Ashwell Mercer Interiors / BG-Demo – Demo
Callcompleted
Ashwell Mercer Interiors · 7 Jun 2024 14:15
Demo to Craig Ashwell and Jamal Edwards. Their pain is instructed variations that never get signed or invoiced. Price of £52k was floated, Craig held his reaction. Jamal wants a trial on one live job. Finance lead needed for the proposal.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Demo to Craig Ashwell and Jamal Edwards. Their pain is instructed variations that never get signed or invoiced. Price of £52k was floated, Craig held his reaction. Jamal wants a trial on one live job. Finance lead needed for the proposal.
What happened: Hannah Lowe demoed chat, the dashboards builder and the client page on sample data. Craig's question was where the variation is, what the client has signed and whether it has been invoiced.
Customer view: Craig liked that every line shows its source. He said he does not trust anything that just gives an answer.
Commercial: Priya Raman quoted £52k for the deal as scoped on Growth. Craig said he would not react yet and would bring his finance lead and credit control to the proposal call.
Watch: Craig does not want one person carrying the brain, and Jamal wants to trial it on a live job before committing. Craig also mentioned a previous system that took most of a year and was not used on site.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Variations and unpaid work
Importance
upsell
Sentiment
positive
Voice
decision-maker
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Priya Raman to send the proposal and a short trial note together.
- Priya to offer slots that include the finance lead and credit control.
- Hannah Lowe to confirm trial scope and put access and citation detail in writing.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Craig said a previous system took most of a year and the site teams never used it.
- Craig did not react to the £51,600 figure and nothing is agreed on price.
- Jamal is stretched on site and wants a trial before committing.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Growth tier covers the project, commercial and credit teams in one subscription.
- A trial on one live project could move the deal forward.
Transcript
Priya RamanHello, hello. Can you hear me alright? I can see Craig, I think Jamal's still on his way in.
Craig AshwellLoud and clear. Afternoon, Priya.
Jamal EdwardsAfternoon, sorry, I'm here. Had to move rooms, somebody had the meeting room booked over me. Can you hear me?- Priya RamanPerfectly. No problem at all. And Hannah's with me, so you've got both of us. Hannah, say hello.
Hannah LoweHello both. Thanks for making the time on a Friday afternoon, I appreciate it's not the easiest slot.- Craig AshwellFridays are fine. Everyone's on site till lunch and then they all ring me with problems at about three, so we've got a window.
- Priya RamanHa, well let's make the most of the window. Quick recap so we're all in the same place. We had the discovery chat a couple of weeks back, Craig told us what the pain is, and today is the demo, on a sample of your shape of data. Then, to keep momentum, the aim is a proposal in front of you shortly after, and if we can get this over the line by 9 Aug 2024 you'd be live well before the autumn fit-out rush.
- Craig AshwellThat's the plan. Though I'll tell you now, I've got one project that's worrying me more than anything else, and I'd like to see whether this thing would have caught it.
- Hannah LoweGood, that's exactly where I'd like to start. What do you most need to know today? Not the full tour, the thing that would make this worth your hour.
- Craig AshwellRight. We've got a retail fit-out in the Thames Valley, landlord's client, and the scope has moved about four times. Instructions from site, a lot of it verbal. Where's the variation? That's my question. Where's the variation, what has the client signed, and have we invoiced it.
- Jamal EdwardsWhich, to be fair, is a fair summary of my week. I'm the one chasing the paperwork. The instruction comes in by email or a phone call, I log it in the project system, the commercial team pick it up later, and credit control only hear about it when the valuation's already gone out.
- Craig AshwellAnd by then the client's forgotten they asked for it.
- Hannah LoweUnderstood. So the short answer is, yes, that's the kind of question the brain is built for. The longer answer is that it depends on those three places actually being connected, so let me show you what that looks like and then be precise about what we'd need from you.
- Priya RamanAnd just to say, Hannah's got the sample set loaded with the same structure you described, projects, clients, variations, emails, calls and invoices. Nothing of yours yet, obviously.
- Hannah LoweRight, I'm sharing my screen now. Can you see a page with a chat box at the top?
- Craig AshwellYes. Bit small. Can you make it bigger?
- Hannah LoweIs that better? Good. So this is the chat. Underneath it you've got search and a set of pages. Let me just ask it the sort of thing Craig said. I'll type: which variations on the retail project have been instructed but not yet agreed in writing?
- Hannah LoweGive it a moment, it's reading across the connected sources rather than one table.
- Jamal EdwardsMm. That's a long few seconds.
- Hannah LoweIt is, a bit, sorry, it's a bigger question than it looks. There we go. It's come back with a short list and, importantly, it shows where each line came from. This one is from an email thread, this one from a call recording, and this one from the project log, with the note that no signed variation order exists against it.
- Craig AshwellHang on, go back. That one from the call. Who said that?
- Hannah LoweIf I click through, you get the passage in the transcript and the speaker. So in this sample it's the client's site representative asking for an extra partition run, and your project manager saying they'd sort it. That's the sort of thing that normally lives in someone's head.
- Craig AshwellThat is exactly what kills us. Somebody says yes on site to be helpful and the money never follows. Right. Okay. I like that it shows the source. I don't trust anything that just gives me an answer.
- Hannah LoweGood, you shouldn't. I'd rather you could check every line. I'll put that in writing too, how the citations work, because your finance people will ask.
- Priya RamanCraig, while Hannah's got that up, is this the view you'd want your commercial team looking at first thing, or is it more a project manager thing?
- Craig AshwellBoth. Jamal's lot put it in, my lot need to see it. Jamal, what would you actually do with it?
- Jamal EdwardsHonestly, I'd ask it on a Monday morning for every live job, what's been instructed since last week with no paperwork. If it did that reliably I'd save myself a couple of hours. Does it only answer when you ask, or does it flag things?
- Hannah LoweGood question, and the honest answer is both, with a caveat. You can build a dashboard that sits there and shows the list without anyone asking. That's the dashboards builder, which is part of Growth. The chat itself waits for you. Let me show you the dashboard bit next.
- Hannah LoweOkay, I'm opening the builder. This is a blank canvas, and I'm going to add a table. I choose the client, the project, the status of the variation, and the value. I'll filter on instructed, not signed.
- Craig AshwellCan I put the age on it? How long it's been sitting there?
- Hannah LoweYou can. I'll add a column for days since instruction. There. Sorted oldest first. In your case I'd expect that column to be a little uncomfortable to look at.
- Craig AshwellHa. It'll be a lot uncomfortable. Good. Good, that's what I want. Let's get paid for what we've built.
- Priya RamanThat's literally the line I've got in my notes from the discovery call, so well remembered.
- Jamal EdwardsCan I ask about the credit control side? Because what I know is the project side. Where do the invoices come in?
- Hannah LoweSo the accounting system is one of the connectors. Invoices and payments come in nightly, and the brain can join them to the client and the project. Let me ask it. I'll type: for this client, show instructed variations alongside what has been invoiced and what is outstanding.
- Hannah LoweAnd while that thinks, one thing I want to be clear on. It reads what's in the accounting system. If an invoice hasn't been raised, it can tell you that nothing's been raised against that variation, but it can't tell you why. That's still a human conversation.
- Craig AshwellUnderstood. Fair enough. Nobody's selling me a miracle.
- Hannah LoweHere it is. Three columns: instructed, valued, invoiced. You can see the gap on the second row, work instructed and done, no valuation, no invoice.
- Craig AshwellRight. That's the one. That's my retail job, near enough. If I'd had that screen in March I'd have had a very different conversation with the client.
- Priya RamanCraig, can I pick up on that? When you say a very different conversation, is that a conversation you'd want your finance side in on? I know cash is a topic you like to take with the right people in the room.
- Craig AshwellIt is. I'm not going to talk cash without our finance lead there. When we get to a proposal, I'll want her on it, and the credit control team. I'll set that up.
- Priya RamanPerfect, happy to make that easy. I'll send two or three slots once we're done and we can build the proposal call around her diary.
- Hannah LoweShall I carry on? There's one more area I'd like to show, which is the client view. Because you said at the start you want project, commercial and credit teams looking at the same client.
- Craig AshwellGo on.
- Hannah LoweSo this is a page for a single client in the sample. Everything the brain knows about them is on here. Open projects, variations, recent calls, recent emails, invoices, and a short summary at the top, generated from all of that. I'll scroll slowly.
- Jamal EdwardsThe summary at the top, who writes that? Is it just a paragraph the machine makes up?
- Hannah LoweTo be precise, it's generated from the records underneath, and each sentence links back to what it's based on. It doesn't invent anything that isn't in your data, but it can be wrong about emphasis, which is why the links matter. If it says the client's relationship is strained, you can see which email it took that from.
- Craig AshwellI'd never put that in front of a client anyway. Internal only.
- Hannah LoweYes, it's an internal tool. Nothing here is customer-facing.
- Jamal EdwardsCan I ask a boring one? Who can see what? Because some of our commercial figures I'd not want every project manager looking at.
- Hannah LoweNot boring at all. Access is controlled by roles, and it runs inside your own Snowflake account, so your data doesn't leave your environment. For a company your size on Growth, you'd set up groups, say project, commercial and credit, and decide which pages and sources each group sees. I'll put the detail in writing so you can show your IT lead, and if there's anything I'm not sure of I'll check with our security colleague before I answer, I won't guess.
- Craig AshwellFine by me. We've got an IT contractor, he'll want it in writing anyway.
- Priya RamanAnd Craig, just so it's said out loud, the Growth tier covers several teams, so project, commercial and credit sit inside it without you needing anything bigger.
- Craig AshwellRight, and that's what I'm interested in. What does that come to, roughly? I know you'll send it properly, but give me a feel.
- Priya RamanOf course. So on what we've scoped, the deal comes to £51,600 in total. That's the whole package for the deal as it stands. I'll break it down line by line in the proposal so you can see what's subscription and what's the one-off set-up work.
- Craig AshwellFifty-one six. Okay. I'll not react yet. Show me the rest and let's see whether it's worth it.
- Hannah LoweFair. Then let me use the time to show you something nearer your daily life. Jamal, you said the instructions come in by email and phone. Can I show you how a call lands in the brain?
- Jamal EdwardsPlease.
- Hannah LoweSo the call recorder is another connector. When a call finishes, the transcript comes in, and the brain links it to the people and the client by name and by email address. Here's one from the sample. If I search for partition, it finds the passage, and it also shows me the project it relates to.
- Jamal EdwardsSo if I say on a call, we'll treat that as a variation, it'd find it.
- Hannah LoweIt would find the words you said. Whether it treats them as a variation depends on how you or the team phrase things and on what you ask. It's search and reading, not a rules engine. The more consistent your people are about saying the word, the better it gets, which is honestly a habit worth building anyway.
- Craig AshwellThat's a habit I'll enforce. Variation, said out loud, every time.
- Priya RamanI'm writing that down as a testimonial.
- Craig AshwellPut it on a mug. Right, what about how long it takes to get going? We've been burned before. Last time we brought in a system, it took most of a year and half the site teams never touched it.
- Hannah LoweUnderstood, and I'd rather be honest about it. For Growth the implementation runs about eight weeks. In that time we connect the sources, check the data is arriving properly, and set up the first pages and dashboards with you. Where it goes wrong is usually not the technology, it's that nobody on the customer side owns it.
- Priya RamanWhich is why I'd always ask who the day-to-day owner would be. Craig, is that you, or someone like Jamal?
- Craig AshwellMe for the commercial side, Jamal for the project side. I don't want one person carrying it, that's a mistake. If one person asks all the questions and they leave, we're stuck.
- Hannah LoweThat's a sensible instinct. Honestly, the accounts where it sticks are the ones with a couple of regular askers in different teams.
- Jamal EdwardsI can do that. I'd need to know how much of my time. Because on site I'm stretched.
- Hannah LoweEarly on, a few hours a week for the first couple of weeks, mostly telling us which sources are right and which are messy. After that, it should take time off you, not add to it. I'll put a rough plan in the follow-up so you can judge it.
- Craig AshwellGood. Anything else you want to show us? Otherwise I've got a few questions.
- Hannah LoweOne last thing. The messy-data case. Let me show you what it looks like when a source stops loading, because it will happen at some point, and I'd rather you saw it here than discovered it later.
- Hannah LoweThis is the connector view. Green means it's loading as expected. This one's amber, which means the record count hasn't moved for a few days. That's usually because somebody changed something upstream, a field renamed, a permission changed. It's flagged, so you're not quietly working on stale information.
- Craig AshwellThat's a useful thing to hear. My worry is always the numbers being out of date and nobody saying.
- Priya RamanAnd that's something we'd review with you regularly once you're live, so it doesn't sit there unnoticed.
- Craig AshwellRight. Questions, then. First, who else sees our data? Second, if we're unhappy at the end of the first year, what happens? And third, can we start with just the commercial team and credit control and add the project side later?
- Hannah LoweI'll take the first. Nobody outside your own account sees it, because it's built inside your Snowflake account. I'll confirm the exact wording in the written follow-up. On the third, yes, in principle, though I'd gently push back, because the value you described is the three teams seeing the same client. Starting with only two teams might mean the first demo you give your board is the least impressive one.
- Priya RamanOn the second, the subscription is annual, so we'd talk before the end of the term about whether it's delivering. I'd rather we agreed a way of judging that up front than argue about it later. I'll cover it in the proposal.
- Craig AshwellThat's all I wanted. Straight answers. Right. Jamal, anything from you?
- Jamal EdwardsOnly that I'd like to try it on one of our own jobs before we commit. Even a small one. Is that possible?
- Hannah LoweIt's possible, and it's what I'd suggest. Pick one live project, and we'll agree what we can safely connect for a trial. I'll check what's feasible and come back to you with specifics.
- Priya RamanLet me make that easy. I'll send the proposal and a short trial note together, and I'll put the slots in for your finance lead and credit control at the same time, so Craig's not chasing.
- Craig AshwellGood. Do that. Thanks both, that was useful. Better than the last lot who showed us a slide deck.
- Hannah LoweThanks, Craig. Thanks, Jamal. Speak soon.
- Jamal EdwardsCheers, bye.
- Priya RamanBest from me too. Speak next week.
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