Brackwell Freight Ltd / BG-Demo – QBR
Callcompleted
Brackwell Freight Ltd · 24 Jun 2026 13:15
At the 24 Jun 2026 QBR, new Finance Director Gareth Whitlam asked what £44k buys when six of forty seats are active, said he has been asked to cut software spend, and rejected a higher renewal price for fewer users.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026At the 24 Jun 2026 QBR, new Finance Director Gareth Whitlam asked what £44k buys when six of forty seats are active, said he has been asked to cut software spend, and rejected a higher renewal price for fewer users.
What happened: Marcus Bell presented usage with Gareth and Aisha Rahman. Active users are about six against forty seats, down by about a quarter, and questions asked are concentrated in a handful of people.
Customer view: Gareth inherited the contract in April and has been asked to cut software spend. He said he is not against the tool but against paying for something he cannot justify line by line.
Commercial: The term ends on 30 Nov 2026 and renews on 1 Dec 2026. Gareth rejected a higher price for fewer users and asked whether seats can be reduced, which points to a downgrade risk on Growth.
Watch: There are no tickets and the data is fresh, so this is a value and adoption problem. Aisha is the admin and a key-person risk, and the depot account managers have gone quiet.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
value challenge at renewal
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
negative
Voice
decision-maker
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Marcus Bell to email the usage breakdown by person and depot, the contract wording and the seat and price points to Tom Ashdown.
- Aisha Rahman to send the list of quiet depots and book the thirty-minute admin session with Marcus.
- Tom Ashdown to join a follow-up with a firm price figure before any renewal paperwork.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Gareth is under instruction to cut software spend and rejects a higher price for fewer users, so the Growth subscription may be cut back or lost on 1 Dec 2026.
- Active use is about six of forty seats and concentrated in a few people, with Aisha as a key-person risk.
- Marcus could not put a value on the brain from usage alone, so there is no value case yet.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Build a value case with Aisha and Gareth around the manual reconciliation the brain replaces.
- An admin session and depot manager conversations could widen adoption among the group the brain was bought for.
Transcript
Marcus BellHello, can you hear me all right? I've got a bit of an echo on my side.
Aisha RahmanYes, I can hear you fine. Afternoon, Marcus.
Gareth WhitlamAfternoon. Give me a moment, the camera's not behaving. Right. I'm here.- Marcus BellNo problem at all. Thanks both for making the time. How's the week been? Still raining up there?
- Aisha RahmanIt has been, yes. Typical. And it's been busy, everyone's chasing figures ahead of the quarter end, so I've mostly been in spreadsheets.
- Gareth WhitlamBusy is one word for it. Shall we get on? I've another meeting at half past two.
- Marcus BellOf course. Let me share my screen. Can you see it? Good. What I want to cover is usage over the last quarter, what's working and what isn't, and then the renewal timeline, so nothing comes as a surprise later in the year. Happy to jump on a longer call after this if we run out of road.
- Gareth WhitlamBefore you start, let me say what I've read. I've read the order form, and I've read the usage summary you sent last week. Forty licensed seats, £44k a year, and the summary says six people are active. What exactly are we paying for?
- Marcus BellThat's a fair question, and honestly it's the number I wanted to start with. I've pulled the numbers. Six active users on average over the last thirty days, and that's down by about a quarter on the previous quarter. So yes, it's fewer people than you've got seats for.
- Gareth WhitlamDown by a quarter. Is that a trend or a blip?
- Marcus BellLooking at the weekly line, it's a gentle slope rather than a cliff. It's been drifting down, not dropping in one go. I'll bring up the chart. Here. You can see the line, and the dip is steady across the quarter.
- Aisha RahmanJust flagging, I did look at this before the call. I've tried filtering by depot in the admin page to see who's stopped logging in, and it does look like it's mostly the depot account managers, not the revenue operations side.
- Gareth WhitlamWhich is the group the brain was bought for. Correct?
- Aisha RahmanYes. That was the idea. Revenue operations and the depot account managers seeing accounts, delivery exception tickets and calls in one place. So that's the group I'd have hoped to see more from.
- Gareth WhitlamAnd why have they stopped?
- Aisha RahmanI don't know, Gareth. I'd only be guessing, and I'd rather not. I can ask them, though. I just haven't wanted to go round the depots without knowing what we'd say back.
- Marcus BellThat's a sensible approach, Aisha. I can help with the asking. What I can show you from our side is who is still using it, and what they're using it for. Shall I put that up?
- Gareth WhitlamPlease. Show me the usage. Not the feature list, the usage.
- Marcus BellRight, so this is questions asked, which is the best single measure I've got of whether people find it useful. Over the last quarter, most of the questions come from a handful of people. Two of them are in revenue operations, and a couple are depot managers who ask about delivery exceptions on their larger retail accounts. And Aisha, you're in there as well.
- Aisha RahmanI am, yes. A lot of mine is for the Tuesday operations review. I pull the exceptions summary and the account notes so the review isn't built on last week's figures.
- Gareth WhitlamSo a few people ask a lot of questions, and most of our seats ask none.
- Marcus BellThat's a fair summary, yes. I won't dress it up. The questions that are asked are real ones, and they're useful to the people asking. But it's concentrated, and I'd rather say that to you plainly than have you find it yourself.
- Gareth WhitlamI appreciate plain. It doesn't change the arithmetic. If six people use it, I'm paying £44k for six people.
- Marcus BellI understand why you'd put it that way. Can I offer another way of looking at it, and you tell me if it's fair?
- Gareth WhitlamGo on.
- Marcus BellThe thing the brain does is replace a lot of manual reconciling. So the question isn't only how many people log in, it's what those six people would otherwise be doing. If Aisha's review was built by hand from four different systems each week, that's real time. What I don't have is a number for that, and I'd be making one up if I gave you one. That's something we'd need to work out with you.
- Gareth WhitlamSo you can't tell me the value.
- Marcus BellNot from the usage alone, no. I can show you activity. The value case needs your input, and I'd like to build it with you properly.
- Gareth WhitlamHmm. That's honest, at least. What about problems? Are there any? Support tickets, faults, anything I should know about?
- Marcus BellNone. No tickets in the last thirty days, nothing high priority, and your invoices are all paid, nothing overdue. So on the support side it's been quiet.
- Gareth WhitlamQuiet. Is quiet good? Or is quiet people not bothering?
- Marcus BellMm. Honestly, with fewer active users, it could be a bit of both. I wouldn't read it as a clean bill of health. When a lot of people use something, you tend to get tickets. When tickets drop and usage drops together, I'd want to understand it, not just be pleased about it.
- Aisha RahmanCan I add something? I've not raised tickets because the things I've hit were mostly how do I do this in the admin side. I've been working it out from the help pages. Is it me, or is the permissions screen a bit hard to follow?
- Marcus BellIt's not just you. It's one of the screens people ask about. And that's useful, actually, because you've been the admin since our previous admin left, and I don't think we've ever sat down and gone through that side with you properly. That's on us, not on you.
- Aisha RahmanI didn't want to say. I thought I was supposed to know it by now.
- Marcus BellNo, not at all. I'd like to book a proper admin session. Shall we say thirty minutes, just you and me, and we go through users, connectors and permissions?
- Aisha RahmanYes, please. That would help. Thank you.
- Gareth WhitlamLet me bring us back to the contract. The order form says the term ends on 30 November 2026. Renewal date is 1 December 2026. Correct?
- Marcus BellCorrect. The term ends on 30 November 2026 and the renewal falls on 1 December 2026. You've been with us since 1 December 2023, so this is the first renewal.
- Gareth WhitlamAnd I was brought in in April. I didn't choose this, I inherited it. So I'm looking at it fresh, and I've been asked to cut software spend. I'd rather you heard that from me now than in November.
- Marcus BellI appreciate you saying it. That's helpful, genuinely. So you know where I stand: my job is to make sure the brain is earning its place, or if it isn't, to tell you what would need to change.
- Gareth WhitlamWhat happens to the price at renewal? I've seen the letter that went out earlier this year about list prices.
- Marcus BellRight. I'll be straight about where I sit on that. The price conversation belongs to Tom Ashdown, your account owner, not me, and I don't want to quote you something half remembered. What I can say is that because you signed on the earlier price book, the newer list price applies from this renewal, so it will be higher than what you pay now. Tom will send you the actual figure.
- Gareth WhitlamHigher. For fewer users. I'm not minded to agree that.
- Marcus BellUnderstood. I'll make sure Tom hears exactly that, in those words. And I'd rather he had a proper usage picture before he calls you, so you're not being asked to decide anything on a number alone.
- Gareth WhitlamGood. Because I'll ask the same thing again. What exactly are we paying for?
- Marcus BellYes. And I'd like to have a better answer for you than I have today. Can I suggest what that would look like?
- Gareth WhitlamPlease. Briefly.
- Marcus BellThree things. One, I send you a breakdown of usage by person and by depot, so you can see who's active and who isn't. Two, Aisha and I look at why the depot managers have gone quiet. Is it that they don't know how to ask it questions, that they've gone back to their own spreadsheets, or that the answers aren't what they need? We'd find out rather than guess. And three, we pick the one or two things the brain does that you'd actually miss if it went away, and we put a rough value on them with you. If we can't, that tells you something too.
- Gareth WhitlamAnd if the answer to the third is nothing?
- Marcus BellThen you'd have a clear reason to cut it back, and I'd rather you knew that than renewed out of habit. I'd hope we can do better. But I'm not going to sit here and tell you the number of seats is right if it isn't.
- Gareth WhitlamHmm. Fine. I'll say that's more useful than a feature list.
- Aisha RahmanIf it helps, I could speak to the depot managers next week. Just a short conversation with each of them. I'd want to be careful how it's put, though. I wouldn't want it to sound like they're being told off for not using it.
- Marcus BellThat's the right instinct. Keep it as a question: what would make this worth opening on a Monday morning? I can give you a couple of lines to use if that helps, and I can join one or two of them if they'd like.
- Gareth WhitlamAisha, to be clear, you'd be doing that on top of your day job.
- Aisha RahmanYes. It's fine, honestly. I think I'd want to know anyway, since I'm the one keeping it running.
- Gareth WhitlamThen I'd rather it was an agreed part of your week and not something you do quietly. I'll mention it to the operations director.
- Aisha RahmanThank you. That would help.
- Marcus BellWhile I've got the screen up, one more thing worth showing. This is the list of connectors. Everything's loading, nothing's gone flat, and the records indexed are still going up each night. So the data underneath is fresh. It's not a stale data problem, it's a usage one. I thought you'd want to know that, Gareth.
- Gareth WhitlamSo the system's fine and the people aren't using it.
- Marcus BellAs far as these numbers show, yes. I'd be careful with how I word the second half. I don't know yet why they aren't, and that's the bit we want to find out.
- Gareth WhitlamFair. Next question. Seats. We have forty. If it turns out we only need ten or so, can we reduce at renewal?
- Marcus BellThat's a commercial point, so again it's Tom's call, and I don't want to guess at what the order form allows beyond what I've seen. What I'd say is that it's a reasonable thing to raise, and I'd rather you raised it with Tom early than late. I'll flag it to him today.
- Gareth WhitlamDo. And I'll want it in writing, not on a call.
- Marcus BellYes, of course. I'll put it all in an email after this, with the usage attached.
- Aisha RahmanMarcus, one other thing, and I'm just flagging it. The Tuesday review pulls from the tickets and the calls. Sometimes I'm not sure which version of an account note is the latest. Is that something the training session could cover?
- Marcus BellYes, that's exactly the kind of thing. Bring me two or three real examples from the review and we'll go through them on your own data rather than a demo account. I find that sticks better.
- Gareth WhitlamI'm going to say something and I'd like it noted. I'm not against this tool. I'm against paying for something I can't justify line by line. Those are different.
- Marcus BellNoted, and understood. That's a clear brief, and it's one I can work to.
- Gareth WhitlamThen let's be clear about timing. I don't want to be having this conversation in the last week of November.
- Marcus BellAgreed. Here's what I'd propose. By the end of next week you have the usage breakdown from me. Aisha and I do the admin session and she talks to the depots in the same stretch. Then, in the middle of the summer, we sit down again, the three of us, with Tom, and look at what we've learned before any renewal paperwork arrives.
- Gareth WhitlamTom should be on that call. And he should bring a number I can read, not a range.
- Marcus BellI'll pass that on word for word.
- Aisha RahmanIs there anything I should send you before then? I can put together a list of which depot managers I think have gone quiet, with the caveat that it's from the admin page and I don't know the reasons.
- Marcus BellThat would be perfect. A simple list, with the caveat, exactly as you've said it. And if there's anything you've been meaning to ask and haven't, send that too. No question is too small.
- Gareth WhitlamOne last thing. Does anything in the contract change on its own at the end of the term? I don't want it rolling over because nobody said anything.
- Marcus BellGood question. I'd rather not paraphrase the clause from memory. I'll pull the exact wording from the order form and the terms and put it in the email, along with when we'd normally send the formal renewal notice, so you can see it in black and white.
- Gareth WhitlamGood. I'll read it properly.
- Marcus BellLet me recap so we all leave with the same list. I send the usage breakdown by person and depot, the contract wording, and a note to Tom with your seat question and your point on price. Aisha sends the list of quiet depots and we book thirty minutes on the admin side. Gareth, you'll mention the depot conversations to the operations director. Have I missed anything?
- Aisha RahmanNo, I think that's it. I'll book the time with you after this.
- Gareth WhitlamThat's it from me. I'll wait for the email.
- Marcus BellThanks, both. I know this wasn't the easiest conversation, and I'd rather we had it now. I'll get that email out today.
- Aisha RahmanThanks, Marcus. Speak soon.
- Gareth WhitlamRight. Goodbye.
- Marcus BellCheers both. Bye for now.
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