Carnwath Haulage / BG-Demo – Discovery
Callcompleted
Carnwath Haulage · 20 Sep 2023 13:45
Andy Brownlie and Margaret Cleland described scattered systems and a recent double-booking. Tom Ashdown pitched the brain, promised pricing the next day and proposed a mid-October demo with the CTO. No price was given on the call.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Andy Brownlie and Margaret Cleland described scattered systems and a recent double-booking. Tom Ashdown pitched the brain, promised pricing the next day and proposed a mid-October demo with the CTO. No price was given on the call.
What happened: Tom Ashdown ran a discovery call with Andy Brownlie, Commercial Manager, and Margaret Cleland, Finance Director. They described booking, Salesforce and email data that nobody can see across.
Customer view: Margaret called the situation "a nightmare" and cited a double-booking. Andy liked that the data stays in their own Snowflake account.
Commercial: Both asked about cost and Tom declined to quote, promising pricing the next day. The tier is not stated; the call mentions a fixed implementation fee, an annual subscription and a possible go-live at the end of the year.
Watch: Cost was asked twice and left open, and Margaret as Finance Director will test value. The evidence does not show whether the pricing and demo dates were sent.
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 confirmed pricing and demo dates the day after the call.
- Tom Ashdown to book a demo of the brain on Carnwath data with Tobias Renwick in the afternoon.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Price was asked for twice and not given, so cost could become an objection.
- Finance Director Margaret Cleland will weigh the fee against the time saved.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- A new implementation plus annual subscription to fix the cross-system visibility problem.
- Keeping the data in the customer's own Snowflake account answers their concern about handing data off.
Transcript
Tom AshdownRight, Andy, Margaret, thanks for taking the time. How's your week been?
Andy BrownlieYeah, not bad, busy as ever. Good to connect.
Margaret ClelandSame here, plenty on.- Tom AshdownSo Andy reached out a couple of weeks back about data visibility. Before we dive in, I'd really like to understand how you're running things at Carnwath just now, and where the friction is. Yeah?
- Andy BrownlieYeah, absolutely. So we're managing a pretty complex operation. We've got haulage jobs all over central Scotland, bulk and general stuff. The challenge is visibility. We've got our booking system, Salesforce for the commercial side, emails everywhere, and nobody really knows what's happening across it all. Margaret and I spend ages trying to piece together what's scheduled, what's behind, who's where.
- Margaret ClelandIt's a nightmare, honestly. Last week we had a double-booking because one team didn't know what another team had already committed. Costs us time, frustrates the drivers.
- Tom AshdownSo the data exists, just living in different places and you can't see across it?
- Andy BrownlieExactly that. We've looked at connecting things, but it's complicated and expensive, so we've just muddled through.
- Tom AshdownThat's the exact problem the brain solves. It's an AI layer that sits inside your own Snowflake warehouse. You ask it questions across Salesforce, your booking system, Xero, everything. One place, answers in seconds, no manual chasing.
- Margaret ClelandHow much work is it to set that up?
- Tom AshdownThere's a fixed implementation fee, we do the heavy lifting, and then annual subscription. Takes a few weeks to go live, probably end of year. Your team doesn't really do much except give us access to the systems.
- Andy BrownlieAnd what's the cost?
- Tom AshdownI don't want to guess on this one, let me confirm it properly, but it's nothing compared to what you're spending on people's time doing spreadsheets. I'll send it over tomorrow and we can talk through it.
- Margaret ClelandDoes it need special access? Are we handing data off to you?
- Tom AshdownNo drama. We'd need read access to Salesforce, your booking system, Xero. But the data stays in your Snowflake account, on your infrastructure. We're just building the AI layer on top.
- Andy BrownlieI quite like that. We're not handing everything off to someone else.
- Tom AshdownRight, so next step, I'd love to do a proper demo where we load your actual data and show you what it looks like. About an hour. Can we get something in the diary?
- Margaret ClelandWhen were you thinking?
- Tom AshdownMid-October? I'd bring Tobias, our CTO, so you can ask him the technical stuff as well.
- Andy BrownlieYeah, that works. Afternoon's better for us if you don't mind?
- Tom AshdownAfternoon's fine. I'll send over a couple of dates tomorrow. Between now and then, any big questions?
- Margaret ClelandWhat's the timeline from decision to live?
- Tom AshdownOnce we're signed, a few weeks. If you wanted to move fast, end of the year is realistic.
- Andy BrownlieThat's reasonable.
- Tom AshdownBrilliant. I'll get those dates and the pricing over tomorrow. Cheers, you two. Speak soon.
- Andy BrownlieCheers, Tom.