly. That's one for the supplier. Can you find out the export time and let me know?
- Imran Hussain NoneI'll ask. I'll write it in the checklist.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneI'm going to share my screen with the checklist so you can see what I mean. One second. Can you see it?
- Imran Hussain NoneNot yet. Ah, there it is.
- Nicola Brearley NoneYes. It's a bit small. Can you make it bigger?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneIs that better?
- Nicola Brearley NoneMuch.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneSo each connector has the same five lines. Who gets the access, what level of access, what's the test, who signs it off and what date it should be loading by. For the helpdesk, the access is Imran's service account, the level is read-only, the test is that we load a small slice of tickets and compare counts, and sign-off is Imran.
- Imran Hussain NoneCompare counts against what?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneAgainst a report you run in the helpdesk itself. If the brain says it holds so many tickets for that week and your report says the same number, we're happy. If it doesn't, we stop and look.
- Imran Hussain NoneThat's how I'd do it as well. Good.
- Nicola Brearley NoneAnd the date, what are we promising?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThe order form has live-by commitments for the connectors, and I'll put the exact dates on the checklist so it isn't from memory. I'd rather quote them from the document than guess in a call.
- Nicola Brearley NoneGood, thank you. I'll want those for Andrew anyway, so please send them in writing.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneWill do, I'll send it today.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneNow the CRM. Who looks after it on your side?
- Imran Hussain NoneI do the administration, but a colleague in the sales operations team owns the fields. So if you want a new field exposed, or something changed, I need to ask her.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThat's fine. We don't change anything in the CRM, we only read. The thing I need from her, via you, is which fields are trustworthy. Account owner, customer status, site, contract end date. Anything people stopped filling in a couple of years ago.
- Imran Hussain NoneThere are a few of those. I can make a list. Is a short list enough or do you want everything?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThe short list of fields you'd stake your reputation on, and a second list of the ones you know are stale. That's more useful than a full export.
- Imran Hussain NoneOkay. I can do that in a couple of days.
- Nicola Brearley NoneCan I add one? The CRM has two records for some customers because of the merger of two depots a while back. Imran knows about it.
- Imran Hussain NoneI do. Same company, same domain, two records. I've got a note of the ones I've found but not all of them.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThat's another one for the mapping table. Same business, one record. We'll flag duplicates by domain and by name, and you tell us which survives.
- Imran Hussain NoneWhich customer id is that, though, once they're merged? Because finance have their own numbering and I don't want to change theirs.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYou don't change anything. The brain keeps its own key for the customer and records which of your ids belong to it. Yours stay exactly as they are.
- Imran Hussain NoneGood. That's what I wanted to hear.
- Nicola Brearley NoneRight, so we've done connectors. Can we do people? Because I'm conscious of what the usage looks like at the moment.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneGo on, how does it look from your side?
- Nicola Brearley NoneHonestly it's me and Imran poking about, and that's it. We have forty licences and about one of us in on a given day. I'd like to fix that before somebody senior asks.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThat's pretty normal for this stage, and it's the right time to talk about it, because there's not much in there yet for people to find. If you gave the account managers access today, they'd open it, see sparse data and not come back.
- Nicola Brearley NoneThat's what I was afraid of.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneSo I'd stage it. A small pilot group first, once the helpdesk and the CRM are joined up and the mapping is mostly right. Maybe a handful of your account managers, the ones who handle your biggest multi-site customers and who'll complain loudest if it isn't useful.
- Nicola Brearley NoneHa. I know exactly who. Three of them, maybe four. Let me think about the depots so it isn't all one area.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes, mix it. Different depots, different kinds of customer. And I'd include at least one team leader, because they're the ones who'll say whether the page actually helps at ten past eight on a Monday.
- Nicola Brearley NoneA team leader, yes. That's a good one. They are the ones who see the missed collections first.
- Imran Hussain NoneWhat do I need to do for the pilot users? Is it accounts one by one?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneAs admin you'd invite them, and I'll show you where. It's a few minutes each. We can also do it in a batch from a list. Single sign-on isn't part of Growth, so it's an invitation and a login.
- Imran Hussain NoneThat's fine for a pilot. I'll want to think about it before forty.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneFair. Let's see how the pilot goes.
- Nicola Brearley NoneWhat should I tell them to ask? If I just say, it's a brain, go and ask it things, they'll ask it the weather.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes, that's exactly what happens. So I'll give you a short sheet of starter questions, in your own language. Which of my customers had a missed collection last week and haven't been contacted. What's the history for this site. What's outstanding on this account.
- Nicola Brearley NoneThat's three. Lovely. Can I also have one for the team leaders? Which rounds had the most missed collections this month.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes, that one comes from the routing data, so it'll only work once that connector's in. But I'll put it on the sheet with a note that it's for the second phase.
- Nicola Brearley NonePerfect.
- Imran Hussain NoneCan I raise one thing about the accounting connector? Before we go on.
- Laura Penhaligon NonePlease.
- Imran Hussain NoneFinance are nervous. They like the idea of invoices appearing next to the complaints, but they don't want the account managers seeing everything. Credit notes, margin, the lot.
- Nicola Brearley NoneWhich is fair. We can't have a junior account manager seeing what we agreed with a big customer on rate.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThat's a sensible concern and we should deal with it before the finance connector goes live, not after. What we can do is choose what we bring in. You don't have to load every field. You could bring invoice status, due date and amount outstanding, and leave margin and rates out entirely.
- Imran Hussain NoneSo it's a whitelist of fields, not a blacklist.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes. Whatever you don't list, we never read. I'd suggest finance sign the list off. Then if anyone asks later, there's a record of what was agreed.
- Nicola Brearley NoneI'd like that. I'll get our finance team into a call with you. Not today, in the next couple of weeks.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneHappy to. Send me a couple of times and I'll fit around them.
- Imran Hussain NoneAnd while we're on it, does the brain remember who asked what? Because finance will ask.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneQuestions are logged, yes, with the user. That's also how Marcus can tell you who is getting value in the quarterly reviews. It's your data in your account, so you can look at it as well.
- Imran Hussain NoneOkay. I'll say that to them.
- Nicola Brearley NoneCan I come back to the routing system, because that's the one I care about and I've heard a lot about ids and not much about collections.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneFair challenge. What do you most want out of it?
- Nicola Brearley NoneThree things. Was the collection scheduled. Was it done, and when. And if not, why. The driver's reason, if there is one.
- Imran Hussain NoneThe reason code is a free-text field in some depots and a drop-down in others. I need to be honest about that, it's not consistent.
- Nicola Brearley NoneYes. That's a known problem, and a different one. Don't let it hold up the rest.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneNo, it won't hold anything up. The brain can read free text and drop-downs alike. It'll just be better for counting where it's a drop-down. We load what's there and you can improve the source over time.
- Imran Hussain NoneOne more worry. If the routing supplier changes the export format, does the connector fall over?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneIt can, yes. What you'd notice is the record count going flat. The connector says it's loaded but nothing new is arriving. That's the signal. I'll set up a simple check so that you and I both see it, and we'll talk about who gets told.
- Imran Hussain NoneMe, first. Then Nicola if it's more than a day.
- Nicola Brearley NoneYes. Don't let a complaint sit overnight, and don't let a stale feed sit overnight either.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneNoted, I'll write that down as the rule. Imran first, Nicola if it runs past a day.
- Imran Hussain NoneWhich reminds me, am I right that tickets about the brain itself go to your support team, not to you?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes. Raise them through the support channel and they'll be answered against the response times for Growth. I'll be in the loop during onboarding, so if something's urgent during these weeks, copy me too.
- Imran Hussain NoneGood. I'll do that.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneAnything else on connectors, or shall we go through the timeline?
- Nicola Brearley NoneTimeline, please. I'd like to be able to say a date to my own boss.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneOkay. Let me put it in rough weeks rather than dates, and I'll turn it into dates in the written plan. The first couple of weeks are the helpdesk and the CRM, plus the mapping table. Then accounting, with finance's field list agreed. Then routing. Then the call recorder. The pilot group starts when the first two are stable.
- Nicola Brearley NoneAnd the wider rollout to the rest of the forty?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneAfter the pilot, and after the routing data is in, because that's when it becomes worth having. I'd rather you launched to everyone with something they'll want than had a launch email nobody reads.
- Nicola Brearley NoneAgreed. I've done the launch email thing before. Never again.
- Imran Hussain NoneIs there anything I should be testing before the pilot that isn't in the checklist? I'm happier with a longer list than a short one.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneTwo things I'd add. First, pick ten customers you know really well, a mix of single-site and multi-site, and write down what you expect the brain to say about each. Then compare. It's the quickest way to find where the ids are wrong.
- Imran Hussain NoneThat's a good test. I like that one.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneAnd second, one customer who's recently complained. The brain should show the full story. If it doesn't, we've found a gap.
- Nicola Brearley NoneI can give you one of those this afternoon. I have an unhappy one right in front of me.
- Laura Penhaligon NonePerfect, that's the one.
- Imran Hussain NoneI'll also want to check the nightly load doesn't collide with our own overnight jobs. We run a few in Snowflake already. I'd like to see the schedule against mine.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneGood thinking. I'll send you the load window and the warehouse it uses, and you tell me if it clashes. We can move it.
- Imran Hussain NoneThanks. And it runs in our account so I can see the cost.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes, you can see everything it does.
- Nicola Brearley NoneCan I ask something slightly off the list? Not today's decision, just so I know. Some of the managers in the north east depots will ask if they can have their own dashboards. Are those a thing?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes, Growth includes the dashboards builder, so they can build views on top of the same data. I'd leave it until the pilot's over. Once people are asking questions, they'll tell you what they want to see regularly, and those are the ones worth turning into dashboards.
- Nicola Brearley NoneGood. That's sensible. Questions first, dashboards from what they keep asking.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneExactly that.
- Imran Hussain NoneLaura, sorry, can I go back a step? On the helpdesk. If we backfill the history later, does it duplicate tickets already loaded?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneNo. Each ticket is keyed on its helpdesk id, so a second load updates what's there. But I'd still test it on a small slice first, you'll be happier.
- Imran Hussain NoneI will. Thank you.
- Nicola Brearley NoneRight. Owners. Who's doing what, one more time, so I can write it down.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneOkay. Imran owns the connector access and testing, and the mapping table. You, Nicola, own the pilot group, the agent tagging and the finance conversation. I own the checklist, the load schedule, the starter questions and the written plan. And Marcus picks up after go-live.
- Nicola Brearley NoneGood. Three each, roughly.
- Imran Hussain NoneOne thing I'd add to mine. The export time from the routing supplier. I'll chase it.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes, and the shortlist of CRM fields, and the helpdesk history window. I've got those written down. Is that right?
- Imran Hussain NoneThat's right. I'll aim to get you the field list and the volume check by Friday, if that works.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneFriday's fine. Nicola, from you I need the pilot names, ideally by early next week, and a couple of slots for the finance conversation.
- Nicola Brearley NonePilot names by Monday. I'll look at the depot spread tonight. And I'll find finance some times tomorrow.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneLovely. And from me, the written plan with the dates and the commitments from the order form, the checklist, and the starter questions. I'll send those today, or first thing tomorrow at the latest.
- Nicola Brearley NoneToday, if you can, because I'm seeing the board's operations lead tomorrow and I want to be able to say something concrete.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThen today. I'll do it straight after this call.
- Imran Hussain NoneCan I ask one last practical question? When you say live, what does live mean? Because in my head it's when the nightly refresh is running without me watching it.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThat's a good definition, and I'd go with yours. For me a connector is live when it's loaded, the counts match your own reports, and it has refreshed on its own for a few nights in a row. Then it's yours to watch, and you're not babysitting it.
- Imran Hussain NoneGood. Then we agree.
- Nicola Brearley NoneCan I say something, as the person who pushed for this? I'm not worried about the technology, Imran's lot are on it. What worries me is somebody in six months asking what we're getting for it, and my not having a clear answer.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThat's a really sensible thing to say now rather than later. The best answer is the one you build as you go. Pick the one or two things that matter, say, how quickly a missed collection is followed up, write down where it is today, and we'll have Marcus show you where it is at the first review.
- Nicola Brearley NoneTime from missed collection to the customer being contacted. That's the one.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThen that's the measure. Can you give me today's rough number, even a guess, and we'll check it against the data once it's loaded?
- Nicola Brearley NoneI'd be guessing. Ask me again when the helpdesk is in and we can look at it properly rather than me making it up.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThat's the better answer. We'll look at it together.
- Imran Hussain NoneI'd rather not state anything the data doesn't show yet, so, yes, same.
- Nicola Brearley NoneWhich is why I have you.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneRight. Is there anything we haven't covered? Anything that's making you uneasy?
- Imran Hussain NoneOnly the routing system, but I know why, and we have a plan for it. I'm fine.
- Nicola Brearley NoneI'm all right. Better than when I joined, anyway, and the day's been rubbish.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneI'm glad. And please, if something occurs to you later, don't save it for the next call. Send it over, or ring me.
- Imran Hussain NoneWill do. I'll send you a screenshot of the service account permissions tonight so you can check I've got them right.
- Laura Penhaligon NonePlease do. That'd save me asking.
- Nicola Brearley NoneAnd can we book the next one now, so it's in diaries? Otherwise we'll all say next week and then it's a fortnight.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneGood idea. A short check-in, same time next week? That would be after Imran's Friday items and your pilot names.
- Nicola Brearley NoneSame time works for me. Half past four, yes?
- Imran Hussain NoneThat's fine for me. Tuesday, then.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneTuesday at half past four. I'll send the invite with the plan.
- Nicola Brearley NoneBrilliant. Thank you, Laura. That was useful, and quicker than I expected.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThank you both. You've come well prepared, and that makes my job much easier.
- Imran Hussain NoneSpeak next week. Cheers.
- Nicola Brearley NoneThanks, everyone. Bye for now.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneBye both, speak soon.