Harcastle Environmental / BG-Demo – Check In
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Harcastle Environmental · 7 Oct 2025 13:15
Nicola Brearley reported a missed collection caught early using the brain. Usage is up and spread wider. She plans a team-by-team rollout and needs a case for the budget holder before the April renewal.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Nicola Brearley reported a missed collection caught early using the brain. Usage is up and spread wider. She plans a team-by-team rollout and needs a case for the budget holder before the April renewal.
What happened: Marcus Bell covered usage, one how-to ticket, and the April renewal. Daily users and questions asked are climbing, and no longer come mostly from Nicola.
Customer view: Nicola wants to bring teams in a few at a time, starting with the contact centre, and would like to say forty seats well used rather than mostly empty.
Commercial: Growth at £40k a year, term to 10 Apr 2026, renewal 11 Apr 2026, invoices matching the order form. Nicola cannot commit budget alone and needs a case for the person who signs it.
Watch: Nobody has built a dashboard yet. Nicola is one of two admins and wants a third.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Adoption and renewal case
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
positive
Voice
champion
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Marcus to send dashboard build slots and a one-page usage summary including the café example.
- Nicola to send the attendee list and the name of a third admin.
- Marcus to book the contact centre walk-through once names arrive.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Nicola cannot commit budget alone and the budget signer has not yet seen the value.
- Only two admins, and the user base is still far below forty.
- Unannounced source system changes could break a connector.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Contact centre, North East account managers and billing queries team are the next rollout teams.
- Dashboards builder session to build a missed collections view with Nicola.
- On-site training day add-on may be needed later if the rollout goes well.
Transcript
Marcus BellHello, Nicola. Can you hear me all right?
Nicola BrearleyYes, loud and clear. Good afternoon. Sorry, I'm just dragging a second screen across, give me a moment.- Marcus BellNo rush. Good afternoon to you. How's the week been?
- Nicola BrearleyBusy. Right, I'll tell you the worst complaint first, because it's the one that's been in my head all morning. A café customer, three missed collections in a fortnight, and they were about to ring the managing director's office.
- Marcus BellOh dear. Was that one you'd already spotted, or did they get in first?
- Nicola BrearleyThat's the thing. We spotted it. The account manager had the customer's page open in the brain, saw the missed collection tickets sitting next to the last call and the invoice, and rang them before they rang us. Which depot, which round, what's the fix and who owns it. She had all of it in about two minutes.
- Marcus BellThat's really good to hear. That's exactly what it's meant to do, isn't it. Seeing it from the customer's side.
- Nicola BrearleyYeah. A year ago she'd have been in three systems and still not had the whole picture. Anyway. That's my week. Go on, what have you got for me?
- Marcus BellRight, I'll share my screen, and what I'd like to cover is three things. First, I've pulled the numbers on usage since the last check-in. Second, the one ticket you raised last month and whether it's all tidied up. And third, a bit of look-ahead, including April. Happy to go off-piste if you want to talk about something else.
- Nicola BrearleyNo, that's perfect. Three things, I like that.
- Marcus BellOkay, can you see it? It should be the usage summary for Harcastle.
- Nicola BrearleyYes, I can see it. Bit small, but yes.
- Marcus BellI'll make that bigger. There. So the headline is that the number of people using the brain on a normal day is up on last quarter. It's a decent rise, not a spike, which is what I'd rather see. It means people are coming back, not just trying it once.
- Nicola BrearleyThat fits with what I'm seeing. The account managers who were sceptical in the spring are the ones asking me now why their colleagues' pages look different from theirs.
- Marcus BellHa, right. And that's the questions asked line there. It's the measure I care about most, because it's people actually asking the brain things rather than just opening pages. That's climbing month on month, and it's not all coming from one person, which is healthy. Last time it was mostly you and a couple of others.
- Nicola BrearleyYeah, I did notice I'm not the loudest voice any more. I'm slightly offended, to be honest.
- Marcus BellYou'll live. Mm. So that spread is good. Now, the other thing I want to flag, and I say this as a good thing, is licensed users. You've got forty on the Growth licence.
- Nicola BrearleyRight, and we're nowhere near using forty.
- Marcus BellNo, you're not. You've got a handful of people active on a typical day, and a few more who dip in. So there's a lot of headroom. If you wanted to roll it out to more of the account managers, or the customer services side, you wouldn't need to change anything on the contract.
- Nicola BrearleyThat's useful to know. I think what's held me back is that I didn't want to throw forty people at it and have half of them bounce off. I'd rather bring them in a team at a time.
- Marcus BellThat's sensible. Honestly, that's how the ones that stick usually do it. Which team would you do next, if you were choosing?
- Nicola BrearleyLet me think. Lists of three, because that's how my brain works. One, the account managers in the North East, because they cover the most customers per head. Two, the people in the contact centre who take the missed collection calls. Three, probably the billing queries team, because they're forever asking account managers for the same invoice history.
- Marcus BellRight, that's a really clear order. The contact centre would be where I'd start, actually. They'd get value on the first day because every call they take is about a collection and an invoice.
- Nicola BrearleyMm. They'd need to be shown properly though. They're not going to read a guide.
- Marcus BellNo, understood. I could do a short walk-through session for them. Half an hour, live, on your own data, with real customer pages. Shall we book that in once you've confirmed who's coming?
- Nicola BrearleyYes, please. I'll get you a list. I'd say a dozen or so for the first go. Will that work on a call or would you need to be in the room?
- Marcus BellA call is fine. If you did later want a proper training day on site, that's an add-on and I'd hand that over to Lewis to talk through, but I don't think you need it to get started.
- Nicola BrearleyNo, let's start with the call. I don't want to spend money until I've seen who really takes to it.
- Marcus BellFair enough. Okay, moving on. Let me scroll down, one second. This is the connectors and records section. So you've got the collections system, the helpdesk, the CRM and the billing side all loading. They've all been refreshing each night and the record counts are going up, which is what you want.
- Nicola BrearleyGood. I was half expecting you to say something had stopped loading. We changed something on the collections side in the summer and I forgot to warn anyone.
- Marcus BellAh. Well, no sign of any damage. It carried on loading through that. If you do plan changes to a source system in future, just drop me a line beforehand, even a quick message, and I'll keep an eye on it for you.
- Nicola BrearleyI will. Promise. I'm bad at that, I know.
- Marcus BellYou're no worse than anyone else. Right, the ticket. So last month there was one ticket from your side, it was a how-to, I think about filtering the missed collections by round.
- Nicola BrearleyYes, that was me. I couldn't work out why I couldn't get it to show by round and not just by depot.
- Marcus BellAnd the support team came back to you, it was well inside the response time for Growth, and it was closed with the answer. Did that actually do the job, or are you still fiddling with it?
- Nicola BrearleyIt did the job, mostly. It's more that I'd like a proper dashboard for it now. Missed collections by depot and by round, week on week, so I can walk into the Monday meeting and not have to build anything by hand.
- Marcus BellRight. That's the dashboards builder, which is part of Growth, so you've already got it. Nobody on your side has built one yet, I notice. That's not a criticism, lots of customers don't start with it.
- Nicola BrearleyI've avoided it because I assumed it'd be fiddly. Is it?
- Marcus BellNot really. It's mostly picking the question you'd normally ask in chat and saying, put that on a page and refresh it every day. I'd rather show you than describe it. Could we take twenty minutes next week and build that missed collections one together?
- Nicola BrearleyYes. Yes, let's do that. Then I can show the others what's possible, and that'll help with the rollout too.
- Marcus BellThat's the best way to do it. Build one real thing, use it in the real meeting, then people copy it. I'll send you a couple of slots this afternoon.
- Nicola BrearleyLovely. Oh, and one thing while I think of it. Can it show me the same view for a customer's invoices that are overdue? Because the thing that really gets people cross is a missed collection and then an invoice landing the same week.
- Marcus BellIt can pull the invoice data in from the billing side that you've already connected, so in principle yes. I'd want to check how your billing system marks them before I promise you exactly what the page will look like, but I don't see a problem. We'll try it when we build the dashboard.
- Nicola BrearleyThat's fair. No promises, just try it. Fine.
- Marcus BellRight. Third thing. April. Your contract runs to 10 Apr 2026, and the renewal date is 11 Apr 2026. I know that feels a long way off, but I'd rather mention it early than have it sneak up on both of us.
- Nicola BrearleyYeah, no, that's fine. It's about six months, isn't it. I'd rather talk about it now.
- Marcus BellYes, roughly. So just so we're both working from the same page, you're on Growth, £39,600 a year, and what you've been invoiced matches the order form. Nothing odd on the finance side, you've paid everything on time and there's nothing outstanding.
- Nicola BrearleyGood. Our finance team would have told me otherwise, to be fair.
- Marcus BellHa, I'm sure. The commercial side of the renewal is Lewis's area, so I won't get into price. What I'll do is make sure that when he talks to you, he's got a proper picture of what you've got out of it. Questions asked, which teams use it, what's gone in on dashboards.
- Nicola BrearleyRight. And I'll need to make a case internally. I can't commit budget on my own, the person who signs the budget will want to see what we get for it. So whatever you can give me that makes that simpler would be great.
- Marcus BellUnderstood. That's something I can do. How about I put together a short summary, one page really, with the usage trend, the main ways it's being used, and a couple of examples like that café customer. Real stories land better than charts.
- Nicola BrearleyYes. The café one, definitely. I can give you the detail on that, I'll check how much I'm allowed to share. I'd leave the name off.
- Marcus BellOf course, no names needed. Just the shape of it. Missed collections, spotted early, customer called before they complained.
- Nicola BrearleyExactly that. And if the rollout goes well, I'd like to be able to say forty seats well used, not forty seats mostly empty. That's a much better conversation.
- Marcus BellAgreed. So that's a nice reason to get the contact centre and the billing queries team in over the next few months, so it's showing up in the numbers before April.
- Nicola BrearleyYeah. Let's do that. Is there anything you need from me that I haven't said?
- Marcus BellI think just the list of names for the first walk-through session, and a heads-up on any changes to the source systems. Anything else, I'll chase. Oh, and one more. Is there anyone who's left or moved role on your side that I should be taking off, or anyone new who needs admin rights?
- Nicola BrearleyNot that I know of. Let me check with IT. If I'm honest I've been the main admin along with one other, and I'd like a third, probably someone from the contact centre team, so it's not just me and him.
- Marcus BellGood call. It's no bad thing to have a bit of cover. Send me the name and I'll set that up.
- Nicola BrearleyWill do. Right. Anything else from you? Because I've got a three o'clock I need to prep for.
- Marcus BellNo, I think that's us. So to recap. I'll send you slots for building the dashboard, I'll send the one-page summary, and I'll book the contact centre session once you've got me the names. You'll send the list of attendees, the name for the extra admin, and a note if anything changes on the collections side.
- Nicola BrearleyPerfect, that's all of it. Thanks, Marcus. This was a good one, actually. Much more useful than I expected.
- Marcus BellGlad to hear it. Thanks, Nicola. Speak soon.
- Nicola BrearleyBye for now.
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