Harcastle Environmental / BG-Demo – Demo
Callcompleted
Harcastle Environmental · 27 Jan 2025 16:30
Demo of the Growth tier on Harcastle's own extracts. Nicola Brearley wants one customer view and a defensible number. She cannot commit budget and needs a one-page summary and a depot example for her sign-off holder.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Demo of the Growth tier on Harcastle's own extracts. Nicola Brearley wants one customer view and a defensible number. She cannot commit budget and needs a one-page summary and a depot example for her sign-off holder.
What happened: Anya Petrova ran the brain on extracts from routing, helpdesk and accounting. Nicola Brearley tested chat and the dashboards builder, and Imran Hussain probed source conflicts, access control and connector limits.
Customer view: Nicola framed the need around a third complaint in the month where the customer was ahead of the account manager. She liked that answers cite their source, and she accepted that refresh is overnight, not live.
Commercial: Lewis Kerr quoted £52k as the Growth total including implementation, split to follow in writing. Nicola cannot commit budget and the target of Fri 28 Mar 2025 is a hope, not a promise.
Watch: Imran plans to change how rounds are coded, which could stall a connector. He also wants the connector count in writing so the accounting source is not squeezed out.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Growth demo, one customer view
Importance
upsell
Sentiment
positive
Voice
champion
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Lewis Kerr to send the one-page summary and written quote with connector and user counts.
- Anya Petrova to rebuild the missed-collection example on a larger depot extract from Imran Hussain.
- Lewis Kerr to arrange a second call with the budget holder before the end of March.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Budget sits with a sign-off holder above Nicola, and the end-of-March date is a hope, not a promise.
- Planned changes to routing round coding could break a connector load.
- Account managers may drop the brain after one bad answer unless key questions work from day one.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Growth tier with the dashboards builder for the Thursday depot review.
- Add-on connectors or users later if the five sources use up the allowance.
Transcript
Lewis KerrHello, can you hear me all right? I've got Anya with me, she's just joining on her own laptop so you may get a bit of an echo for a second.
Nicola BrearleyYes, loud and clear. Afternoon, Lewis. Imran's just logging in, he's had a roundabout route to get into this meeting room.
Imran HussainHere, sorry. Afternoon all. The link wanted me to update something first. Can you see my camera?
Anya PetrovaAfternoon, everyone. Anya here, I'm the solutions engineer. Yes, we can see you, Imran. Slightly dark but we can see you.- Nicola BrearleyIt's Monday in January in Wakefield, nothing is bright. Right, before we start, can I tell you about the worst complaint of the week? Because it's exactly why we're doing this.
- Lewis KerrPlease do. That's useful context for Anya as well.
- Nicola BrearleySo a customer rang on Friday afternoon, a restaurant group, three sites, and said we'd missed the glass collection twice. The account manager had no idea. The ticket was in the helpdesk, the missed collection was in the routing system, and the invoice was in finance. Three screens, three people, and the customer was ahead of us. That's the third time this month, and we don't tolerate that.
- Anya PetrovaThat's pretty much the picture we want to show you today, so that's helpful. Do you want me to try and build the demo around that kind of case?
- Nicola BrearleyYes please. Let's see it from the customer's side. Which customer, which depot, which round, what did we promise, what did we do.
- Lewis KerrPerfect. Just so we're all aligned on why we're here: my understanding is you're looking at the Growth tier, you want account managers working from one view, and you'd like to have a decision around the end of March. Friday 28 March 2025 is the date I have for the order form. Is that still right?
- Nicola BrearleyThat's the plan. I'd say it's a hope rather than a promise, because it depends on sign-off above me. But yes, that's the target.
- Lewis KerrUnderstood. Imran, you sent us a sample extract last week. Do you want to say where that came from before Anya shares her screen?
- Imran HussainYes. So, what I changed since we last spoke: I pulled a cut of the routing data for a handful of depots, and a month of tickets from the helpdesk, and the matching invoice lines from the accounting system. I removed anything that looked personal. It's not everything, it's about enough to be useful. And I've lined up the customer ids so they should match across all three.
- Anya PetrovaThat's great, thank you, that makes it a lot easier. I did notice that the customer id looked different in the finance extract, there was a prefix. Did you do that on purpose?
- Imran HussainYes, finance adds a prefix for sites that have been merged. I left it as it was because I didn't want to overstate what matched. I wrote a note in the file.
- Anya PetrovaGood, I saw the note. We handled that with a mapping, so it should be fine. I'll share my screen now. Can you see the brain home page?
- Nicola BrearleyYes. It's very plain. I thought it would be busier.
- Anya PetrovaIt's deliberately quiet. There's a search box, chat, and your pages. Most people just start asking it things. Let me ask the restaurant case in your words. So, which customers have had more than one missed collection this month?
- Anya PetrovaGive it a few seconds.
- Anya PetrovaRight, so it's come back with a list. It's pulled the collection exceptions from the routing data and grouped them by customer. And these are the ones that also have an open ticket. This one, the third row, has two missed collections and a ticket opened the same day.
- Nicola BrearleyCan you click into that one? Which depot, which round?
- Anya PetrovaYes. So this is the customer page. It's a depot in the north of your patch in the sample, and the round is here. You can see the two collection dates, the ticket, the status, and the last invoice line underneath. It's all on one page.
- Nicola BrearleyAnd that is built from what, from the files Imran gave you?
- Anya PetrovaFrom those extracts, yes. In your real set up it would be the live connectors running inside your own Snowflake account, refreshed overnight, so nothing leaves your environment.
- Imran HussainThat's one of the questions I had, actually. Where does the data sit and who can see it? Because I'd want to be sure that we can control which account managers see which customers.
- Anya PetrovaSure. It's in your Snowflake, so your existing roles apply. The brain respects who is allowed to see what. On the Growth tier you'd configure that with your admin rather than through single sign-on, so that would be you.
- Imran HussainOkay. I'd want to test that properly before we switch anything on. Is there a way to try it with a couple of fake users first?
- Anya PetrovaYes, and that's how we usually do it in the first weeks. We add a couple of test accounts, check what they see, and only then open it to the account managers.
- Lewis KerrAnd Imran, that sits in the implementation plan, so you'd not be doing that on your own. We'd write it into the plan.
- Imran HussainGood. Thank you.
- Nicola BrearleyCan I ask it something? Can I try the chat? I want to ask something that an account manager would actually ask.
- Anya PetrovaOf course. I'll hand you the keyboard, well, I'll type what you say. Go ahead.
- Nicola BrearleyOkay. Is there anything about this customer I should know before I ring them? And I mean in terms of complaints, not the invoices.
- Anya PetrovaTyping that now. Same customer, yes?
- Nicola BrearleyYes, same one.
- Anya PetrovaSo it says there were two missed collections within the month in the sample, one ticket raised by the customer, and that the ticket was answered but not closed. It's also pointing at the ticket thread where the customer says this is the second time. It's quoted the line, and you can click through to the source.
- Nicola BrearleyRight, that I like. It shows where it got it from. Because if I said that to a customer and it was wrong, that would be worse than not saying anything.
- Anya PetrovaExactly. Every answer links back to the record. If it can't find something, it says so rather than guessing.
- Imran HussainHow does it behave when two sources disagree? For example, the routing system says collected and the ticket says not collected.
- Anya PetrovaGood one. Let me find an example in your sample. Hang on.
- Anya PetrovaRight, here we are. There's a collection marked complete in routing on one date, and a ticket the same day saying the bins weren't touched. It shows both, side by side, with the source for each, and it doesn't pick a winner. It tells you they conflict.
- Imran HussainOkay, I like that, it doesn't hide it. In my experience the worst thing is a tidy answer that's wrong.
- Nicola BrearleyMm. Which is what we have now, to be honest, with spreadsheets. Somebody tidies it, and then nobody believes it.
- Anya PetrovaShall I show you the dashboards builder? That's the Growth tier piece, and it's the bit your managers might want for the weekly review.
- Nicola BrearleyYes. I have a weekly review on Thursdays with the depot managers and it's an absolute slog to prepare. Show me.
- Anya PetrovaOkay. So you can build a dashboard from a question. I'll take the one we just asked, missed collections by depot, and pin it. Then add the open tickets as a second tile.
- Anya PetrovaThere. Two tiles. You can filter by depot or by week, and you can share it with a group. And if the data underneath refreshes overnight, the dashboard is current when people open it in the morning.
- Nicola BrearleyHow current? Because if I'm in a Thursday review and it's a day behind, that's a different conversation.
- Anya PetrovaIt refreshes overnight and should be complete first thing in the morning on business days. It's not live to the minute. For a Thursday review that's fine, but for chasing a missed collection at three in the afternoon you'd still look at the routing system.
- Nicola BrearleyThat's fair, and I'd rather you said so. Imran, does that work for the routing side?
- Imran HussainIt should. The routing export already runs overnight. What I'd want to know is what happens when we change something in the routing system. We're planning to adjust how rounds are coded later this year.
- Anya PetrovaThat's the classic one. When a source changes shape, the connector can stop loading or load partially. We'd see that as the records indexed going flat. In practice, you tell us before you change it, and we adjust the mapping. And you'd see it in the admin view.
- Imran HussainRight. So I add that to my change checklist. Fine.
- Lewis KerrAnd that's a good thing for the CSM to know about too. Marcus Bell would be your customer success manager once you're live, and he'd want that in the check-ins.
- Nicola BrearleyOkay. Now, can we talk about calls? We record customer calls, the account managers and the customer service team, and I'd like to see whether that's in here.
- Anya PetrovaYes. If you connect the call recorder, the transcripts become another source. Let me ask, has this customer called us in the last month. I'll use a different customer, because that restaurant group isn't in the call data.
- Anya PetrovaOkay, so here's a customer with a call logged on a Tuesday, and the summary says they were chasing a late collection. And here it is next to the ticket that was raised afterwards.
- Nicola BrearleySo I'd see that the person rang, that we raised a ticket, and whether the collection then happened. That's the whole chain.
- Anya PetrovaThat's the idea. It's the thing you described at the start. Not three screens.
- Nicola BrearleyRight. What's the fix and who owns it? That's what I always ask. Can the brain tell me who owns the ticket?
- Anya PetrovaIf your helpdesk records an owner, yes, it shows the assignee. And you can ask for all open tickets with no owner. That one tends to be popular.
- Imran HussainWhich would be a lot of ours on a Monday morning, I suspect.
- Nicola BrearleyDon't. We'll find out soon enough.
- Lewis KerrCan I pause the demo there and take a few minutes on how this is put together commercially? I'd rather you hear it now than be surprised in the quote.
- Nicola BrearleyYes, please. Go on.
- Lewis KerrSo, to put a number on it: the deal as it stands is fifty-one thousand six hundred pounds, £51,600, and that's the total for the Growth tier including the one-off implementation. It is not an annual price on its own, so I want to be clear about that. I'll break the two parts out in writing, and the figures are exclusive of VAT. I won't quote the split from memory on a call, I'll send that over today.
- Nicola BrearleyOkay. So that's the all-in for the first year, with the set up included.
- Lewis KerrYes, the all-in, implementation included. In later years it's the subscription only, and I'd confirm the exact figure on the quote so that you're not relying on what I say in a call.
- Nicola BrearleyGood. I have to say, I can't commit budget on this call. I need to take it to the person who signs off the budget, and they'll want to see the missed collection case and a number they can defend.
- Lewis KerrThat's completely fair. What would help you most to take it to them? A one page summary, or would you want them on a call?
- Nicola BrearleyA page first. Then maybe a call, with the missed collection example run on their own depot's data if we can. They don't read long documents.
- Anya PetrovaWe can do that. If Imran can send a slightly bigger cut for the depot you want to use, I can rebuild this example on it. I'd need a few days.
- Imran HussainWhich depot do you want, Nicola? I'd say the one with the most complaints, because that's the one that'll make the point.
- Nicola BrearleyYes. The one that keeps me awake. I'll tell you after the call, there are two I'd argue about.
- Anya PetrovaOkay. Can I show you two more things before we run out of time? Users and connectors, so you know what Growth gives you. Then the admin view.
- Imran HussainYes please. How many connectors have we got left once the three we've talked about are on? That's my main worry. I don't want to use them all up and then find we need the accounting one.
- Anya PetrovaThe way to look at it is that Growth is designed for several teams and several sources. Routing, helpdesk, accounting, call recorder and your CRM are all comfortably in range. I'll put the exact count in the proposal so it's in writing, and there's an add-on if you need more later.
- Imran HussainFine. Writing is better. I'd rather count them on paper.
- Anya PetrovaLet me show you the admin page, then. This is where you'd see each connector, whether it loaded last night, and how many records came in.
- Anya PetrovaSo, green means it loaded, amber means it loaded but fewer records than usual, red means it failed. And you can drill into one and see the last few runs.
- Imran HussainThat's the bit I'd live in. Can I get an alert, rather than looking at it every morning?
- Anya PetrovaYou can. An email to you, or a message to a channel in Slack if you use that.
- Imran HussainWe use Microsoft 365 mostly, so email's fine.
- Nicola BrearleyCan I ask about training? Because my account managers are not going to read a manual. They'll try it, get one bad answer, and never open it again.
- Lewis KerrThat's a real risk and I'd rather you raised it now. In the implementation there's a training element, and Marcus would follow it up in the first check-ins. The best protection is picking a few real questions that matter to your managers and making sure those work well from day one.
- Nicola BrearleyThen it's the missed collection one, the complaint one, and the one where they want to know what a customer pays and whether they're profitable.
- Anya PetrovaThat third one is a good use of the invoice data. Shall I try it on the sample?
- Nicola BrearleyGo on. Which customers had invoice lines last month but also have more than one complaint? Because those are the ones I'm worried about renewing.
- Anya PetrovaTyping that.
- Anya PetrovaOkay, so it's given us a short list, and it's showing the invoice lines and the complaint count next to each. I'd say take it as a pointer rather than a verdict, because it's only a month of sample data.
- Imran HussainWhich is the sort of thing I'd say. It shows a pattern, but I wouldn't claim it proves anything yet.
- Nicola BrearleyNo, understood, but it's the right shape. That's what I'd want to see on a Thursday.
- Lewis KerrRight. I don't want to overrun, we've got a little time. Can I check what you'd like from us over the next few weeks, so I can write it down?
- Nicola BrearleyPlease. I'd say three things. The one page summary I can show upstairs. The example on the depot data. And the written quote with the connector count and the user count, so there are no surprises.
- Lewis KerrGot that. One page summary and the written quote from me, and I'll send both over today or first thing tomorrow. The depot example from Anya once Imran sends the extract.
- Imran HussainI'll send the bigger extract in a couple of days, once I've checked what's in it. I'll test it before I send it.
- Anya PetrovaThat's perfect. If you could keep the same format as last time it will load straight away.
- Nicola BrearleyAnd then maybe a second call in a couple of weeks, with the person who signs off the budget? We could aim to have that done well before the end of March.
- Lewis KerrThat works. I'll send some times with the quote. And just so I've got it right, you'd want to be signed off by Friday 28 March 2025, or as close as you can get.
- Nicola BrearleyClose to it, yes. Don't hold me to the day.
- Lewis KerrUnderstood. We'll plan for it and keep it flexible.
- Nicola BrearleyAnything else from you two? Imran?
- Imran HussainOnly that I'll want the security and data handling notes, so I can read them before the next call. I don't need to be convinced, I just need to have read them.
- Anya PetrovaI'll send you the data handling note with the follow up, and you can come back with anything it doesn't answer.
- Imran HussainGreat, thank you.
- Lewis KerrThen thank you both, that was really useful, and thanks for the honest questions. Kind regards from all of us. We'll speak soon.
- Nicola BrearleyThanks, Lewis. Thanks, Anya. Speak soon.
- Imran HussainBye all.
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