Delancey Haig / BG-Demo – Onboarding
Callcompleted
Delancey Haig · 20 Aug 2024 12:45
Onboarding call on 20 Aug 2024. Saskia Mendes says directors need the brain, but finance is asking whether £42k a year is money well spent and only two or three people use it. Credentials and a second admin are open.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Onboarding call on 20 Aug 2024. Saskia Mendes says directors need the brain, but finance is asking whether £42k a year is money well spent and only two or three people use it. Credentials and a second admin are open.
What happened: Callie Brennan walked Saskia Mendes and Holly Tranter through access, connector order and mapping on 20 Aug 2024. A first wave of three connectors was agreed, with contractor invoices optional.
Customer view: Saskia said her finance team want to know the £42k a year is money well spent. She was frank that adoption is two or three people against forty licensed users.
Commercial: Callie said value shows in questions asked, which Daniel Okafor will review at check-ins. Three directors get the first look before wider invites.
Watch: Holly is the only admin and no second admin is named yet. Late credentials move the first refresh week for week, and a placement field change is planned next quarter.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Onboarding, value 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- Holly Tranter to create read-only service accounts for the recruitment and accounting systems by Friday.
- Saskia Mendes to get compliance guidance on candidate detail and pick three directors for the first look.
- Daniel Okafor to review who is asking questions at the check-ins after handover.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Only two or three people use the brain against forty licences, so finance may not see a value case at renewal.
- Holly Tranter is the only admin, and late credentials move the first refresh week for week.
- A planned change to placement fields could silently break a connector if BG-Demo is not told first.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Three directors seeing their own clients in the first refresh can seed wider adoption on the Growth subscription.
- A contractor invoice dispute page could be built with the Growth dashboards builder once sources load.
Transcript
Callie BrennanHello, afternoon both. Can you hear me all right?
Saskia MendesLoud and clear. Afternoon, Callie. Holly's just dialling in, she had a laptop that wouldn't share anything.
Holly TranterSorry, sorry. I'm here. Can you see me? No, hang on, camera. There. Afternoon, both.- Callie BrennanPerfect, we're all here. Thanks for fitting this in straight after lunch.
- Saskia MendesHa, lunch. I had a sandwich over the keyboard. Quick story from this morning, actually, because it's why I'm so keen on all this. One of our client-account directors went into a review and the client asked her about a complaint she'd never heard of. She just sat there. The complaint had come in through the ops inbox three weeks earlier and nobody had passed it on.
- Callie BrennanOh, that's painful. And that's exactly the picture you want her to have before she walks in. The vacancies, the placements, the invoices and the complaints, all on one page.
- Saskia MendesThe directors need this. Honestly, that was the whole reason we bought it.
- Callie BrennanRight, so let me give you the plan for the next forty minutes or so, and you tell me where I've got it wrong. First, where we are on access, because nothing switches on without it. Second, the connectors, which ones go first and which wait. Third, field mapping, where I'll need a couple of decisions from you. Fourth, who owns what once I've handed over. And at the end I'll read back the actions and send them in writing today. Does that work?
- Holly TranterWorks for me.
- Saskia MendesYep, go.
- Callie BrennanSo, what I need from your side is written access for each source before we switch on the refresh. At the moment I have the signed order form and the admin invite for Holly, and that's it. No credentials for any source yet. Holly, have I missed something sitting in my inbox?
- Holly TranterNo, you haven't missed anything. I put the request in with our IT contractor last week and he's away until Thursday. I do have read-only access to the recruitment system myself, but I didn't want to hand you my own login.
- Callie BrennanGood, please don't. A service account is much better, because if you change role or leave, the connector doesn't break with you. Read-only is all we need to start.
- Holly TranterRight. Am I allowed to create those myself rather than wait for him?
- Callie BrennanIf you have the rights, yes. Just write down what you create and what permissions it has, and send me that note. I won't start a connector until I've got it in writing. It protects you as much as us.
- Saskia MendesIs that going to hold us up? What's the timeline if the credentials turn up late?
- Callie BrennanHonestly, the first refresh is the thing everything hangs off. Growth is an eight week implementation and most of the slippage comes from credentials arriving late. Every week they're late, the first refresh moves a week. So I'd like all of the first wave before the end of next week.
- Saskia MendesHolly, can we make that happen?
- Holly TranterYes. I'll do the recruitment system and the accounting system by Friday, and the rest I'll chase next week.
- Callie BrennanLovely. Let me share my screen so you can see the sheet. Give me a second, it's being slow.
- Callie BrennanCan you see it now?
- Saskia MendesYes. Small, but yes.
- Callie BrennanI'll zoom in. So you've got up to eight connectors on Growth, and I'd strongly suggest we don't use all of them on day one. First wave is three: the recruitment system, where the vacancies, candidates and placements live, then the accounting system for invoices, and then the complaints, which you said arrive through the ops inbox. Those three give Saskia's directors the page she just described.
- Saskia MendesYes. That's it. That's the one I want in front of them.
- Holly TranterCan I ask about the complaints bit? They're not tidy. Some come in by email, some get typed into a tracker by whoever picked up the phone.
- Callie BrennanThat's useful, thank you. So let's start with the inbox, because that's where the one you just described came in, and bring the tracker in the second wave. If we try to do both at once I'd be guessing at how they line up, and I don't like guessing.
- Holly TranterFine by me. The tracker's a bit of a mess anyway.
- Saskia MendesIt's a bit of a mess. We'd be bringing the mess in.
- Callie BrennanIt'd get in eventually, but better we choose when. Second wave then: the tracker, plus the contractor invoices, which I know matter to you, Saskia.
- Saskia MendesThey do. Contractor invoice disputes are the ones that turn nasty if we're slow. Someone says they were underpaid, the client says the timesheet was wrong, and by the time anyone looks it's been a month.
- Callie BrennanThat's the kind of thing the brain is good at, putting the timesheet, the invoice and the complaint side by side. But it needs the sources behind it to be loading properly first, so we earn that one in the second wave.
- Saskia MendesFair. Can we make it simpler, though? If I'm honest, if the first wave works I'd rather not have a big second one. Just the tracker.
- Callie BrennanWe can. I'll mark the contractor invoices as optional and we decide once the first refresh has landed. No point committing to it now.
- Saskia MendesGood. Thank you.
- Callie BrennanRight, mapping. This is where I need Holly most. Scrolling down. So for every client, the recruitment system has a name, and the accounting system has a name, and the inbox has whatever the sender typed. Before we switch on the refresh I need to know which one is the master.
- Holly TranterAh. Yeah. That's a known problem. Same client, three spellings. Sometimes a trading name, sometimes the group name.
- Callie BrennanOkay. Which would you trust?
- Holly TranterGive me a second. Let me think about what we actually keep clean.
- Holly TranterThe recruitment system. Account managers have to create the client there before they can place anyone, so that one's the closest to right. The accounting system is whatever finance typed, sometimes with the legal entity.
- Callie BrennanThen the recruitment system is the master, and I map accounting and the inbox to it. For the ones that don't match I'll give you a list to confirm, so nobody is guessing on your behalf.
- Saskia MendesHow long is that list going to be? Because Holly has a day job.
- Callie BrennanI won't know until I see the data, so I won't pretend. My experience is that the first pass looks worse than it is, because the same few clients cause most of the noise. I'll group them so you do the awkward ones first.
- Holly TranterOkay. Send me the list when you've got it and I'll block out an hour.
- Callie BrennanThanks. Next one on the sheet, and this one maps cleanly, so I'll be quick. Placements to invoices. A placement has a start date and a client, an invoice has a client and a period, and they join without any trouble once the client names are sorted.
- Holly TranterExcept permanent placements. Those are invoiced in one go, not by period.
- Callie BrennanGood catch. That's exactly the kind of thing I'd have got wrong. So permanent placements get their own line, matched on the placement itself, and contract placements match on period. Can you send me one example of each from the accounting system, anonymised if you like?
- Holly TranterYes, I'll pick a recent one of each.
- Callie BrennanBrilliant. That goes on the list.
- Saskia MendesWhile you're writing, can I ask the thing I keep being asked by our finance team? They want to know the forty-one thousand eight hundred is going to be money well spent. The £41,800 a year. What do I show them, and when?
- Callie BrennanFair question, and I'd rather you asked it now than at renewal. The honest answer is that the value shows up in questions being asked, not in the connectors being switched on. So what I'd watch for is how many of your people are asking the brain things in a normal week. Your customer success manager, Daniel, will go through that with you at the check-ins.
- Saskia MendesRight. And at the moment that's, what, me and Holly?
- Holly TranterMe, mostly. Poking around. And Saskia on her phone in meetings.
- Saskia MendesI'm not going to pretend adoption is better than it is. It's two or three of us. We've got forty licensed users and nowhere near forty people using it.
- Callie BrennanThat's completely normal at this stage, because there's nothing in there worth their time yet. People don't come back to an empty page. Which is the argument for getting the first wave right before we invite anyone.
- Saskia MendesOkay. So who should I invite first? I'm thinking the directors, but there are a lot of them.
- Callie BrennanI'd start small. Pick three directors who will actually say what they think, give them the first refresh, and ask what they looked for and didn't find. That's worth more than inviting everyone and getting silence.
- Saskia MendesThree. Yes. I can do that. I know exactly who.
- Holly TranterWill they need training? Or can I just send them the link?
- Callie BrennanA short walkthrough is worth it for the first three. Half an hour, on their own clients, so it's real. I'll do the first one with you, Holly, and after that you should be able to run it without me. That's what I care about, that you can run things alone.
- Holly TranterOkay. That would help. I'm a bit nervous that if something breaks it's me.
- Callie BrennanWhich brings me to the owners bit, so let's do it now. At the moment you're the only admin, Holly. I'd like a second, someone who can step in if you're on holiday or off sick.
- Saskia MendesCould that be someone in IT? Or is that wasteful?
- Holly TranterIt'd probably be the contractor, honestly. He's the one who knows the logins.
- Callie BrennanThat's fine, as long as he's named and we've got it in writing. The person doesn't have to be in the brain every day. They just need to be able to re-run a connector and know who to call.
- Saskia MendesHolly, can you ask him when he's back?
- Holly TranterI'll ask. Thursday.
- Callie BrennanThanks. Let me go through how the refresh itself behaves, because it'll save you a question later. It runs overnight, and the aim is that it's finished and ready for the morning, so when your directors open it at seven or eight, they're looking at yesterday's picture.
- Saskia MendesSome of them are in at half six. Don't ask.
- Callie BrennanHa. Then they might catch it just before it lands, and that's worth saying out loud so nobody thinks it's broken. If a number looks old, check the last refreshed time on the page before you raise anything.
- Holly TranterGood to know. I did raise one ticket already, about the invite link, but that got sorted quickly.
- Callie BrennanYes, I saw that. Good. That's the right way to use support, and please keep doing it. A quiet account isn't necessarily a happy one, I'd rather hear from you.
- Saskia MendesOh, you will. I never let a question sit for more than a day.
- Callie BrennanI believe that. Right, before we switch on the refresh, one more bit of housekeeping. The setup note. I write one for every customer and it says what's connected, with which account, what it can see, and what I mapped to what. You get it at handover, and it's what you'd show your IT contractor or an auditor if they asked.
- Holly TranterThat's useful. I'd be keeping that anyway.
- Callie BrennanThen I've saved you a job. Now, a question for both of you on what the brain can see. Some of the complaints will mention individual candidates by name. Is there anything you don't want in there?
- Saskia MendesHmm. Good question. I'd want to check with our compliance people before I answer that. I don't want to say yes and then regret it.
- Callie BrennanThat's the right answer. Check with them, and tell me in writing what to exclude. Until I hear, I'll leave the candidate detail out of the first refresh, and we can add it back.
- Saskia MendesPerfect. That's much safer. I'll ask tomorrow.
- Holly TranterCan I ask something slightly boring? How do I find out if a connector stops loading? Like if we change something in the recruitment system and it silently stops.
- Callie BrennanNot boring at all, that's the most common way these go wrong. There's a connectors page that shows when each one last loaded and whether the record count is moving. If the count sits flat for a week or so, something upstream has changed. So the rule is: if you're about to change a system we're connected to, tell me or support first.
- Holly TranterWe're thinking of changing the fields on placements next quarter, actually.
- Callie BrennanThen that's exactly why I'm glad you said. Tell me before you do it, not after, and we'll re-map in the same afternoon rather than discover it three weeks later.
- Saskia MendesHolly, put that in the diary now. Please.
- Holly TranterWriting it down as we speak.
- Callie BrennanBrilliant. Let me tidy the sheet while you're doing that. Sorry, I'm just changing the status column so it matches what we've said.
- Callie BrennanRight. So we have the recruitment system and accounting as ready to start once credentials arrive. The inbox I'm marking as needing the compliance answer on candidate detail. The tracker and contractor invoices are second wave and optional. Does that look right?
- Saskia MendesThat looks right. Can we make the dates a bit clearer? I'd like to say them to the directors.
- Callie BrennanYes, let's put dates against everything. Today is Tuesday. Credentials for the first two by Friday, that's Holly. The mapping list from me goes out tomorrow. Your answers on that list, Holly, by the middle of next week. Then I switch on the first refresh and we look at it together the following Tuesday.
- Holly TranterMiddle of next week is fine if the list isn't enormous.
- Callie BrennanAnd if it is enormous I'll tell you tomorrow, and we'll cut it down. I won't spring it on you.
- Saskia MendesWhat if the first refresh looks wrong? What happens then?
- Callie BrennanThen we look at it together, and I'd rather it was wrong in front of three of us than in front of forty. That's partly why I'd rather the first look is small. Most of what looks wrong is a mapping decision we haven't taken yet, not a fault.
- Saskia MendesThat's reassuring. I just don't want the directors to see a half-built thing and write it off.
- Callie BrennanWhich is why the three. They'll forgive a rough edge if you've told them it's a first look, and they'll tell you what matters.
- Holly TranterCan I ask about licences? We've got forty. If more people want in, is it a conversation or is it a button?
- Callie BrennanForty is what's in your order form, and that's the number I'd stick to for now. If you ever get near it, that's a conversation with Priya, your account owner, not something I'd settle on a call like this. But honestly, with two or three people on it you're a long way off.
- Holly TranterHa, yes. Fair.
- Saskia MendesRight, so after the first three, what's the plan for the other directors? I don't want it to stall.
- Callie BrennanAfter the first refresh, we do a short session for the next group, and I'd get the first three to say a sentence each about what they found. Colleagues listen to colleagues more than they listen to me. Then Daniel picks up from go-live and keeps an eye on who is actually asking questions.
- Saskia MendesOkay, I like that. Colleagues listen to colleagues. That's true here.
- Callie BrennanLast bit of the agenda then. Handover. When the first wave is live and stable I don't just disappear. I give you the setup note, a short how-to for the connectors page, and a list of what's connected and who owns each one at your end. Then Daniel takes it from there.
- Holly TranterWho owns each one at our end? I'm guessing that's me for most of them.
- Callie BrennanFor the day-to-day, yes. But I'd like a named person for each source who can answer a question about it. For example, who knows why a field exists in the recruitment system?
- Holly TranterHonestly, I do. But the head of recruitment operations knows the why. I just know the what.
- Callie BrennanThen put both. You for the technical side, and your colleague for the business meaning. It makes the setup note much more useful.
- Saskia MendesHold on, I'm going to challenge something. Do we need a name for every connector? It sounds like paperwork. Can we make it simpler?
- Callie BrennanWe can, and I'd rather it was short and honest than long and ignored. How about this: one named owner per connector, one line each, and a second person only for the recruitment system. That's three lines, not a document.
- Saskia MendesThree lines I can live with.
- Holly TranterThree lines is fine.
- Callie BrennanDone. Is there anything else on your minds? Anything I've not asked about?
- Holly TranterUm. Not really. Maybe, what happens if I get the service accounts wrong? Like, too much access, or too little?
- Callie BrennanToo little and the connector tells me, and I tell you what's missing, nothing breaks. Too much, I'd rather you told me, and we trim it. You won't get in trouble from me for either, I just don't want to find out later.
- Holly TranterThat's a relief, thanks.
- Saskia MendesOne from me. What did the other customers like us do first? Did they get stuck anywhere?
- Callie BrennanThe common sticking point is exactly what we've just done: client names that don't match, and nobody owning the answer. You've settled both in half an hour, which is early. The other one is credentials turning up late, and that's the one to watch.
- Saskia MendesRight. Then credentials are the thing. Holly, I'll check on that Thursday.
- Holly TranterYou don't need to check. I'll tell you.
- Saskia MendesI'll check anyway.
- Holly TranterOf course you will.
- Callie BrennanOkay, let me read back the actions so we've got them in one place. Holly: service accounts for the recruitment system and the accounting system, read-only, with a note of what you've created, by Friday. Holly: ask your IT contractor on Thursday about being the second admin. Holly: send me one permanent and one contract placement with their invoices, whenever you can this week.
- Holly TranterGot all three.
- Callie BrennanSaskia: ask your compliance people what, if anything, should stay out of the complaints data, and tell me in writing. And pick the three directors for the first look.
- Saskia MendesCompliance tomorrow, directors by the end of the week. Done.
- Callie BrennanMe: the mapping list goes to Holly tomorrow, with the awkward ones first. The updated sheet with dates goes to both of you today. I won't start any connector until I've the access note in writing. And once the first refresh is on, we meet on Tuesday to look at it together, same time.
- Holly TranterSame time is fine. Quarter to one.
- Saskia MendesFine. Can you put it in the diary? Otherwise one of us will forget.
- Callie BrennanI'll send the invite straight after the call.
- Saskia MendesCallie, can I say something before we go? When we signed, I honestly wasn't sure we'd get from the demo to something people used. Today's the first time it's felt like a project with an end.
- Callie BrennanThat's kind, thank you. And it's the point of the dates. A thing with dates against every step feels very different from a thing with a vague intention.
- Holly TranterI'm a bit more relaxed now too, to be honest. I thought I'd be doing this without a map.
- Callie BrennanYou've got a map. And a note at the end of it, so the map outlives me. Anything else? Otherwise I'll stop the share and let you get on with your afternoon.
- Saskia MendesNothing from me.
- Holly TranterNo, I'm good.
- Callie BrennanLovely. Then I'll get the sheet out to you within the hour. Thanks, both, speak soon.
- Saskia MendesThanks, Callie. Talk Tuesday. Cheers, Holly.
- Holly TranterBye all. Cheers.
- Callie BrennanBye for now.
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