Brackwell Freight Ltd / BG-Demo – Check In
Callcompleted
Brackwell Freight Ltd · 24 Jul 2026 16:15
Finance Director Gareth Whitlam asked what the £44k Growth subscription delivers, with about five daily users against forty licences. He said he may want a smaller contract before the 1 Dec 2026 renewal.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Finance Director Gareth Whitlam asked what the £44k Growth subscription delivers, with about five daily users against forty licences. He said he may want a smaller contract before the 1 Dec 2026 renewal.
What happened: Marcus Bell opened the 24 Jul 2026 check-in with usage, tickets and renewal timing. Gareth said he inherited the contract and could not find what the company gets for the money.
Customer view: He wants to know which retail contracts are in trouble before the retailer says so. He is not minded to pay more for a product five people touch.
Commercial: The term ends 30 Nov 2026 and renewal is 1 Dec 2026. Marcus told him list price at renewal would be higher, and Tom Ashdown owns that conversation.
Watch: Questions asked are concentrated in a small group and two high priority tickets were raised in thirty days. Gareth wants to know before signing whether the cause is fixed.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Value case before 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 sends the ticket log with timestamps by the following Monday and confirms whether both tickets are properly resolved.
- Marcus builds the one-page usage view and sets up conversations with depot account managers once Gareth names a revenue operations contact.
- Tom Ashdown takes the renewal and price conversation with Gareth before the end of the quarter.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Daily use is about five people against forty licences and has fallen by nearly a quarter on the quarter before.
- Questions are concentrated in a small group, so the value rests on a handful of people.
- Gareth says he will want a smaller contract if the usage view shows little use, and he will not accept a higher price.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Sessions with the depot account managers and revenue operations could widen adoption toward the forty licences.
- A one-page view of real questions asked and what came of them could give Gareth a value case.
Transcript
Marcus BellGood afternoon, Gareth. Can you hear me all right?
Gareth WhitlamI can. Afternoon.- Marcus BellBrilliant. Thanks for making time on a Friday, I know it's the end of the week and everyone's trying to get out of the door.
- Gareth WhitlamIt's not the end of anything for me. Month end is on us. But go on.
- Marcus BellFair enough, I'll keep it tight. I've got about thirty-five minutes in the diary so that's what I'll aim for. Let me share my screen, hang on... can you see that?
- Gareth WhitlamI see a usage page. Yes.
- Marcus BellGood. So what I wanted to cover is three things. Usage over the last quarter, the support tickets you've had, and then the renewal, just so we're clear on timing and nobody's surprised in the autumn. Does that work for you?
- Gareth WhitlamIt's roughly what I expected. Let me say where I am, so we don't waste time. I've read the summary you sent last week. I've read the order form. What I haven't found is anything that tells me what we actually get for the money.
- Marcus BellRight. Yeah, that's fair.
- Gareth WhitlamI inherited this, Marcus. I didn't choose it. I came in back in April with a brief to look at software spend, and this is one of the lines I was asked to look at properly. So I'd rather you were direct with me.
- Marcus BellHappy to be. I've pulled the numbers, so let me just be straight about what they show. We have forty licensed users on the Growth plan. In the last thirty days, on average, about five people a day are actually logging in and using it.
- Gareth WhitlamFive.
- Marcus BellAbout five, yeah. And that's down on the quarter before. It's down by nearly a quarter, so it's moving the wrong way, I won't dress it up.
- Gareth WhitlamSo forty licences and five people. Why are we paying for forty?
- Marcus BellWell, forty is what's in the Growth tier, it's what the contract was written around. It was set up for revenue operations and the account managers across the depots to all be in there. The idea was they'd see the accounts, the delivery exception tickets and the calls together in one place.
- Gareth WhitlamI know what the idea was. It's in the proposal. What I'm asking is whether it happened.
- Marcus BellPartly. Honestly, partly. The people who are in there are using it. But it hasn't spread across the depots the way it was meant to.
- Gareth WhitlamWhy not?
- Marcus BellI can't tell you that from the numbers alone, and I don't want to guess. It could be that the account managers never got properly started, it could be that they've got other habits, it could be something about how the depots are organised. I'd want to ask them rather than tell you a story.
- Gareth WhitlamThat's honest, at least. It's also not much of an answer.
- Marcus BellNo, I take that. Let me show you the page, because there's a bit more in it. If I scroll down to the questions asked, you can see how that's gone month by month.
- Gareth WhitlamShow me the usage. Go on.
- Marcus BellSo this line here is questions put to the brain. It's the best single measure of whether people are getting value, because it's someone actually asking something they need to know. And it's lower than the same stretch earlier in the year. Not collapsed, but lower.
- Gareth WhitlamAnd who is asking them?
- Marcus BellA small group, mostly. That's the other thing I wanted to flag. It's concentrated. When it's that few people, you lean heavily on whether those individuals stay interested and stay in the business.
- Gareth WhitlamWhich is a way of saying the whole thing hangs on a handful of people.
- Marcus BellIt's a fair way of saying it, yeah.
- Gareth WhitlamRight. Let me ask something different. What exactly are we paying for? Not the feature list. The money. What is it that we pay for each year?
- Marcus BellSo the contracted figure is £44,000 a year. That's the annual subscription for the Growth tier. It matches the order form and it matches what's been invoiced, so there's no gap between those.
- Gareth WhitlamI've seen the invoices. They've been paid. Nobody's disputing that. I'm asking about value, not whether finance did its job.
- Marcus BellUnderstood. And you're right to separate the two.
- Gareth WhitlamThen do the arithmetic for me. £44k a year, about five people using it. That's a lot of money for each person actually in there.
- Marcus BellIt is, if you look at it purely per active person. I won't argue with that. The case I'd make is that it's not meant to be measured by headcount in the system alone, it's about what those people can find out and how quickly. But I accept that on its own that's not enough for you.
- Gareth WhitlamNo, it isn't. That sounds like a feature list. I've had a feature list.
- Marcus BellOkay. Then let me try something more concrete, and tell me if it lands. Can I ask what you or the board actually want to know about the retail contracts? Like, what's the question that if you could answer it quickly would be worth something?
- Gareth WhitlamWhich contracts are in trouble before the retailer tells us. That's what I was told it was for. Late deliveries, exceptions, complaints piling up, and nobody connecting them to the account until the customer's already half out of the door.
- Marcus BellRight, yeah. That's exactly what it was set up for. And that's the thing I think we should test. Not whether it can do it, but whether anyone's using it that way. If the account managers aren't opening it, then it's not doing that job, whatever it's capable of.
- Gareth WhitlamSo you're telling me it's our problem.
- Marcus BellNo, I'm not saying that. I'm saying it's ours jointly. Adoption is part of my job as much as yours. If forty people were meant to be in there and five are, that's something I should have been pushing on harder, and I'd rather say that than hide behind it.
- Gareth WhitlamHm. Let's move on. Tickets. You said two.
- Marcus BellYes, two in the last thirty days. Both were marked high priority. Let me pull that up. Both came from your side, both were about the data not looking right.
- Gareth WhitlamNot looking right how?
- Marcus BellI'd rather not paraphrase them from memory and get the detail wrong. What I can say is that two tickets in a month from a team this size isn't a lot, but when both of them are flagged as high priority, that tells me people care when something's wrong. Which is a slightly better sign than silence.
- Gareth WhitlamOr it tells me the thing broke twice.
- Marcus BellThat's also true. Yeah. It could be both.
- Gareth WhitlamHow quickly were they answered? You're on Growth. There's a response commitment.
- Marcus BellThere is, and I'll give you the times rather than my impression. I'll send you the ticket log with the timestamps after this call, so you can see when each was raised, when we first replied and when it was closed. Then you can judge it against what the contract says.
- Gareth WhitlamFine. I'd like that in writing.
- Marcus BellWill do. It'll be with you today or first thing Monday.
- Gareth WhitlamNow the renewal. Tell me what the position is. I don't want to find out in November.
- Marcus BellSure. So the current term ends on 30 Nov 2026, and the renewal date is 1 Dec 2026. We're a few months out, which is why I wanted to have this conversation now rather than leave it. Normally I'd be sending a formal renewal notice about ninety days ahead, so that's coming up.
- Gareth WhitlamAnd what happens to the price?
- Marcus BellThat's the part I need to be careful with, because pricing is Tom's side, Tom Ashdown, your account owner. I don't negotiate that and I don't want to say something I can't stand behind. What I can tell you is that the price book has changed since you signed, and at renewal customers move to the current list price. Tom will walk you through exactly what that means for you.
- Gareth WhitlamSo it goes up.
- Marcus BellAt list, yes, it would be higher than what you pay now. That's what the policy says. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But the actual number and what's possible is a conversation with Tom.
- Gareth WhitlamI'm not minded to agree that. Not with five users. If I'm paying £44,000 for something that five people touch, I'm certainly not paying more for it.
- Marcus BellNo, understood. I'm not asking you to agree to anything on this call. I just didn't want you to hear it for the first time in a formal letter.
- Gareth WhitlamThen thank you for that, at least. It would have been worse in a letter.
- Marcus BellYeah. Look, can I suggest how I'd approach the next few months? Because I don't think the useful thing is arguing about price today. I think it's whether we can make a case that stands up, one way or the other.
- Gareth WhitlamGo on.
- Marcus BellSo, one. Between now and the end of the quarter, I'd like to get in front of the depot account managers, and revenue operations, and find out why they're not in there. Properly, with them, not a survey. Maybe a few short sessions.
- Gareth WhitlamA training session. We've had one.
- Marcus BellIt's not meant to be a training session, or not only. It's more finding out what stopped them. If it turns out they don't need it, then that's useful for you to know too, because then you'd be making the renewal decision with your eyes open.
- Gareth WhitlamHm. That I can live with. I'd want to know who's in those sessions.
- Marcus BellOf course. You'd have the list. I'd actually like your help with that, if you can point me to the right person in revenue operations to coordinate with.
- Gareth WhitlamI'll find out who that should be. I've only been here a few months, I don't know everyone's remit yet. Give me a couple of days.
- Marcus BellThat's great, thanks. Two, I'd put together a one-page view of what the brain has actually been used for. Real questions people have asked, which accounts they were about, and what came of it. If there's a story in there, you'll see it. If there isn't, you'll see that too.
- Gareth WhitlamThat's more useful than what I've had so far. But I'll be blunt. If the answer is that it's been used a handful of times by a handful of people, I'll want to talk about a smaller contract.
- Marcus BellThat's a fair position to take, and I'd rather you took it with the evidence in front of you. Again, the commercial side of that sits with Tom, but I'll make sure he's got the same picture as you.
- Gareth WhitlamGood. Because I don't want to be explaining myself twice.
- Marcus BellUnderstood. Third thing. The two tickets. I'd like to check with our support team that whatever caused them has actually been put right, not just closed. I can't give you a date for any engineering work, I'm not going to guess at that, but I can find out whether it's resolved or still open and tell you plainly.
- Gareth WhitlamPlease do. If it's still broken I'd like to know before I'm asked to sign anything.
- Marcus BellAgreed. That goes in the note as well.
- Gareth WhitlamOne more thing. The forty. Is there any flexibility on that, or is it fixed at forty?
- Marcus BellForty is what the Growth tier includes, so it's not something I can change by myself. How the tier and the number of users line up at renewal is a Tom conversation, and honestly it's a reasonable thing to ask him. I'd flag it as a question rather than a demand, and I'll make sure he's expecting it.
- Gareth WhitlamI'll put it as a question, then. For now.
- Marcus BellThat's all I'd ask. Right, let me just check I've got this down properly. Is it all right if I read it back?
- Gareth WhitlamPlease.
- Marcus BellSo, from me: I send you the ticket log with timestamps, today or Monday. I find out whether those two tickets are properly resolved. I put together a one-page view of what's actually been asked of the brain. And I set up some conversations with the depot account managers and revenue operations. From you: you tell me who the right contact is in revenue operations, in the next couple of days. And Tom picks up the renewal and price conversation with you, ahead of the notice period.
- Gareth WhitlamThat's about right. Add that I want the renewal discussed before the end of the quarter, not squeezed in after.
- Marcus BellYes, noted. Before the end of the quarter, I'll tell Tom that directly.
- Gareth WhitlamGood. Anything else from you?
- Marcus BellOnly that I appreciate you being straight with me, Gareth. It's easier to do something useful when I know where you stand.
- Gareth WhitlamI'm not minded to be anything else. Send me the log.
- Marcus BellWill do. Thanks for your time. Have a decent weekend, such as it is.
- Gareth WhitlamMonth end. We'll see. Goodbye.
- Marcus BellSpeak soon, bye.
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