Hartside Student Living / BG-Demo – Demo
Callcompleted
Hartside Student Living · 31 Dec 2025 12:15
Hannah Lowe demoed the brain on Hartside's own records to Bethany Cole, Sana Rahman and Zainab Ali. Zainab, who had been sceptical, found it persuasive. Growth at £57k total deal value remains the plan, with James Whitworth still to read the order form.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Hannah Lowe demoed the brain on Hartside's own records to Bethany Cole, Sana Rahman and Zainab Ali. Zainab, who had been sceptical, found it persuasive. Growth at £57k total deal value remains the plan, with James Whitworth still to read the order form.
What happened: On 31 Dec 2025 Hannah Lowe showed agreements, tickets and invoices joined by university, using an extract of Hartside's own data. Each answer linked back to its source record.
Customer view: Zainab Ali said she had been sceptical but found the joined-up tickets persuasive. Bethany Cole valued hearing about resident issues before a university does.
Commercial: Lewis Kerr restated Growth at £57k total, implementation included, with signature targeted for Friday 27 Mar 2026. James was absent and will read the order form first; the call does not show whether it was signed.
Watch: Sana flagged older tickets with free-text building fields, and Hannah named source changes as the commonest cause of a connector stopping loading.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Demo on own data
Importance
upsell
Sentiment
positive
Voice
champion
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Sana Rahman to send the systems list with administrators and any planned changes.
- Hannah Lowe to send the architecture note and connector plan.
- Lewis Kerr to send the proposal and draft order form for James Whitworth.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Tickets with no usable building field will sit unmatched until the mapping is cleaned up.
- A change to the helpdesk configuration could stop a connector loading if Sana Rahman does not warn BG-Demo first.
- James Whitworth was absent and has not yet read the order form.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Growth tier with the dashboards builder, with the first dashboard built with Sana during implementation.
- User growth beyond the included forty if usage supports it.
Transcript
Lewis KerrHello everyone. Can you all hear me? Hannah's here with me, and I can see Bethany and Sana already.
Bethany ColeHi both. Zainab's just coming through the lobby, give her a second.
Zainab AliSorry, sorry. I was on with a site team. Hello, can you hear me?- Lewis KerrPerfectly, Zainab, welcome. And happy New Year's Eve to you all, I'm impressed anyone's at their desk.
Sana RahmanOnly because the office is quiet. It's the one day nobody emails me, so I actually get to do some work.
Hannah LoweThanks for making the time, all of you. Before I share anything, may I ask what each of you most needs to know by the end of this hour? Then I can spend the time where it counts.- Bethany ColeFrom me, it's the partner review view. If I pick a university, can I see the nomination agreement, the open resident issues and what's been invoiced, without asking three people?
- Zainab AliMine is the resident side. Our tickets come in by building, not by university, and universities ask us about their students. I want to know whether it can connect the two.
- Sana RahmanAnd I'm the one who'll keep it running, so I want to know how it connects, how often it refreshes, and what happens when one of our sources changes.
- Hannah LoweGood, that's three clear questions and I think the demo answers all of them. I've loaded an extract of the data you sent over for two of your university partners, so what you'll see is your own records, not a mock-up. Let me share my screen. Can you see it?
- Bethany ColeYes, I can see the search box.
- Hannah LoweLovely. I'll start with Bethany's question. I'll type, show me the nomination agreement and open issues for the first partner university. And here it is. On the left is the agreement, with the nomination terms pulled out of the document, and on the right are the tickets tied to that university's buildings.
- Bethany ColeOh, that's good. Can I click through to the agreement itself? I'd want to check the wording.
- Hannah LoweYes. Every answer links back to the source record, so you're never relying on a summary alone. To be precise, the brain tells you where each statement came from, and you can open the original in your own system.
- Bethany ColeThat's what I'd need. What will the university ask? They'll ask where I got it from.
- Lewis KerrThat's the point Hannah's making. It's evidence, not opinion, and you can show it to the partner.
- Zainab AliCan I ask about the tickets? We've got issues that are logged against a block or a street, not a university. How does it know whose students are affected?
- Hannah LoweThe short answer is, it uses the link you already hold between building and university. The longer answer is that it depends on that mapping being in one of your systems. In the extract you sent, the building is on the agreement and on the ticket, so the brain can join them. If a ticket had no building at all, it would sit unmatched, and I'd show you those rather than hide them.
- Sana RahmanI can tell you now there'll be some of those. Older tickets especially, the building field was free text for a long time.
- Hannah LoweThat's useful to know. It's normal, and it's usually a small clean-up in the first weeks rather than a blocker. I'll note it as something to look at in the connector design.
- Zainab AliCould you show me what a bad day looks like? Say a heating failure across a few buildings. Could I ask which universities are affected?
- Hannah LoweYes, let me type that. Which universities have open heating issues in more than one building? And there we go, grouped by university, with the tickets underneath. You can see two partners here and the ages of the tickets.
- Zainab AliRight. So I could ring the partnership team before the university rings me.
- Bethany ColeWhich is exactly the bit I care about. Resident issues fixed before a university hears about them. Or at least, they hear it from us.
- Lewis KerrHannah, perhaps show the money side too, because James isn't here and he'll ask Bethany about it afterwards.
- Hannah LoweOf course. I'll ask, what has this university been invoiced and what is outstanding. This comes from the finance extract. You can see the invoices listed by date, and the status, paid or open. Again, each line opens the original.
- Bethany ColeCould I ask it to compare the invoiced rooms with the nominated rooms in the agreement? That's the conversation that always goes wrong.
- Hannah LoweYou can, and I'd be honest about what it does. It will put the nominated allocation from the agreement next to what's been invoiced, and flag where they differ. It won't decide who's right. That's a judgement for you and finance, but you'll have both numbers in front of you in seconds.
- Bethany ColeThat's more than I have now.
- Sana RahmanHannah, can I ask the plumbing questions now? How often does it refresh?
- Hannah LoweGo ahead. The nightly refresh completes by 07:00 your time on business days. So each morning, the brain reflects the previous day's activity. It isn't live to the minute.
- Sana RahmanThat's fine for partnerships. Resident services might want faster, but I think the morning is acceptable. Zainab?
- Zainab AliFor the review work, yes. If something's urgent I'd be in the helpdesk anyway.
- Sana RahmanAnd where does it actually live? I'll be asked.
- Hannah LoweInside your own Snowflake account. We build and run it there, so your data stays in your environment. I'll put that in writing as an architecture note, with a diagram, so you can pass it to James and to the universities if they ask.
- Sana RahmanGood. And if we change the helpdesk configuration, say add a field or rename a category?
- Hannah LoweThat is the most common cause of trouble, so well done for asking. When a source changes, the connector can stop loading properly. We watch for the record count going flat, and I'd ask you to tell us before a change, ideally. Then we adjust the mapping and re-run. It's routine, but it does need someone like you to flag it.
- Sana RahmanThat I can do. I'd be the person making the change in most cases anyway.
- Lewis KerrTo put it in context, that's why we ask for a named admin on your side. It's a short conversation, not a big process.
- Bethany ColeCan we go back to something? Could I see this by month, say how many open issues a partner had in the autumn compared with the summer? I'd like to bring the numbers to a review.
- Hannah LoweYes. I'll ask for open issues per month for the first university. That's a simple chart, and with the dashboards builder in Growth you can save it as a view, so the next review you open the same page and it's up to date.
- Zainab AliWho builds the dashboards? Is that us?
- Hannah LoweYou can, and Sana certainly would. I'd normally build the first one with you during implementation so you can see how it's done, and then it's yours.
- Sana RahmanI'd like that. Less for me to guess at.
- Lewis KerrCan I come back to the plan, because I want to make sure we're all expecting the same thing? What we've sized for you is the Growth tier, with the deal value we pencilled in at £57,000 in total, implementation included. The date we're working toward for signature is Friday 27 March 2026, with James reading the order form first.
- Bethany ColeYes, and James will want the order form in good time. He doesn't pay against anything he hasn't read.
- Lewis KerrI know, and I'd expect nothing less. I'll send it over today, as a proposal, with a clear note that nothing is agreed until the executed copy.
- Zainab AliCould I ask one more thing about users? How many of us would be on it?
- Lewis KerrGrowth includes forty users. From what Bethany said, partnerships, resident services and a few in finance would sit comfortably inside that. If you outgrow it, we'd talk about adding users, but I wouldn't suggest buying more than the usage supports.
- Zainab AliGood. We'll start small and see who actually asks questions.
- Hannah LoweThat's the right way round, honestly. The best sign of value is people asking the brain real questions, and we'd look at that together at the quarterly review.
- Bethany ColeSo, what do you need from us before the next step?
- Hannah LoweFrom Sana, the list of systems with who administers each, and a note of anything that's about to change in them. From Bethany, the two or three universities you'd most want live first. I'll put the architecture note and a connector plan in writing.
- Sana RahmanI can have the systems list to you in the new year.
- Lewis KerrAnd I'll send the proposal and the draft order form for James. Anything else from anyone?
- Zainab AliNo, that was really helpful. I'd been sceptical, I'll admit, but seeing our own tickets joined up is persuasive.
- Bethany ColeThanks everyone. Partners first, as ever. Have a good evening, and a good new year.
- Lewis KerrThank you all, and a happy new year. Speak soon.
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