Corstorphine Building Society / BG-Demo – Negotiation
Callscheduled
Corstorphine Building Society · 26 Oct 2026 16:45
This call is booked for 26 Oct 2026 at 16:45, hosted by Tom Ashdown. It has not yet been held, so no outcome, customer position or commercial result can be reported.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026This call is booked for 26 Oct 2026 at 16:45, hosted by Tom Ashdown. It has not yet been held, so no outcome, customer position or commercial result can be reported.
What is on record: The call is booked for 26 Oct 2026 at 16:45 with Tom Ashdown as host. Listed participants are Tom and Owen Tallis for BG-Demo, and Morag Cowie, Alasdair Gunn and Catriona Muir for Corstorphine Building Society.
Status: The call is a plan, not a held meeting, so this read describes no outcome, customer view or commercial position.
Watch: The call type is negotiation while the title says demo. The account team should confirm the purpose with Tom before the date.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Booked demo, not yet held
Importance
neutral
Sentiment
neutral
Voice
unknown
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Tom Ashdown to hold the call as booked on 26 Oct 2026 at 16:45 and confirm whether it is a demo or a negotiation.
Transcript
Tom AshdownMorning, morning. Can you hear us all right? Morag, Struan, hello.
Morag CowieMorning, Tom. Aye, loud and clear. Struan's just dialling in from the other room, he's had a wee tussle with the headset.
Struan MackaySorry, sorry. Joined. Can you hear me? Right, good.- Tom AshdownNo drama. How's your week been, Morag? You look like you've had one.
- Morag CowieHa. The broker story of the week is that one of our larger firms went quiet on submissions for nearly a fortnight and nobody on my side noticed until the business development manager happened to ring them about something else. Which is rather why we're here.
- Tom AshdownThat's the story, isn't it. Well, that's a good place to start then. Hannah's with me, she's going to drive the demo, and she'll want to know what matters most to you before she clicks anything.
Hannah LoweHello both. Yes, so before I share anything: what do you most need to know by the end of this hour? I'd rather show you two things properly than ten things badly.- Morag CowieFor me it's simple. Which brokers are slipping, and can my business development managers see the whole picture of a firm without ringing three departments. Member services get the complaints and the queries, we get the submissions, and nobody sees both.
- Struan MackayAnd from my side, honestly, where does the data live and who can see what. We're regulated, so I'll be asking about Snowflake, about access, about what leaves our estate. Probably nothing leaves, but I'd like to hear it said.
- Hannah LoweGood, then I'll say it first. To be precise, the brain is built and run inside your own Snowflake account. We don't copy your data into a BG-Demo environment. The short answer is that it stays with you. The longer answer is that I'll show you how that looks in your account in a few minutes, so you can judge it for yourselves.
- Struan MackayMm. That's what the proposal said. Fine. I'd like to see it, though.
- Hannah LoweOf course. Let me share my screen. Can you see the browser window, not the slides?
- Morag CowieBrowser, aye. It's the broker firm page you've set up from the sample Struan's team sent over.
- Tom AshdownYeah, thanks for that, Struan, by the way. It makes a real difference doing this on your own data and not a made-up building society.
- Struan MackayIt was a small extract. I scrubbed anything that looked like a member name. So if something looks thin, that's why.
- Hannah LoweThat's exactly right, and it's worth saying: what you're about to see is thinner than it will be live. So, this is a broker firm. One page. Down the left you've got the submissions history that came from your CRM extract, and underneath that the contact notes your business development managers keep.
- Morag CowieRight. That's the bit they live in already. What's new?
- Hannah LoweWhat's new is the right-hand side. Here are the service queries that came in through member services for customers who came via that firm, and here are the emails and call notes that mention it. Same page, same firm. Nobody had to reconcile anything by hand.
- Morag CowieHang on. Go back. So member services tickets are sitting against the broker firm? Not just against the member?
- Hannah LoweBoth. The ticket is linked to the member and, where the origination data says which firm introduced them, to the firm as well. To be precise, that link depends on your data carrying the firm reference consistently. In the extract it does for most records, not all.
- Struan MackayIt won't for the older cases. The firm reference was free text for years before we tidied it. You'd get three spellings of the same firm.
- Hannah LoweThat's useful to know, and it's common. We'd handle it in the implementation, matching the variants once and keeping the mapping somewhere you own and can edit. I'll put that in writing so it's not just something I said on a call.
- Tom AshdownStruan, that's the sort of thing we'd scope up front, no surprises later. Leave that with me and I'll make sure it's on the list.
- Morag CowieCan I ask it the way I'd actually ask it? Not clicking. Can I just type a question?
- Hannah LowePlease do. Tell me what you'd type and I'll type it.
- Morag CowieWhich of our top firms have submitted less this quarter than last, and have any of them had a complaint raised in the same period?
- Hannah LoweRight. Typing that as you said it. Give it a moment, it's reading across both sources.
- Struan MackayIs that live against the extract or is it cached?
- Hannah LoweLive against the extract in the test schema. In production there's a nightly refresh, finished by seven in the morning on business days, so your teams start the day on yesterday's close.
- Hannah LoweOkay, here we are. Three firms with fewer submissions than last quarter, and one of those also has a service query logged. It shows the sources it used, so you can open the underlying records and check.
- Morag CowieWell, that's the one. That's the firm that went quiet. And there's a query attached? I'd not have known that. Right. Right, that's useful. Sorry, I'm just looking at it.
- Tom AshdownTake your time. That's the bit people tend to sit with.
- Morag CowieOkay. Let's not overcomplicate it. If my managers had that on a Monday morning, they'd ring the right firms before the quarter is out, not after. That's the value, as far as I'm concerned. Now, how much of that is the brain, and how much is me being clever with a report?
- Hannah LoweFair question. A report answers the question someone built it for. The brain lets you ask one nobody built it for, across sources that weren't designed to meet. That said, you can still pin a question as a page or a dashboard once it's proved useful.
- Struan MackayCan we talk access? Who sees what. A business development manager shouldn't see everything member services can see, and vice versa. Some of those tickets will have vulnerable customer markers.
- Hannah LoweYes. So it respects the permissions you set in your Snowflake account, and on Enterprise you get single sign-on and SCIM, so people and groups come from your identity provider rather than being managed twice. I want to be careful here: what I'm confident of is the architecture and those features. The detail of how your vulnerable customer markers should be treated is something we'd design with you and check against your policies, not assume.
- Struan MackayGood. That's a better answer than I usually get.
- Hannah LoweIf there's a security question I'm not certain of, I check with our security lead before I answer. Enterprise includes security review support in the implementation, so Struan, you and I would go through your questionnaire together.
- Morag CowieAnd that would go through our supplier-risk process, which I should say now is not quick. I'm not going to promise a date I can't keep. We have a committee, and then it goes up to the executive, and the board will want a case.
- Tom AshdownUnderstood, and we'd rather it be done properly. For what it's worth, we pencilled 30 Sep 2026 as the target for the order form, but that's a planning date, not a promise from you. If supplier risk needs longer, it needs longer.
- Morag CowieGood. I'll tell you honestly if it's going to slip. Better that than you hearing it from someone else.
- Struan MackayWhile we're on the commercial side, can you remind me what's in the number? I've seen a figure in the draft but I want to make sure I understand it before it gets to finance.
- Tom AshdownRight, so I don't want to quote from memory and get it wrong, and I'll confirm it in writing. But the total deal value in what we've drafted is £155,000. That's the whole deal, so it includes the one-off implementation as well as the subscription. It isn't an annual price on its own, and I'll set out the split properly so finance isn't guessing.
- Struan MackayThanks. That's what I needed. Split in writing, then.
- Morag CowieDoes that cover both my team and member services, or is that two conversations?
- Tom AshdownOne order, Enterprise, company-wide. I know you'll want to think about who starts first. That's a rollout question as much as a price one, and Hannah can talk to that.
- Hannah LoweI'd suggest starting with intermediary distribution, because the broker view is the clearest win and you'll have a story for the board quickly. Member services come on as the second wave, once the firm mapping is clean. Doing both at the same time is possible, but then the mapping work sits in the critical path for everyone.
- Morag CowieI like that. Prove it with my brokers, then bring member services in with something to show them. Struan, does that work for you?
- Struan MackayIt does. Fewer moving parts at the start. My concern would be the connectors. How many sources are we really talking about, and who maintains them when we change a system?
- Hannah LoweEnterprise carries a generous number of connectors, so I don't expect you to be squeezed. On maintenance: when a source changes, the usual symptom is that records stop growing for that connector. We watch for that in the usage view, and you'd see it too. The fix is normally a short piece of work rather than a rebuild. But if you're planning to change your CRM, tell us early.
- Struan MackayWe're not planning to, but it's not impossible in a couple of years. Noted.
- Morag CowieCan I see the thing for the board? Whatever I'd show an executive. I don't want to oversell it to them. If it's good, it'll stand up by itself.
- Hannah LoweRight. This is the usage view, and it's the one I'd show a board after the first quarter. Questions asked, who is asking them, which sources are feeding it. It's an honest picture. If only one person is using it, it says so.
- Morag CowieThat's what I want. If it says only I'm using it, then I know I've failed to bring my team with me.
- Tom AshdownWhich is why there's a check-in cadence built in. Enterprise has an executive sponsor on our side, and your customer success manager, once you're live, would be sitting down with you regularly. No drama if the numbers look flat, we'd just look at why.
- Struan MackayCan I come back to the Snowflake side one more time? I'd like to understand the footprint. Roles it creates, warehouse use, what I'd need to approve.
- Hannah LoweYes, and I'll write it up so you have it as a document, but the shape is this. We ask for a dedicated database and schema for the brain, a service role with only the access it needs, and a warehouse you can size and cap. You approve each of those. Nothing is created that you haven't seen.
- Struan MackayCap on the warehouse is important. Finance will ask. Is there a typical cost so I can warn them?
- Hannah LoweI'd rather not give you a number from memory, because it depends heavily on how much data you index and how often people query. What I can do is estimate it from your extract and give you a range with the assumptions written out. Would that help?
- Struan MackayYes, that would help. I'd rather have a range with assumptions than a confident guess.
- Morag CowieCan we go back to the broker view for a minute? I want to understand the notes. My managers write notes after every call, but they're a bit inconsistent. Will the brain make sense of them?
- Hannah LoweIt reads them as they are, so it copes with inconsistency better than a report would. Let me show you. I'll ask what the notes say about the firm that's gone quiet.
- Hannah LoweSo, it's picked up two notes: one mentions a change of staff at the firm, and one mentions a query about turnaround. It doesn't prove why they went quiet, and I wouldn't claim it does. But it gives your manager somewhere to start the conversation.
- Morag CowieAye, that's the point. It tells me where to look, it doesn't pretend to know. I trust that more, to be honest.
- Tom AshdownI'll say, that's the thing we hear most from people at this stage. It's less magic and more 'show me where it came from'.
- Struan MackayRight. A practical one. If we went ahead, what do you need from me in the first few weeks?
- Hannah LoweThree things. Access to a Snowflake account with the right admin rights for the setup. A named owner for each source system, so I know who to ask when a field makes no sense. And a decision on the firm reference mapping, because that drives the broker view. Everything else follows.
- Struan MackayI can be the owner for the data platform side. The source owners are other people, I'd need to ask.
- Morag CowieI'll put my name against the broker side, and I'll find someone in member services. Let's not overcomplicate it: one name per source, written down.
- Tom AshdownBrilliant. Let me sketch the next steps so we're all clear, and shout if I've got it wrong. After today I send the written summary: the deal value with the implementation split out, the scope as we discussed, and Hannah's note on the Snowflake footprint and the firm mapping.
- Hannah LoweAnd I'll send the security questionnaire pack, so Struan can start looking at it before the supplier-risk committee. The earlier we answer your questions, the less it holds you up.
- Morag CowieGood. And I'll find out when the next committee sits and tell you straight. I can't tell you the outcome, obviously. Only when it gets looked at.
- Struan MackayOne more from me, a small one. Is the demo environment going to stay up? I'd like to have another look at the broker page with my own team, not just the three of us.
- Hannah LoweI can leave it running on your extract. Tell me who should have access and I'll set that up, with the understanding that it's still the scrubbed sample.
- Tom AshdownWhile you're at it, if any of your business development managers fancy a go, bring them. Better they hear it from the people who'll actually use it than from you or me.
- Morag CowieI'll do that. Two of them, I think, the ones who look after the biggest firms. They'll ask better questions than I do.
- Tom AshdownLet's get something in the diary for that, then. Shall I send a couple of slots for the week after next, or is that too soon?
- Morag CowieSend them and I'll see what I can do. Holidays are a bit of a mess at the moment.
- Struan MackaySame here. Send them over and I'll flag any clashes.
- Hannah LoweIs there anything we haven't covered that you'd have wanted answered today? Now's the time, otherwise I'll assume I've been thorough.
- Morag CowieNo, I think I've seen what I wanted. It shows me the firms that are slipping. That's the thing. I'm going to sleep on it and think about how I put it to the executive.
- Tom AshdownPerfect. No pressure from us, you've got your process and we'll fit around it. Thanks both, this was a good one.
- Struan MackayThanks, both. Speak soon.
- Morag CowieThanks, Tom, Hannah. Have a good rest of the week. Cheerio.
- Hannah LoweThanks, everyone. I'll get that pack out to you.
- Tom AshdownCheers all. Bye now.
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