Calderbrook Housing Group / BG-Demo – QBR
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Calderbrook Housing Group · 22 Oct 2025 13:15
At the 22 Oct 2025 QBR, Helen Marsden and Paul Rigby worked through the arrears reconciliation and repairs reporting. Helen asked for a clear account of cost against value, as the board will ask about the £44k a year.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026At the 22 Oct 2025 QBR, Helen Marsden and Paul Rigby worked through the arrears reconciliation and repairs reporting. Helen asked for a clear account of cost against value, as the board will ask about the £44k a year.
What happened: Helen put the arrears gap first. Daniel Okafor reconciled the totals on screen, apart from a small group of tenancies that moved between rent accounts, and agreed to export that group for Helen to check.
Customer view: Paul said the repairs report is now one job, one line, and the team no longer asks whether the number is right. Complaints data remains the weakest of the four sources, and customer services sees the tool as the BI team's toy.
Commercial: Helen repeated that IT colleagues are talking about building in-house, and asked for cost set against what the brain does. Daniel promised a sourced value note, and said the renewal conversation would start about three months ahead with Tom Ashdown involved.
Watch: Roughly a quarter of the forty seats are active, and Paul is the only day-to-day admin. A possible rent system change could break a connector.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Value case and adoption
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
mixed
Voice
champion
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Daniel Okafor to export the arrears tenancy group to Helen's shared folder today and wait for her ledger check.
- Daniel Okafor to send a sourced value note by the end of the following week.
- Paul Rigby to ask a colleague to be second admin, draft the complaints and repairs dashboard, and warn Daniel if the rent system change firms up.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- IT colleagues are discussing building a platform themselves, and the board will ask what the £44,000 a year buys.
- Only about a quarter of the forty Growth seats are active on an average day.
- Paul Rigby is the only day-to-day admin, and a possible rent system change could break a connector.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- A complaints and repairs dashboard could win over the customer services team, who have not adopted the brain.
- A second named admin and wider seat use would deepen adoption within the Growth tier.
Transcript
Daniel OkaforHello, hello. Can you hear me all right? I think I've got the sound sorted this end.
Helen MarsdenYes, loud and clear. Good afternoon, Daniel.- Daniel OkaforGood afternoon, Helen. Thank you both for making the time. I can see you, Helen, and is that Paul just joining?
Paul RigbyAye, it's me. Sorry, was stuck on a stand-up that overran. Paul.- Daniel OkaforNo apology needed at all. Lunch survived, I hope? Or has it gone the way of most Wednesdays.
- Paul RigbySandwich at the desk. Same as always.
- Helen MarsdenLeeds is grey and wet, in case you were wondering. The whole of the office has the lights on at one o'clock in the afternoon.
- Daniel OkaforSame here, London's doing its best impression. Right, shall we make a start? This is the quarterly review, so I'd like to cover how the team is using the brain, anything that's been bothering you, and then have a look ahead. If there's something you want to put at the top, say so now.
- Helen MarsdenYes, I'd like to. Before we go anywhere, the arrears section of the board pack. The figure the brain gave me last week and the one finance gave me from the housing system were different, and the board will ask. So I need to understand why before I take it anywhere.
- Daniel OkaforOkay. Thank you for raising it first. Do you have both numbers in front of you, or the two reports?
- Helen MarsdenI have both reports. I can't put the figures in an email without the source, that's the thing. Can you show me the source?
- Daniel OkaforOf course. Let me share my screen and we'll go to the arrears page. Bear with me a moment while it loads.
- Paul RigbyWhile he's loading that. I think I know what it is. Finance run theirs on a Friday cut and the brain refreshes overnight.
- Helen MarsdenPaul, I don't want to guess. Let's look at the dates on both.
- Paul RigbyFair enough. Not guessing, just saying where I'd look.
- Daniel OkaforThat's useful, Paul, and it's a sensible place to start. Right, I have it up. You can see the page here, and the source line underneath says the arrears come from the housing management system and the rent ledger. Helen, can you see the last refreshed stamp in the corner?
- Helen MarsdenI can. That says this morning. So the brain is current, and finance are the ones on the older cut.
- Daniel OkaforThat would be my reading, but let's not leave it at that. If I open the underlying records and filter to the same tenancy group you've used in the pack, we should be able to reconcile line by line. It will take a few minutes.
- Helen MarsdenPlease. I'm happy to wait.
- Daniel OkaforRight. So I've filtered to the tenancies that were live at the same date as finance's cut, and the totals now sit next to each other. They line up apart from a small group of tenancies that moved between rent accounts after that date. Does that match what you'd expect, Helen?
- Helen MarsdenIt might. Can you export that group so I can check it against the ledger myself?
- Daniel OkaforYes, I'll do it now and drop it in your shared folder, and I'll come back to you by end of day if anything in it looks odd to me.
- Helen MarsdenThank you. That's the thing I needed. I'm not saying the brain is wrong, I'm saying I have to be able to show it.
- Daniel OkaforCompletely understood, and that's the right instinct. Just to close the loop on that one, then: export from me today, you check against the ledger, and if there's still a gap you tell me which tenancies and we go again.
- Helen MarsdenAgreed.
- Daniel OkaforLovely. Shall we move to usage? Paul, I know you wanted to show something too.
- Paul RigbyYeah. Can I share? I've got the repairs report open. It's the one I look at before stand-up.
- Daniel OkaforGo ahead, I'll stop sharing.
- Paul RigbyRight. This is repairs jobs by patch for the week. Last spring this one was double-counted again every other day, and I'd have to explain it to the team. Now it's one job, one line.
- Daniel OkaforThat's good to hear. I remember the tickets you raised after the housing system upgrade. How is the team finding it, now that you can trust the morning view?
- Paul RigbyBetter. They've stopped asking me whether the number's right. They just use it.
- Helen MarsdenWhich is the whole point, really. For a year I was the one fielding those questions.
- Paul RigbyI still keep my spreadsheet of the old ones. Habit.
- Daniel OkaforI'd keep it, honestly. It's a good record. And I'll say, nothing has come in from you on the support side this month, no tickets at all, which I take as a good sign. Is that fair, or have you been quietly working round something?
- Paul RigbyNo. Genuinely nothing to raise. If it was broken I'd have raised it.
- Daniel OkaforGood. That's what I wanted to hear, and I'd rather hear it from you than guess it.
- Daniel OkaforLet me give you the shape of usage from our side. You're licensed for forty users on Growth. Over the past month, roughly a quarter of those seats are active on an average day, and that's a touch up on the quarter before. Questions asked are steady, with the repairs and arrears pages doing most of the work.
- Helen MarsdenA quarter. So most of the seats aren't being touched.
- Daniel OkaforThat's the honest reading. It isn't alarming, because the people who do use it use it properly. But it means there's room, and I'd like us to think about who else should have it.
- Helen MarsdenWho is asking the questions? I'd want to know if it's all Paul and me.
- Daniel OkaforIt's mostly the BI team, yes, with a handful from repairs and a few from finance. It's not all the two of you, but if either of you were away for a stretch you'd feel it. I'd call that a bit of a dependency, nothing more.
- Paul RigbyThat's fair. I'm the only one who really admin's it day to day.
- Daniel OkaforWhich is partly why I'd like a second person to know the admin side. Is there someone in the team who'd be willing?
- Paul RigbyI could ask. There's a lad in the analytics team who's keen. Don't know if he'd want it on his plate.
- Helen MarsdenAsk him. If he says yes, put it in writing and tell me, because I'd like a named deputy for the board pack anyway.
- Paul RigbyWill do.
- Daniel OkaforThank you. Then on my side I'll run a short admin session for whoever it is, an hour or so, nothing heavy.
- Helen MarsdenDaniel, can I ask about the complaints data? It was in the original idea, tenant calls, repairs, complaints and arrears into one picture. Complaints has been the weakest of the four.
- Daniel OkaforYes. I was hoping you'd bring that up. Where do the complaints live at the moment? Is that still the case management tool the customer services team uses?
- Helen MarsdenIt is. And honestly, the customer services lead has never really come on board. They see it as the BI team's toy.
- Daniel OkaforMm. That's a very familiar story, if I'm honest. The tool only earns its place with a team when it answers a question that team already has.
- Helen MarsdenRight. So what would that question be for them?
- Daniel OkaforFrom what I've seen in other housing teams, it's usually which complaints are linked to a repair that was missed or repeated. That's the join nobody can do by hand. You have the repairs data already, which is Paul's work, and you have the complaints, so the join exists. It just hasn't been shown to them.
- Paul RigbyI could build that. It's a dashboard, not a big job.
- Helen MarsdenPaul, build it, and let me look before it goes anywhere near customer services. If it doesn't reconcile, they'll stop listening.
- Paul RigbyUnderstood. I'll send a draft in a couple of weeks.
- Daniel OkaforAnd if it would help, I can sit with the customer services lead for half an hour once it exists. Not a sales pitch, just showing them their own complaints.
- Helen MarsdenI'd welcome that. Let's see what the draft looks like first.
- Daniel OkaforOf course. Shall I talk about the connectors for a moment?
- Helen MarsdenPlease.
- Daniel OkaforEverything you've configured is loading, and the record counts are climbing the way I'd hope, so nothing looks stale from where I sit. You're well within the limit for Growth. So there's no pressure on you there at all.
- Paul RigbyOnly thing I'd flag is we might change the rent system in the next year or so. Not decided. IT are looking at it.
- Daniel OkaforThank you for telling me now, because that's exactly the kind of change that can quietly break a connector. If it firms up, would you let me know before it happens, so we can plan the switch rather than find out afterwards?
- Paul RigbyYeah, I'll make sure you're told.
- Helen MarsdenAnd I'll say, since we're on the subject of looking ahead. There's been some talk among our IT colleagues about what we might build ourselves over time. It's not my plan, I'm not driving it, but you should know it's being said.
- Daniel OkaforI appreciate you saying that so plainly, Helen. It's useful, and I'd much rather hear it from you than from the side. Is there anything you think they'd need to see to feel comfortable with how things are at the moment?
- Helen MarsdenHonestly, a clear account of what it costs against what it does. The board will ask what we're getting for forty-four thousand a year. I can tell them about the repairs figures, but I'd like it set out properly.
- Daniel OkaforThat's a fair request, and a fair way to ask it. So the contract is forty-four thousand a year on Growth, running from the second of September in twenty twenty-four, and it comes to an end on 1 Sep 2026. Everything's been invoiced and paid on time, so there's nothing hanging there.
- Helen MarsdenYes, finance have been happy on that front.
- Daniel OkaforGood. Here's what I'd suggest. I put together a short value note for you before the next quarter's review: how many questions the team has asked, which pages carry the load, what's changed since go-live, and what the double-count fix has meant for the repairs reporting. Written so you can lift it into a board paper without translating it.
- Helen MarsdenThat would be very helpful. And please include the sources. I don't want a summary I can't trace.
- Daniel OkaforEvery line will carry its source. I'll come back to you by the end of next week with a first version for you to react to.
- Helen MarsdenThank you.
- Daniel OkaforAnd on the renewal itself, I don't want it to arrive as a surprise. It's some time off, but we'll start that conversation well before the end of the term, about three months ahead, and Tom Ashdown will be involved on the commercial side as he has been.
- Helen MarsdenFine. Better early than late. I'd rather the board saw it coming.
- Daniel OkaforAgreed. Is there anything else either of you wanted to raise? Training, a new report, anything you've been meaning to ask?
- Paul RigbyDashboards builder. There's a filter I can't get right, on the patch field. Might be me.
- Daniel OkaforShow me, and we'll see whether it's you or us.
- Paul RigbySo that's the filter. It drops the void properties even when I tick them.
- Daniel OkaforI see it. That's a setting on the field rather than the filter, there's a switch hiding the empty values. Try turning that off and then re-run it.
- Paul RigbyRight. Done. Aye, there they are. Cheers.
- Daniel OkaforNot at all. Easy one to miss, and I'll put a line about it in the note I send afterwards.
- Helen MarsdenAnything else from you, Daniel, before we let you go?
- Daniel OkaforOnly a recap, so we're all holding the same list. I send you the arrears export today, Helen. Paul asks his colleague about being the second admin, and builds the complaints and repairs dashboard draft in the next couple of weeks. I send the value note by the end of next week. And Paul, you tell me if the rent system change firms up.
- Helen MarsdenThat's everything I have. Thank you, Daniel.
- Paul RigbySame. Ta.
- Daniel OkaforThank you both, really. Speak soon, and best wishes to the team.
- Helen MarsdenBye for now.
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