Brimscombe Energy / BG-Demo – Onboarding
Callcompleted
Brimscombe Energy · 28 Jan 2025 16:15
Onboarding call with Nikhil Rao, Brimscombe's sole admin. Nothing connects until his written access note lands. A billing table rename is a live risk, and he is thinking about a deputy admin.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Onboarding call with Nikhil Rao, Brimscombe's sole admin. Nothing connects until his written access note lands. A billing table rename is a live risk, and he is thinking about a deputy admin.
What happened: Callie Brennan and Nikhil agreed the connection order and a dry run before the full refresh. Nothing connects until the written access note is signed off.
Customer view: Nikhil flagged a billing table rename with views still catching up. He also warned that teams expect the brain to answer everything.
Commercial: Callie raised the £115k annual order form. Nikhil said finance and procurement handled it and he knew of nothing outstanding.
Watch: Nikhil is the only admin and would only think about a deputy. SSO is wanted before wider teams are invited, and complaints content waits until its fields are agreed.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Onboarding access and sequencing
Importance
neutral
Sentiment
neutral
Voice
user
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Nikhil Rao to deliver the signed-off access note, with the billing rename log, by Thursday.
- Callie Brennan to send the revised plan, the access note template and the SSO list today.
- Nikhil Rao to choose three dry run customers by Wednesday and send the lookup table and unmatched count.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- A billing table rename leaves downstream views behind, so a connector could load nothing while looking healthy.
- Nikhil is the only admin and has not committed to a deputy.
- Key-account teams have told people the brain will answer everything, which risks disappointment.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- SSO and provisioning set-up is brought forward so wider teams can join without separate logins.
- The licence leaves room to add further sources after the first wave, once Nikhil is ready.
Transcript
Callie BrennanHi Nikhil, can you hear me alright?
Nikhil RaoYes. Hear you fine. Camera's off, the laptop is being difficult.- Callie BrennanNo problem at all, I'll survive without the face. Right, so, the plan for the next forty minutes, if that's okay with you. First, where we are on access and roles in your Snowflake account. Second, the order we connect the sources in. Third, when the first refresh lands and who watches it. And last, what I leave you with so you can run this without me. Tell me if any of that's wrong.
- Nikhil RaoThat's right. I'll start with what I've done, saves time.
- Callie BrennanPlease do.
- Nikhil RaoCreated a dedicated database and a warehouse for the brain last week. Separate role, read on the source schemas I've listed, write only on its own database. I checked the load history on the warehouse this morning, nothing odd. Nothing else is using it. It sits idle.
- Callie BrennanThat's a good start, that's genuinely tidier than most. What's the role called, so I've got it in the note?
- Nikhil RaoWhich role has access is the question I'd ask too. It's the brain service role. I'll put the exact name in the access note. Not typing it into a chat window.
- Callie BrennanFair. And that's actually the first thing I need from your side. Before I touch any connector I need the access in writing, the role, what it can read, what it can write. I don't start a connection on a verbal yes, even from you.
- Nikhil RaoGood. I don't grant access by email either. So it'll be a written access note in the shared folder, with the grants listed, and my security colleague signs it off. Then I run the grants from that, not from anyone's inbox.
- Callie BrennanThat works for me. Perfect, actually, because it gives an auditor something to follow later. When can you have it?
- Nikhil RaoThursday. Draft Wednesday, sign-off Thursday morning.
- Callie BrennanThursday it is. I'll write that down. So nothing connects until Thursday at the earliest, and I'll use the days before for the mapping work so we're not idle.
- Nikhil RaoMm. Which brings me to the mapping. I should say, there's a schema change coming on the billing side. They renamed a couple of tables last month and the downstream views haven't all caught up.
- Callie BrennanRight, okay, that's useful to know now rather than after. Do you know which tables?
- Nikhil RaoThe invoice header and the payment allocation ones. I've got the old and new names in a log. I'll attach it to the access note.
- Callie BrennanPlease do. I won't say anything maps cleanly until I've actually checked it against the new names, so that log is exactly what I need. Is the rename finished or still moving?
- Nikhil RaoFinished in the source. The views are what's behind. I'm fixing those. Not on a Friday.
- Callie BrennanUnderstood, and I wouldn't ask you to. Okay. Let me bring up the source list we agreed at the kickoff, and you can correct it. Can you see my screen?
- Nikhil RaoYes.
- Callie BrennanSo we've got, in the order I'd suggest: the CRM first, because the key-account team lives in it and it holds the customer and site hierarchy. Then the billing system, because collections needs the bills and the payment history. Then the call recorder. Then the helpdesk and the complaints queue. And the mailboxes in Microsoft 365 last, because that's the one with the most privacy questions.
- Nikhil RaoMailboxes last is right. I want legal to look at the scope before anything from there lands.
- Callie BrennanAgreed. And I'd rather you said that than me. Now, I know you've got twenty-odd sources around the platform in total, so this first list isn't everything.
- Nikhil RaoNo. There's the site and meter data, the market messaging feeds, a couple of spreadsheets that finance still maintains by hand, and some legacy extracts. Most of that I'd leave out of the first wave.
- Callie BrennanThat's my instinct too. First wave is the five I just listed, so the three teams can actually ask something useful. The rest we add as you're ready, and the licence leaves room for that.
- Nikhil RaoFine. One thing. The meter data is large. If someone adds it casually it will make the warehouse unhappy. I'd want that to be a deliberate decision.
- Callie BrennanNoted, and I'll put it in the setup note as a deliberate decision by you, not a default. Nobody switches that on without your name against it.
- Nikhil RaoGood.
- Callie BrennanOkay, let's talk about how a business customer shows up across these systems, because that's where I've seen the first refresh go wrong on other accounts. You've got customers with lots of sites. Is the customer identified the same way in the CRM and in billing?
- Nikhil RaoMostly. There's an account reference that both use. The complaints system doesn't. It has its own customer id and a free-text company name.
- Callie BrennanFree text. Right. So how do complaints get tied back today?
- Nikhil RaoThere's a lookup table. I maintain it. It's good for most customers. There's a tail where someone typed a trading name and it doesn't match. I'd call that a known gap.
- Callie BrennanHow big is the tail, roughly? Just a feel.
- Nikhil RaoDon't know. I'd have to test it. I don't guess. Give me a day and I'll run the unmatched ones and send you the count.
- Callie BrennanBrilliant, thank you. That's exactly the sort of thing I'd rather know before the refresh than have the complaints team find on day one. What I need from your side is the lookup table as it stands, plus that unmatched list.
- Nikhil RaoI'll put both in the folder.
- Callie BrennanLovely. And while we're on it, the sites. A big customer with, say, dozens of sites, each with its own contract. Does the contract hang off the site or off the customer?
- Nikhil RaoOff the site, mostly. Some corporate customers have a master agreement above that. The CRM models the master agreement. Billing doesn't know about it.
- Callie BrennanSo the master agreement lives only in the CRM, and the bills and sites live underneath in billing. Okay. Then the join goes customer, master agreement where there is one, site, contract, bill. I'll draw that and send it to you to check. Don't sign it off from my drawing alone, test it against a real customer you know well.
- Nikhil RaoI'd do that anyway.
- Callie BrennanI know you would. Just saying it out loud so it's in the recording.
- Nikhil RaoHa. Right.
- Callie BrennanLet me move to the refresh, since that's the bit you care about most. The nightly refresh is meant to be complete by 07:00 on business days. What I'd want to do before we switch on the refresh is a dry run against a slice, a handful of customers you pick, so we can see timings and see what falls over, and only then the full set.
- Nikhil RaoWhich customers?
- Callie BrennanYour call. I'd pick one simple single-site customer, one big multi-site one with a master agreement, and one with an open complaint and an overdue bill, because that touches all three teams.
- Nikhil RaoI can do that. I'll choose them Wednesday and put the references in the note. Won't name them on the call.
- Callie BrennanSensible. So, timing. Access signed off Thursday. Connectors configured Thursday and Monday. Dry run on the slice Tuesday night. If that's clean, full refresh the night after.
- Nikhil RaoNot Friday for any of it.
- Callie BrennanNo, nothing lands on a Friday. That's why I've pushed the dry run to the Tuesday after, not this week. Does that give you enough room to fix the billing views first?
- Nikhil RaoIt does. Views done Monday if nothing else comes up.
- Callie BrennanAnd if something does come up?
- Nikhil RaoThen I tell you Monday morning and we move the dry run a day. Not a drama.
- Callie BrennanPerfect. I'd much rather move a day than refresh on top of half-renamed tables.
- Nikhil RaoSorry, one second, someone at the door.
- Nikhil RaoBack. Carry on.
- Callie BrennanNo problem. I was going to talk about who watches the first run. On the morning after the full refresh, someone should look at the load history and the record counts before the teams log in. Is that you?
- Nikhil RaoMe. I look at it every morning anyway. I'd rather look at the brain's loads the same way as the rest. What counts do I compare against?
- Callie BrennanGood question. Honestly, the first night we don't have a baseline, so the check is against the source. Count of customers, sites and open bills in your system, against the count the brain reports it indexed. They should agree, give or take what's been filtered out on purpose. From the second night we compare to the night before.
- Nikhil RaoOkay. Source count against indexed count. Where do I see the indexed count?
- Callie BrennanThere's an admin view for each connector, showing records indexed and the last successful load. I'll walk you through it in the training session, and it'll also be in the setup note with a screenshot. If it's flat for a few days, that's your early warning that a source has gone quiet.
- Nikhil RaoFlat meaning no new records when there should be.
- Callie BrennanExactly that. A connector can look healthy, green tick and all, and still be loading nothing because someone changed a table underneath it. Which, given the rename, is a live risk for you.
- Nikhil RaoYes. That's a schema change. That's the sort of thing that bites. I'll tell you before I touch anything else upstream.
- Callie BrennanPlease. A message to me or to our support queue is plenty, I just don't want to find out from the numbers.
- Nikhil RaoUnderstood.
- Callie BrennanOkay. Users. You've got 180 licensed users, and at the moment only a handful have been in, which is what I'd expect at this stage. Who are the first people you want in, and from which team?
- Nikhil RaoKey-account first. A few senior people, they've been asking. Then collections, then complaints. I don't want all of them in on the same day. Support load on me.
- Callie BrennanThat's sensible. Team by team, a week apart, say? And I'd suggest one named person per team who's the go-to, so questions don't all come to you.
- Nikhil RaoI'd have to ask the team leads who. Can't name them yet.
- Callie BrennanThat's fine. Can you ask them this week and add the names to the note? Not urgent for the dry run, but I'd like them before the training sessions.
- Nikhil RaoYes.
- Callie BrennanNow, a gentle one. You're the only admin at the moment. Is that a worry for you?
- Nikhil RaoIt's how it is. It's simple. Less to audit.
- Callie BrennanIt is simpler, I won't argue. My only point is the day you're on leave, or ill, or just in a meeting about something else on fire, and a connector needs a credential rotated. It's one of my things, honestly, leaving the customer able to run this alone, and alone should still work when you're away. A deputy with the narrowest rights that do the job. I'm not saying more users, I'm saying one more careful person.
- Nikhil RaoLeast privilege. A deputy who can rotate credentials and view loads, nothing else?
- Callie BrennanPrecisely, and that's a role you define in your Snowflake account, not something I decide for you.
- Nikhil RaoHm. I'll think about it. Not promising. Let me see who on the team I'd trust with it.
- Callie BrennanCompletely fair. Put it on the list as a question, not a task.
- Nikhil RaoCan I ask something about the Enterprise features? Single sign-on. We use our identity provider for everything. Is that part of this stage or later?
- Callie BrennanIt's part of Enterprise, yes, and I'd put it before you invite the wider teams, so nobody has to create a separate login and then migrate. Do you want me to bring forward the single sign-on and provisioning set-up so it's ready by the time key-account goes in?
- Nikhil RaoYes. I need the metadata and the attribute mapping from you. And I want to test it with two test accounts before anyone real.
- Callie BrennanThat's what I'd hope. I'll send you what I need from you and what I'll give you. What I need from your side is the identity provider metadata and which groups should map to which brain roles. Don't send the metadata by chat, put it in the same shared folder.
- Nikhil RaoObviously.
- Callie BrennanObviously, yes. Sorry. I'm so used to saying it.
- Nikhil RaoIt's fine. People do paste things.
- Callie BrennanThey really do. Okay, what else is on your list? You said at the start you had some things.
- Nikhil RaoDocumentation. We get audited. Ofgem, internal audit, our own security people. If the brain is reading customer bills and call content, someone will ask me what it reads, why, who can see it, and how long it keeps it. I need that on one document I can hand over.
- Callie BrennanGood, that's the setup note, and I'll write it to answer exactly those four questions. For each connector: what it reads, from which schema, under which role, how often it refreshes. Then who can see what inside the brain. Then where the data sits, which is in your Snowflake account, not ours. Retention you control, since it's your account.
- Nikhil RaoRetention in the brain's own database. I set that.
- Callie BrennanYou do. I'll describe the defaults and where you'd change them, but the decision's yours.
- Nikhil RaoAnd the complaints content. That's sensitive. Some of it names individuals.
- Callie BrennanRight. So we'd want to decide before that connector goes live whether any fields are excluded. I'd suggest we don't connect the complaints queue until we've sat down with whoever owns it and gone through the fields. Not on this call, a separate short one.
- Nikhil RaoAgreed. That moves complaints to the second half of the sequence.
- Callie BrennanIt does, and that's fine. Key-account and collections first, complaints once the fields are agreed. I'll change the plan document so it says that.
- Nikhil RaoGood.
- Callie BrennanLet me read back what I've got so far, because there's a lot. Tell me if I've got anything wrong.
- Nikhil RaoGo.
- Callie BrennanOne. You write the access note, with the role, the grants and the billing rename log, signed off by your security colleague, in the shared folder by Thursday. Two. Nothing connects until I've read that note. Three. I do the field mapping in the meantime and check it against the new table names. Four. You pick three customers for the dry run by Wednesday, and send the lookup table and the unmatched list. Five. Dry run Tuesday night, full refresh the night after if clean, nothing on a Friday. Six. First wave is the CRM, billing, call recorder and helpdesk, then mailboxes after legal's looked, and complaints after the fields are agreed. Seven. Single sign-on with two test accounts before real users. Eight. You think about a deputy admin.
- Nikhil RaoYou said the helpdesk in the first wave. Is the helpdesk the same as the complaints queue?
- Callie BrennanGood catch, no, and I should have said. I mean the general support helpdesk in the first wave. The complaints queue is the sensitive one that waits. Have I got that distinction right from the kickoff, or are they in the same system for you?
- Nikhil RaoSame system, two queues. So I can scope the connector to the one queue.
- Callie BrennanThen that's even better. Scope it to the general queue first, and add the complaints queue later as a change, with your name against it. I'll note that it's one connector with a restricted scope, not two.
- Nikhil RaoRight. That I can grant narrowly. Read on that queue's view only.
- Callie BrennanLovely. Put that in the access note as its own line and I'll mirror it.
- Nikhil RaoWill do.
- Callie BrennanAnything on the commercial side I should know about, just so I'm not blindsided? Your finance team will have had the order form for the annual subscription, the £115,000.
- Nikhil RaoThat's not mine. Finance and procurement did that. I only know the number because I was asked to size the platform. Nothing outstanding that I've heard.
- Callie BrennanUnderstood. Nothing from me on that either, I just like to ask. Tom Ashdown owns the commercial relationship and Daniel Okafor will be your contact for adoption once I've handed over, so you'll hear from both of them.
- Nikhil RaoDaniel. Okay. When do I meet him?
- Callie BrennanI'll introduce you properly at the end of onboarding, once the full refresh has run clean. I'd rather he joined a calm call than an untidy one.
- Nikhil RaoSensible.
- Callie BrennanRight, a few smaller things before we finish. Time zone and calendar. Your nightly loads, when do they start, and is there a window where the warehouse is busy that I should stay out of?
- Nikhil RaoOur own loads run overnight and finish well before morning. If the brain's refresh starts after the billing load completes, there's no clash. I'd make it depend on the billing load finishing, not a fixed clock time.
- Callie BrennanThat's better than a clock time, yes. So the refresh waits for your billing load to report done, then starts. Can you tell me how the billing load signals it's done? A status table, a flag?
- Nikhil RaoA status table. One row per load, with an end timestamp and a state. I'll give you read on that single table.
- Callie BrennanPerfect, add it to the access note as another line. And what happens if the billing load is late? Does the brain just wait?
- Nikhil RaoIt waits. If it hasn't finished, no refresh that night, and I'd want to know. Teams would see yesterday's data. Better than half of today's.
- Callie BrennanAgreed, and worth saying to the teams as well. Available but a day old is a very different thing from broken, and I'll put a line in the guide for them so they don't ring you about it.
- Nikhil RaoPlease do. They ring me about everything.
- Callie BrennanHa, they will. Let me make that easy for you. The guide will say, if the data looks old, check the last refresh time on the page first. It's shown at the top.
- Nikhil RaoGood. Fewer calls.
- Callie BrennanThat's the aim. Okay, last piece. The handover. By the end of onboarding I want you able to run this without me. That's the setup note, the connector list with owners, the refresh schedule, how to read the admin view, how to rotate a credential, and who to contact with what. And a short runbook for the three most likely failures. A credential expires, a table changes, a load is late.
- Nikhil RaoTable changes. Put that first. It's the one I'd bet on.
- Callie BrennanDone, table change first. I'll draft the runbook after the dry run so it's based on what actually happened and not on what I imagine.
- Nikhil RaoThat's better. I've seen runbooks written from imagination.
- Callie BrennanSo have I, and I've written one or two, to be fair. Never again.
- Nikhil RaoHa.
- Callie BrennanAnything you want to raise that I haven't asked about? Concerns, worries, things you'd rather say now.
- Nikhil RaoOne. The teams are keen. Key-account have already told people it will answer everything. I'd like expectations kept sensible. It reads what we connect. If a system isn't connected, it doesn't know.
- Callie BrennanI completely agree, and it's better coming from both of us. In the first training session I'll open with what's connected and what isn't, per team, on one slide, so nobody's guessing. Would you be happy to say the same in your own words when you announce it?
- Nikhil RaoYes. I'll write the announcement. You review it.
- Callie BrennanHappy to. Send it before it goes out and I'll check the wording against what's really live.
- Nikhil RaoOkay.
- Callie BrennanGood. So, what I'll send after this call, today if I can: the revised plan with the new sequence, the access note template so yours is in the shape I need, the draft join diagram for customer, master agreement, site, contract and bill, and the list of what I need for single sign-on. Is that all clear?
- Nikhil RaoClear. And what I send you: the access note by Thursday, the lookup table and the unmatched count, the three customers for the dry run on Wednesday, the single sign-on metadata, the team leads' names.
- Callie BrennanThat's everything on my list as well. And the question about a deputy admin, which isn't a task.
- Nikhil RaoWhich isn't a task. I'll think.
- Callie BrennanThank you. I'll book the next call for the day after the dry run, so we can go through the results together. Does Wednesday afternoon suit, same time as this?
- Nikhil RaoSame time is fine. If the dry run's clean it'll be a short one.
- Callie BrennanI'll hope for a short one, then. Brilliant. Thanks for the time, Nikhil, and for being so clear about the billing rename, that will save us a day at least.
- Nikhil RaoIt would have cost you a day. Better you knew. Speak Thursday, then.
- Callie BrennanSpeak Thursday. Look after yourself, and enjoy what's left of the afternoon. Thanks, Callie.
- Nikhil RaoNikhil. Bye.
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