What was said
What this says
Current to 13 Oct 26At 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
Current to 9 Oct 26Who was there
BB-Demo
Them
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- 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
Current to 9 Oct 26- 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
Current to 9 Oct 26- 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 Okafor NoneHello, hello. Can you hear me all right? I think I've got the sound sorted this end.
- Helen Marsden NoneYes, loud and clear. Good afternoon, Daniel.
- Daniel Okafor NoneGood afternoon, Helen. Thank you both for making the time. I can see you, Helen, and is that Paul just joining?
- Paul Rigby NoneAye, it's me. Sorry, was stuck on a stand-up that overran. Paul.
- Daniel Okafor NoneNo apology needed at all. Lunch survived, I hope? Or has it gone the way of most Wednesdays.
- Paul Rigby NoneSandwich at the desk. Same as always.
- Helen Marsden NoneLeeds 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 Okafor NoneSame 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 Marsden NoneYes, 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 Okafor NoneOkay. Thank you for raising it first. Do you have both numbers in front of you, or the two reports?
- Helen Marsden NoneI 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 Okafor NoneOf course. Let me share my screen and we'll go to the arrears page. Bear with me a moment while it loads.
- Paul Rigby NoneWhile he's loading that. I think I know what it is. Finance run theirs on a Friday cut and the brain refreshes overnight.
- Helen Marsden NonePaul, I don't want to guess. Let's look at the dates on both.
- Paul Rigby NoneFair enough. Not guessing, just saying where I'd look.
- Daniel Okafor NoneThat'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 Marsden NoneI can. That says this morning. So the brain is current, and finance are the ones on the older cut.
- Daniel Okafor NoneThat 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 Marsden NonePlease. I'm happy to wait.
- Daniel Okafor NoneRight. 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 Marsden NoneIt might. Can you export that group so I can check it against the ledger myself?
- Daniel Okafor NoneYes, 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 Marsden NoneThank 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 Okafor NoneCompletely 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 Marsden NoneAgreed.
- Daniel Okafor NoneLovely. Shall we move to usage? Paul, I know you wanted to show something too.
- Paul Rigby NoneYeah. Can I share? I've got the repairs report open. It's the one I look at before stand-up.
- Daniel Okafor NoneGo ahead, I'll stop sharing.
- Paul Rigby NoneRight. 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 Okafor NoneThat'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 Rigby NoneBetter. They've stopped asking me whether the number's right. They just use it.
- Helen Marsden NoneWhich is the whole point, really. For a year I was the one fielding those questions.
- Paul Rigby NoneI still keep my spreadsheet of the old ones. Habit.
- Daniel Okafor NoneI'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 Rigby NoneNo. Genuinely nothing to raise. If it was broken I'd have raised it.
- Daniel Okafor NoneGood. That's what I wanted to hear, and I'd rather hear it from you than guess it.
- Daniel Okafor NoneLet 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 Marsden NoneA quarter. So most of the seats aren't being touched.
- Daniel Okafor NoneThat'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 Marsden NoneWho is asking the questions? I'd want to know if it's all Paul and me.
- Daniel Okafor NoneIt'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 Rigby NoneThat's fair. I'm the only one who really admin's it day to day.
- Daniel Okafor NoneWhich 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 Rigby NoneI 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 Marsden NoneAsk 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 Rigby NoneWill do.
- Daniel Okafor NoneThank you. Then on my side I'll run a short admin session for whoever it is, an hour or so, nothing heavy.
- Helen Marsden NoneDaniel, 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 Okafor NoneYes. 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 Marsden NoneIt is. And honestly, the customer services lead has never really come on board. They see it as the BI team's toy.
- Daniel Okafor NoneMm. 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 Marsden NoneRight. So what would that question be for them?
- Daniel Okafor NoneFrom 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 Rigby NoneI could build that. It's a dashboard, not a big job.
- Helen Marsden NonePaul, build it, and let me look before it goes anywhere near customer services. If it doesn't reconcile, they'll stop listening.
- Paul Rigby NoneUnderstood. I'll send a draft in a couple of weeks.
- Daniel Okafor NoneAnd 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 Marsden NoneI'd welcome that. Let's see what the draft looks like first.
- Daniel Okafor NoneOf course. Shall I talk about the connectors for a moment?
- Helen Marsden NonePlease.
- Daniel Okafor NoneEverything 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 Rigby NoneOnly 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 Okafor NoneThank 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 Rigby NoneYeah, I'll make sure you're told.
- Helen Marsden NoneAnd 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 Okafor NoneI 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 Marsden NoneHonestly, 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 Okafor NoneThat'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 Marsden NoneYes, finance have been happy on that front.
- Daniel Okafor NoneGood. 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 Marsden NoneThat would be very helpful. And please include the sources. I don't want a summary I can't trace.
- Daniel Okafor NoneEvery 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 Marsden NoneThank you.
- Daniel Okafor NoneAnd 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 Marsden NoneFine. Better early than late. I'd rather the board saw it coming.
- Daniel Okafor NoneAgreed. Is there anything else either of you wanted to raise? Training, a new report, anything you've been meaning to ask?
- Paul Rigby NoneDashboards builder. There's a filter I can't get right, on the patch field. Might be me.
- Daniel Okafor NoneShow me, and we'll see whether it's you or us.
- Paul Rigby NoneSo that's the filter. It drops the void properties even when I tick them.
- Daniel Okafor NoneI 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 Rigby NoneRight. Done. Aye, there they are. Cheers.
- Daniel Okafor NoneNot at all. Easy one to miss, and I'll put a line about it in the note I send afterwards.
- Helen Marsden NoneAnything else from you, Daniel, before we let you go?
- Daniel Okafor NoneOnly 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 Marsden NoneThat's everything I have. Thank you, Daniel.
- Paul Rigby NoneSame. Ta.
- Daniel Okafor NoneThank you both, really. Speak soon, and best wishes to the team.
- Helen Marsden NoneBye for now.