Fosdyke Packaging / BG-Demo – Discovery
Callcompleted
Fosdyke Packaging · 26 Aug 2025 16:15
First discovery call on 26 Aug 2025 with Fosdyke Packaging's systems and finance leads. Siloed CRM, ERP, finance and email data; Tom Ashdown quoted £26k for the first year on Starter. A demo is the next step.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026First discovery call on 26 Aug 2025 with Fosdyke Packaging's systems and finance leads. Siloed CRM, ERP, finance and email data; Tom Ashdown quoted £26k for the first year on Starter. A demo is the next step.
What happened: Sam Entwistle and Beth Varley described order, production and invoice data spread across four systems plus spreadsheets. Tom Ashdown pitched Starter, a four-week implementation, and quoted £26k for the first year.
Customer view: Sam said answering an order query can take five to twenty minutes and sometimes fails. Beth raised manual reconciliation of CRM orders against invoices and liked the Snowflake audit trail.
Commercial: Starter allows four connectors, and the customer named a CRM, an ERP, a finance system and email. That is tight, and Tom said only that the ERP "shouldn't be a problem" without the system being named.
Watch: The evidence does not show who signs or any decision date. Sam asked for the next step, so a demo on Fosdyke's own systems is the test.
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 schedule a one-hour demo on Fosdyke's own kind of systems.
- Sam Entwistle and Beth Varley to send details of their ERP and CRM before the demo.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- The ERP was not named, so connector support is unconfirmed, and four Starter connectors may not cover CRM, ERP, finance system and email.
- The evidence does not show who signs or any decision date.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Finance reconciliation of orders against invoices gives a second use case beyond order tracking.
- Tom Ashdown said more users and connectors can be added later, so Growth is a possible upgrade path.
Transcript
Tom AshdownHi Sam, Beth, you there?
Sam EntwistleYeah, we're on.- Tom AshdownBrilliant. How's the week been?
Beth VarleyBusy, as always. Running a manufacturing business doesn't slow down.- Tom AshdownTell me about it. Right, I appreciate you both making the time. I know sales conversations aren't top of anyone's list, so I'll keep it focused. What I want to do today is understand what you're working with: your systems, how your teams are organised, and where you might be feeling some friction.
- Sam EntwistleOkay. So we've got a CRM for customer orders and delivery tracking. We use an ERP for our manufacturing side, lot of data in there. Finance is in their own accounting system. And a lot of project work happens in email and spreadsheets. It's pretty siloed.
- Tom AshdownRight. So information's spread across a few different places.
- Sam EntwistleExactly. When a customer rings up about their order, where's it at in production, when's it shipping, we have to go hunting across the systems to answer them.
- Tom AshdownHow long does that usually take?
- Sam EntwistleDepends on the order. Could be five minutes, could be twenty. And sometimes we still can't find everything they're asking about.
- Beth VarleyFrom a finance perspective, we also spend a lot of time manually reconciling orders from the CRM against what we've invoiced. It's error-prone.
- Tom AshdownThat's actually really common in manufacturing. You've got the data, but it's not connected.
- Tom AshdownSo what we do is build the brain, it's an AI-powered search layer that sits on top of everything you've got. You connect your CRM, your ERP, your finance system, email: whatever has the information: and then your teams can ask questions like: 'Show me this order, production status, invoice, everything.' One search, you get the answer.
- Sam EntwistleHow do you connect to the ERP?
- Tom AshdownWe've got connectors for most of them. If you tell me what system you're on, I can let you know if we support it.
- Sam EntwistleWe use an industry standard one, I won't name names, but it's been around for ever.
- Tom AshdownYeah, we've connected to most of the big ones. So that shouldn't be a problem. And where does it run?
- Tom AshdownEverything lives in your Snowflake account. We don't host your data, you keep it under your control. The connectors run inside your warehouse, pull the data, index it, and make it searchable. Your data never leaves your account.
- Beth VarleyThat's good for us. Audit trail, data security.
- Tom AshdownExactly. It's a big deal in manufacturing because you've got compliance, you've got traceability. Having everything indexed and searchable means you can show an auditor exactly what happened to an order.
- Sam EntwistleHow long is the implementation?
- Tom AshdownFor a business your size, packaging manufacturing, a handful of systems to connect, we usually do it in four weeks on our Starter package. You get the connectors set up, training, support throughout.
- Beth VarleyWhat's the cost?
- Tom AshdownYou're looking at £25,500 for the first year. That's implementation and the annual subscription all in.
- Sam EntwistleAnd what does Starter include?
- Tom AshdownUp to four connectors: so your CRM, ERP, email, maybe one more. Fifteen users on the platform. Six-monthly check-ins with us. If you find you need more later, more users, more connectors, we can expand you.
- Sam EntwistleI think this could work for us. What's next?
- Tom AshdownI'll set up a demo, I'll show you how the brain works, walk through your kind of systems. About an hour. You'll get a proper sense of whether this solves your problem.
- Sam EntwistleSounds good.
- Tom AshdownGreat. I'll send a doodle over for September. In the meantime, if you can jot down any detail about your systems: which ERP you're using, your CRM, that sort of thing, that helps me prep.
- Beth VarleyWill do.
- Tom AshdownCheers, both. Speak soon.