What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Demo to Neil Metcalfe on a sample built to look like Cairnlea's Salesforce and Zendesk data. He asked about speed, embedding, security, onboarding and support, and asked when they would start. A proposal was promised.
What happened: Tom Ashdown and Hannah Lowe showed search across Salesforce records and Zendesk tickets, plus the Growth dashboard builder. Neil asked about speed, embedding, data protection, onboarding and support.
Customer view: Neil called it "quite slick" and said the demo was making more sense. He raised data protection around customers, which was answered with the Snowflake-in-your-account model, role-based access and audit logs.
Commercial: Neil asked when they would start. Tom said BG-Demo would want to sign in early December to kick off in January, and promised a proposal with pricing and terms.
Watch: Embedding in the finance system or intranet was declared out of scope for the standard offering. Only Neil attended, and the evidence does not show a finance or procurement voice at this stage.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Who was there
BG-Demo
Them
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Tom Ashdown to send Neil a proposal with pricing and terms.
- Hannah Lowe to put the architecture, data freshness and connector details in writing.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Neil wants to embed the brain in a finance system or intranet, which is out of scope for the standard offering.
- Data protection requirements around customers need a clear written answer.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Growth subscription with the dashboard builder, with an eight-week implementation starting in January.
- Training for the ops team to build their own dashboards.
Transcript
- Tom AshdownHi Neil, thanks for making the time. Hannah's here, she's our solutions engineer. We've built a demo on your data, well, a sample that looks like yours.
- Neil MetcalfeGreat. I'm keen to see what it actually looks like in practice.
- Hannah LoweTo be precise, what you're seeing is a brain connected to a Salesforce instance and a Zendesk instance with post-completion tickets and customer records. It's your data structure but anonymized. Should feel pretty close to the real thing.
- Tom AshdownRight. So Neil, this page here is where your support team would log in. You can search, just type a question. Watch this. 'Show me all defects reported in the last month by development.'
- Hannah LoweAnd it returns results from both your Salesforce customer records and your helpdesk tickets, in one view. No jumping between systems.
- Neil MetcalfeHow fast is that?
- Tom AshdownInstantly. Literally seconds. And you can drill down: click on a record and see the full ticket history, customer details, everything.
- Neil MetcalfeThat's quite slick. Can you search on things like specific keywords?
- Hannah LoweAbsolutely. The short answer is you can ask it anything. The longer answer is it works best on structured data: dates, customer names, ticket statuses, but it's pretty good at understanding context too. Like 'customers complaining about heating' would work.
- Tom AshdownSo now let's look at the dashboard side. Growth includes our dashboard builder. Your team can create their own views without coding. Like, you could have a dashboard that shows defect trends by development, or tickets by status, updated live.
- Neil MetcalfeCan anyone build these or is it only technical people?
- Hannah LoweAnyone in Growth can build them. It's drag and drop, no SQL, no coding. Someone from your ops team could do it. We've got training to walk them through it.
- Tom AshdownAnd the data refreshes nightly, so these dashboards are always current. Every morning your team sees last night's data.
- Neil MetcalfeWhat if we want to embed this somewhere? Like, our finance system or our intranet?
- Hannah LoweThe short answer is we can do custom integrations but they'd be out of scope for the standard offering. The longer answer is most customers just use the brain directly, it's fast enough that embedding isn't necessary.
- Tom AshdownRight. So the usual flow is you ask a question, get the answer, export the data if you need to. Very quick.
- Neil MetcalfeWhat about security? We've got data protection requirements around customers.
- Hannah LoweEverything runs inside your own Snowflake account. So the data never leaves your environment. We run the application but your data stays with you. Plus there's role-based access, you control who can see what.
- Tom AshdownAnd audit logs for compliance. Every query is logged.
- Neil MetcalfeOK, that's good. Can I go back to the dashboard, can I save queries?
- Hannah LoweYou can save searches and queries as views that your team can reuse. So if someone builds a view that shows 'defects this month by type', anyone else can run it with a click.
- Tom AshdownAnd it updates automatically. So you build it once and it stays fresh.
- Neil MetcalfeWhat's the onboarding process like?
- Tom AshdownEight weeks. Week one is your IT giving us access. Weeks two to five we build the connectors and test. Weeks six to eight you're testing it and we're training your team. Week eight you flip the switch.
- Hannah LoweWe'll do a kickoff call, answer architecture questions, build a data map, basically make sure we're connecting the right systems and the data flows properly.
- Neil MetcalfeTraining, what does that involve?
- Tom AshdownWe walk your team through logging in, building searches, creating dashboards. Pretty hands-on. Half a day usually does it.
- Neil MetcalfeAnd after launch? Who do we call if something breaks?
- Tom AshdownEmail and chat support, one-hour response on critical issues. We also do quarterly check-ins: you tell us what's working, what's not, what you want next.
- Neil MetcalfeThis is making more sense. When would we actually start?
- Tom AshdownIf you're happy with what you've seen, we'd want to sign in early December to kick off in January.
- Neil MetcalfeWhat happens next?
- Tom AshdownI'll send you a proposal with pricing and terms. You have a look, think it over, and let me know if you want to have another conversation.
- Hannah LoweI'll also put in writing some of the technical details we've talked through: the architecture, the data freshness, how connectors work.
- Neil MetcalfeBrilliant. Cheers, both.
- Tom AshdownCheers, Neil. Speak soon.