Ashwell Mercer Interiors / BG-Demo – Renewal
Callcompleted
Ashwell Mercer Interiors · 18 Jul 2025 14:45
On the 18 Jul 2025 renewal call, the Finance Director said she cannot take £44k to the board without evidence of payback. The current price is £40k, and a revised one-page proposal is due within two weeks.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026On the 18 Jul 2025 renewal call, the Finance Director said she cannot take £44k to the board without evidence of payback. The current price is £40k, and a revised one-page proposal is due within two weeks.
What happened: Priya Raman set the renewal at £44k against £40k now, explaining that the first-term arrangement ends at renewal. Craig Ashwell heard it as the same thing for more money.
Customer view: Valerie Okon, the Finance Director, is judging cost and needs written evidence in collections or variations recovered. Board approval is needed, and she will not sign alone.
Usage: Marcus Bell said questions are concentrated in Craig and Debbie Rowntree. A site manager rollout is the headroom inside the forty seats.
Watch: The overdue invoice is held by a purchase order mismatch, which Debbie called partly the customer's side. A connector refresh slip was resolved inside the Growth commitment.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Renewal price and value
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
mixed
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 Valerie Okon a one-page revised proposal with a clear date, inside two weeks and before the board.
- Craig Ashwell and Debbie Rowntree to write up variations and recoveries with amounts.
- Marcus Bell to get the purchase order details from Debbie and book thirty minutes with site managers.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- The Finance Director may not take £44,000 to the board without written evidence of payback.
- Questions come mostly from Craig and Debbie, so usage depends on two people.
- She raised whether forty seats is the right number, so the renewal may be resized.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Rolling the brain out to site managers would use headroom inside the forty included users.
- Written examples of recovered variations could turn into the value case for the board.
Transcript
Priya RamanHello, hello. Can everyone hear me all right? I've got a little lag on my side.
Craig AshwellLoud and clear. Bit of a delay on your video, but fine.
Marcus BellAfternoon all. Yeah, I can hear you, Priya. Valerie, Debbie, you two there?
Valerie OkonI'm here. Debbie is just dialling in from the other office, she's a minute behind.- Craig AshwellHonestly, it's been one of those weeks. Site visit on Tuesday, another on Wednesday, and the lift at the Reading office has been out since Monday. So if I'm a bit short, that's why.
- Priya RamanHa, I'll try to make it painless then. Happy to make this easy.
Debbie RowntreeSorry, sorry, I'm here. Is it recording? Right, ignore me, carry on.- Valerie OkonBefore we start. Priya, Marcus, where do we stand on invoices? When will the outstanding one be sorted from your side? I want to be sure we're looking at the same thing.
- Priya RamanFair question, and I'll let Debbie and Marcus pick it up in a second, because I think there's one that's showing as overdue on our ledger. Can I do a quick recap of where we are first, so everyone has the same picture?
- Valerie OkonPlease.
- Priya RamanSo. You joined us on 23 Aug 2024 on Growth, forty seats, and the current term runs out on 22 August 2025, with the renewal date as 23 August 2025. You're paying £39,600 a year at the moment. The renewal deal on our side is sitting at £44,000, and what I'd love is to get this over the line by Friday 8 August 2025, to keep momentum, so nobody is rushing at the end of the month.
- Craig AshwellHang on. £44,000? That's not what we pay now.
- Priya RamanRight, no, and that's the bit I want to be clear on. The £39,600 reflects the first-term arrangement from when you signed. At renewal that comes to an end and the Growth subscription goes to its standard rate, which is where the £44,000 comes from. Nothing else has changed in the package.
- Craig AshwellHm. So it's the same thing for more money.
- Priya RamanSame tier, same forty users, same connectors. I'd rather we talked through what you've got out of it, and then come back to the number. Marcus has pulled usage.
- Marcus BellYeah, thanks Priya. I'll share my screen, give me a second. Can you see it? It's the usage report for the last quarter, and I've put the questions asked on the first page, because that's the number I care about most.
- Craig AshwellI can see it. Carry on.
- Marcus BellSo, I've pulled the numbers. Active people are up on last quarter, a fair bit, and we're averaging somewhere around six or seven people a day across the month. I know that's well short of forty licensed users, and I'll come back to that. But the direction is the right way. The questions being asked have gone up too, and the pattern is mostly project and credit questions, which is what you bought it for.
- Craig AshwellWho's asking them?
- Marcus BellGood question. It's a bit concentrated, honestly. You, Craig, and Debbie are the two biggest. A couple of the project managers have started, which is good to see. But if either of you were away for a month, you'd see the graph drop.
- Debbie RowntreeThat'll be me. I use it every morning for the aged debt calls. I pull up the client, see the variations, the last call notes, what's been invoiced. Saves me ringing round three people.
- Craig AshwellThat's the point of it, to be fair. What has the client signed? Where's the variation? You ask the brain and it tells you. When it works, it works.
- Marcus BellRight. And that's what I'd say is the value case, really. Debbie, can I ask, what would you do without it, day to day?
- Debbie RowntreeSpreadsheets. Same as before. I'd go back to chasing the commercial team for the sign-off emails, and then waiting. It's not that I couldn't, it would just be slower, and slower costs us on valuations.
- Valerie OkonWhich brings me back to the invoice. Debbie, what's your view?
- Debbie RowntreeThere's one of yours that we've had sitting in the queue. Marcus, I think it's the quarter's one. We approved it, but it got held up because the purchase order on it didn't match what we had. So it's overdue by a bit, and that's on us as much as you.
- Marcus BellOkay, thanks for being straight about that. I can't see the detail of the payment run, that's with our finance team, but if you send me the purchase order you're expecting on it, I'll get it passed over today so it matches.
- Valerie OkonWe'll pay on the agreed terms once it matches. I'm not going to promise a date I can't keep, but Debbie will put it in the next run.
- Debbie RowntreeYes, I'll email you the order details this afternoon, Marcus.
- Marcus BellPerfect. Thanks, Debbie. That's useful.
- Valerie OkonGood. Now, I'll be blunt. I'm looking at this renewal from a cost point of view. We're a fit-out contractor, margins are what they are, and every subscription gets looked at. The question for me is simple: what is it worth to us?
- Priya RamanThat's a completely fair question, and I'd rather we answered it properly than glossed over it. Marcus, would you pick up the headroom point? Because I think there's something in the forty seats.
- Marcus BellYeah. So, you've licensed forty people and a handful are active. That's two ways to read it. One is, well, you're paying for seats nobody uses. The other is that the value is proven in the teams that do use it, and the rest of the company hasn't been brought in yet. I'd say it's the second, but I'd rather show you than just say it.
- Craig AshwellWe've never rolled it out properly to the site managers. That's on me. They're not at a desk, they're in a portakabin or on the phone.
- Marcus BellThat's what I was wondering. The mobile side of the questions is where I'd focus. Happy to jump on a call with your site managers, half an hour, show them the three questions that matter. Which variations are unsigned, what's the client's last valuation, and has anything been invoiced against it.
- Craig AshwellWhere's the variation. Yes. If they could get that in their pocket, I'd be happy. Because the worst thing is work done and nothing recorded.
- Valerie OkonCraig, we've also discussed this before. Training sessions are all very well, but they have to turn into something we can measure. What do I see at the end of it?
- Marcus BellFair. I'd say, questions asked per week from the site managers, and the number of people active. I'll put it in the quarterly review so you've got a before and after. You get that review on Growth anyway.
- Valerie OkonFine. And on the tickets? I saw something about an urgent one.
- Marcus BellYes, there were a couple of tickets last month. One was marked high priority. It was a connector that stopped refreshing for a day or so. It's been resolved and responses were inside the Growth commitment. I can send you the detail if that's useful.
- Debbie RowntreeThat was mine. The credit data was a day behind and I noticed on the morning call. It came back fine, and they were quick about it, to be fair.
- Craig AshwellWhich is exactly why it matters. If the data's stale, you chase the wrong client. I don't want that.
- Marcus BellUnderstood. The refresh is meant to be complete by seven in the morning, and I'll keep an eye on that for you. I can't give you a date for any engineering changes, I'm afraid, that's not mine to promise, but I can make sure you hear straight away if it slips.
- Valerie OkonThat's acceptable.
- Priya RamanCan I come back to the commercial side? Valerie, you raised cost. I do want to be useful here. What would make the renewal sensible from where you sit? Is it the number, or is it the proof of value?
- Valerie OkonBoth. I can't take £44,000 to the board for something we use in one corner of the business. I can take it if I can show that it's paying for itself, in collections or in variations recovered. I'll need evidence.
- Craig AshwellI can give you evidence. There are two projects this year where a variation would have gone unrecorded. We caught it because it came up in the project view. Let's get paid for what we've built, and that's how it got paid.
- Valerie OkonI'd want that written down, Craig, with the amounts, not remembered.
- Craig AshwellFine. I'll get the project managers to write it up. Debbie can help with the numbers.
- Debbie RowntreeI can do that. I'd need a couple of weeks, because some of it is on invoices that aren't closed out.
- Priya RamanThat's great, and that gives us a nice shape. If you can pull that together, we can sit down again before the deadline, and I'll come with a view on what we can do on the proposal. I can't put anything in writing today, but I'll make sure whatever I bring has a clear date on it.
- Valerie OkonI'd expect nothing less. And I want to be clear, the board has to see anything new. I won't sign anything on my own.
- Priya RamanUnderstood, completely. When does the board next meet, roughly?
- Valerie OkonEarly August. So whatever it is needs to be with me the week before.
- Priya RamanThen that fits. If I have the revised proposal to you inside the next fortnight, you've got time to read it and take it to them, and we're still ahead of the end of the term on 22 August 2025.
- Craig AshwellPriya, one question. If we wanted to add more people, say the site managers, we've got forty. Is that all of them or is that a limit?
- Marcus BellIt's the number included in Growth, and you're nowhere near it in terms of active people. So you'd have room to bring all the site managers in before you'd need to think about anything extra. That's why I'd start there.
- Craig AshwellGood. That's a better answer than I expected.
- Valerie OkonMarcus, that makes me think the renewal question is partly about whether the forty is the right number for us. I'm not asking you to answer today.
- Marcus BellNo, understood, and I'll leave the pricing side with Priya. What I can do is give you a plain picture of who's using it and who isn't, and you can decide with that in front of you.
- Priya RamanAnd that's the right split. Marcus on usage and the rollout, me on the commercial proposal. Let me read back what I've got so we're all agreed.
- Priya RamanOne. Debbie sends Marcus the purchase order details this afternoon so the overdue invoice can be matched. Two. Marcus books thirty minutes with the site managers and sends a usage summary Valerie can read. Three. Craig and Debbie write up the variations and recoveries from the last year. Four. I send a revised proposal to Valerie inside two weeks, with a clear date, ahead of the board. Does that sound right?
- Valerie OkonThat's right. Please keep it short. One page.
- Priya RamanOne page. Understood.
- Craig AshwellAnd Marcus, don't make the site manager session a lecture. They'll switch off.
- Marcus BellHa, no, I'll keep it practical. Three questions, on their phones, ten minutes of showing and the rest for them to try. Shall we book thirty minutes next week, Craig?
- Craig AshwellSend me a couple of slots. Not Tuesday.
- Marcus BellWill do. Thanks, Marcus, signing off the actions there.
- Valerie OkonThank you all. Debbie, a word afterwards, please.
- Priya RamanBrilliant, thanks everyone. Best, Priya, and speak soon.
- Debbie RowntreeThanks all, cheers. I'll send that over now.
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