Harcastle Environmental / BB-Demo – Qbr
Callcompleted
Harcastle Environmental · 2026-06-02 13:45
QBR on 2 Jun 2026: usage up by about a third, no overdue invoices and a clean ticket month. CFO Andrew Sugden asked for the value in plain terms and will sign nothing without a business case.
What was said
What this says
Current to 13 Oct 26QBR on 2 Jun 2026: usage up by about a third, no overdue invoices and a clean ticket month. CFO Andrew Sugden asked for the value in plain terms and will sign nothing without a business case.
What happened: Marcus Bell walked through a good quarter on 2 Jun 2026. About nine of forty licensed users are active on an average day, and Nicola Brearley's café group complaint was answered in about ten minutes.
Customer view: Andrew Sugden pressed on what the value is and what the gap between nine and forty means. He accepted Marcus's advice to add nothing and use the licences already paid for.
Commercial: The Growth order form is £44k a year, signed 11 Apr 2025, renewing 11 Apr 2027. Andrew wants usage and complaint handling in writing, and said any acquisition goes in the plan with integration cost first.
Watch: Nicola and two senior account managers ask most of the questions, a key-person risk. Imran Hussain asked about connector headroom, which Marcus promised to confirm the same day.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Theme
Usage growth, value case
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
positive
Voice
decision-maker
Who was there
BB-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Marcus Bell to send Imran Hussain the connector list on the day of the call.
- Marcus to send Andrew Sugden a usage and value summary once Nicola Brearley's examples arrive.
- Nicola to pick groups for remote training sessions that week, and Imran to test the new source on Wakefield first.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Only about nine of forty licensed users are active daily, so value is thin against what is paid.
- Most questions come from Nicola and two senior account managers, a key-person risk.
- The CFO will not sign without a written business case and cannot yet explain the value to the board.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- Training sessions for newer account managers could spread usage and strengthen the renewal case.
- Imran wants to add one more source, which could need an additional connectors add-on.
- Andrew's hypothetical about taking on another company's customers points to possible future connectors and users.
Transcript
Marcus Bell NoneAfternoon, all. Can you hear me alright? I'm just waiting on the recording notice to pop up.
Nicola Brearley NoneAfternoon Marcus. Yes, loud and clear. Imran's here, Andrew's just coming off another call.
Imran Hussain NoneHello. I'm here. Camera's being a bit slow but audio's fine.- Marcus Bell NoneNo problem. Let's give Andrew a minute. How's the week been? Weather's turned a bit, hasn't it, it was lovely this morning in Manchester and now it's coming down.
- Nicola Brearley NoneSame here, well, Wakefield. Honestly the week has been all about one complaint. A café group, three sites, bins missed on the same round two Fridays running. Which depot, which round, that was the first thing I asked, and we had the answer in about ten minutes from the brain. That's the thing I wanted to say before we start.
- Marcus Bell NoneAh, good, that's exactly the sort of story I like to hear. Hold that thought, I'll come back to it when I share the numbers.
Andrew Sugden NoneSorry, sorry. Andrew here. I'm in. What's the headline?- Marcus Bell NoneHa, straight in. Hello Andrew. Headline is it's a good quarter. Usage is up by about a third on the last quarter, no overdue invoices, four tickets in the last month and none of them high priority. I'll share my screen and walk you through it. Can you all see it?
- Imran Hussain NoneYes, I can see it.
- Nicola Brearley NoneYep. Bit small. Oh, that's better.
- Marcus Bell NoneRight. So I've pulled the numbers, and I want to cover three things. Usage and who's using it, the tickets and what they were about, and then what you might want to do next. Then a quick word on the contract so nobody's surprised later in the year. Happy for you to stop me as we go.
- Andrew Sugden NoneFine. Start with the usage. How many people is it actually touching?
- Marcus Bell NoneSo you've got forty licences on Growth. On an average day in the last month about nine people are active. That's up around a third on the quarter before, so it's going the right way, and the number of questions asked has gone up with it.
- Andrew Sugden NoneNine out of forty. Is that good or is that low?
- Marcus Bell NoneFair question. Honestly it's a healthy trend from a smaller base. Daily active is always lower than the total who've logged in over a month, because not everyone needs it every day. But there's headroom, and I'd rather say that plainly than dress it up.
- Nicola Brearley NoneCan I come in on that? The nine are mostly the account managers and my team, the people who live in complaints. The rest are people we haven't got round to onboarding properly. That's on me. Which, let's see it from the customer's side, those are the ones who take the calls when a collection is missed.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat fits what I'm seeing. A small group asking a lot of questions, and a few names with a login and not much else. Nicola, who's asking most of the questions?
- Nicola Brearley NoneMe, if I'm honest. And two of the senior account managers. I do try to push it down but they don't always want to.
- Marcus Bell NoneOkay. That's worth knowing, and I'll flag it in the write-up. Not a worry at all, it just means more of the value sits with a few people, so spreading it is the easy win. I can do a short training session for the newer account managers if that helps.
- Andrew Sugden NoneWhat would that cost?
- Marcus Bell NoneNothing, a short session like that is part of what I do. An on-site training day is a separate add-on, but I don't think you need that. A remote hour or two with a couple of groups would do it.
- Andrew Sugden NoneGood. Put it in the plan, Nicola.
- Nicola Brearley NoneWill do. I'll pick the groups this week.
- Marcus Bell NoneLovely. Let me go on to the tickets. Four in the last month, as I said. Imran, you raised most of them I think?
- Imran Hussain NoneThree of them, yes. Do you want me to go through them? I changed a couple of things since last time so it ties in.
- Marcus Bell NonePlease. That's how you open, isn't it, what you've changed.
- Imran Hussain NoneIt is, yes. So, since the last review I tidied the customer records so there's one record per site rather than a few where a customer had moved or been renamed. That caused a couple of odd results where a complaint was sitting against the old record and the invoices against the new one. I checked every merge before I made it and I kept a copy of anything I couldn't put back.
- Nicola Brearley NoneAnd that's why the café group came up clean. Before, I'd have had to go to two places.
- Imran Hussain NoneRight. Then one of the tickets was a how-to, about filtering by round in the dashboards. Marcus answered that quickly. One was a sync question on the helpdesk connector, where the nightly refresh seemed late on a Monday. It turned out to be fine, I'd been looking before it finished. And the fourth was a small query on a field name.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat matches what I have. All answered inside the response times for your tier, nothing needed escalating. On the Monday one, the refresh should be complete by seven in the morning on business days, and it was, so I think you're right that it was timing.
- Imran Hussain NoneYes. I'll check after seven next time before I raise anything. Sorry about that.
- Marcus Bell NoneDon't apologise, I'd much rather you asked. Four tickets from a team that's using it more is what I'd expect to see.
- Andrew Sugden NoneCan I ask what the value is? What's the margin on this? Put it simply, I'll need to explain it to the board at some point.
- Marcus Bell NoneI'll give you what I can see and then Nicola can say what she sees. From my side it's questions asked and the fact that the team is working from one view of collections, tickets, calls and invoices instead of four. I can't put a margin figure on it, that's your numbers, not mine.
- Nicola Brearley NoneI can give you the plain version, Andrew. Three things. We find the missed collection faster, we tell the customer before they ring us, and we stop arguing about which system is right. The café group is a good example. They rang on Wednesday and I think they expected a fight. We'd already seen it.
- Andrew Sugden NoneDid we keep them?
- Nicola Brearley NoneWe did. They're still on the contract, and I'd say happier than before the complaint.
- Andrew Sugden NoneGood. That's the sort of thing I can write down. How many customers does that touch, if we do it properly?
- Nicola Brearley NoneIn principle all of them. About thirty thousand business customers, though obviously the account managers cover the bigger ones more closely. The point is every account manager would have the same view.
- Andrew Sugden NoneRight. Then I want to understand the gap between nine and forty before we talk about anything else.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat's fair, and it's a good way to look at it. What I'd suggest is we don't add anything. You've got room on the licences already, so the first job is to use what you've paid for. Then, in a quarter, we look again.
- Andrew Sugden NoneI like that. It's cheaper.
- Marcus Bell NoneIt is, and it's honest. Imran, on connectors, you wanted to ask something.
- Imran Hussain NoneYes. How many connectors have we got left? I know Growth has a limit, and I want to add one more source but I don't want to break the old ones.
- Marcus Bell NoneGrowth comes with eight. I'll check precisely how many you've configured and send you the list today, rather than guess on a call. If it takes you to the limit, additional connectors are an add-on, and that's something Lewis would pick up with you, I don't do pricing.
- Imran Hussain NoneThat's fine. I'll test it before we switch it on, in any case. I don't want a half-loaded source feeding the account managers the wrong answer.
- Marcus Bell NoneGood, and honestly that's the habit I'd want everyone to have. If a source stops loading, records indexed go flat and nobody notices for weeks. You've been on top of that.
- Nicola Brearley NoneWhich source is it, Imran? Be honest, is it the one I keep asking about?
- Imran Hussain NoneIt's the one you keep asking about, yes. The depot notes from the routing side. I want to test it with a single depot first.
- Nicola Brearley NonePerfect. Start with Wakefield. What's the fix and who owns it, that's all I ask.
- Imran Hussain NoneI own it. I'll tell you when it's ready.
- Marcus Bell NoneOkay, a word on the contract, and then I'll stop. You signed on Friday 11 Apr 2025, you're on Growth, forty users, at £44,000 a year, and that's what's on the order form and what's been invoiced. Nothing's out of line. The term ends on 10 Apr 2027 and it renews on 11 Apr 2027.
- Andrew Sugden NoneThat's a way off.
- Marcus Bell NoneIt is. I only mention it so there's no surprise. I'll be in touch well ahead of it, and Lewis will talk to you about terms for the next year. I don't want to say anything on price today, that's his, but I'll make sure you've got the usage picture so the conversation starts from value.
- Andrew Sugden NoneFine. I don't sign anything without a business case, so the more of the usage and the complaint handling I can have in writing, the better.
- Marcus Bell NoneUnderstood. I'll put together a short summary you can use. Usage, questions asked, tickets and response times, and what the team says it's changed. Nicola, if you could give me two or three examples like the café group, in your words, that'd help.
- Nicola Brearley NoneEasy. I've got more than three. I'll send them tomorrow.
- Andrew Sugden NoneOne more thing. If we were to take on another company's customers, hypothetically, would this cope? I'm not saying we are.
- Marcus Bell NoneHypothetically, then. It depends on what they use and how clean the records are, which is really Imran's area. In general the sooner you know which systems would need connecting, the sooner we can say what it takes. I'd not want to promise anything blind.
- Imran Hussain NoneI'd want to see the data first. Never overstate what it'll do. But one record per site helps a lot, and we've got that now.
- Andrew Sugden NoneGood. Then it goes in the plan, with the integration cost, before anyone says yes.
- Marcus Bell NoneSounds right. Anything else from anyone? Otherwise I'll recap.
- Nicola Brearley NoneNo, I'm good. That was useful.
- Marcus Bell NoneRight, so. I send Imran the connector list today. I send Andrew the summary once Nicola's examples are in. Nicola picks the groups for the training sessions this week, and Imran tests the new source on Wakefield. Shall we book thirty minutes in a few weeks to see how the new users are getting on?
- Nicola Brearley NoneYes please. Send an invite and I'll move things around.
- Andrew Sugden NoneFine by me. Thank you, Marcus.
- Imran Hussain NoneThanks all. Speak soon.
- Marcus Bell NoneCheers everyone. Thanks for your time, and well done on the café group.
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