Ashwell Mercer Interiors / BG-Demo – Demo
Callcompleted
Ashwell Mercer Interiors · 17 Jun 2024 12:15
Second demo on the customer's own extracts with Craig Ashwell and Sunil Kapoor. Craig said he has seen enough to know it does what he needs, but nothing is signed. Proposal due this week, finance lead to join the next call.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Second demo on the customer's own extracts with Craig Ashwell and Sunil Kapoor. Craig said he has seen enough to know it does what he needs, but nothing is signed. Proposal due this week, finance lead to join the next call.
What happened: Hannah Lowe showed unsigned variations, invoices linked to variation status, client-name matching and a dashboard. Sunil asked about matching, data location and refresh timing.
Customer view: Craig said nothing is signed yet and he wanted to see it work first. By the end he said he had seen enough to know it does what he needs.
Commercial: Priya Raman restated £52k as the whole deal including implementation, with 9 Aug 2024 as the target date. A written proposal follows this week.
Watch: Sunil will confirm client matches himself and wants nothing silently merged. He accepts overnight refresh but does not want anyone to assume it is live.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Demo on own data
Importance
upsell
Sentiment
positive
Voice
decision-maker
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Priya Raman to send the written proposal this week.
- Craig Ashwell to ask his finance lead to join the next call.
- Sunil Kapoor to send sample client lists with project codes, and Hannah Lowe to send the written note on matching, data location and refresh.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Nothing is signed and the finance lead has not yet joined a call.
- Messy client names across systems need Sunil's confirmation before answers can be relied on.
- Project managers may not adopt it unless early answers help them.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Growth tier with implementation, with the dashboards builder wanted for a weekly open-variations review.
- Marcus, the customer success manager, can be introduced before signing to build adoption.
Transcript
Priya RamanAfternoon, Craig. Afternoon, Sunil. Can you hear us all right?
Craig AshwellLoud and clear. Sunil's just coming in, he's in the other room.
Sunil KapoorHello. Sorry, the camera's being slow. I'm here.
Hannah LoweAfternoon, both. Hannah, solutions engineer. Sunil, we've swapped a few emails about the connectors.- Sunil KapoorWe have, yes. Thanks for the list. It was useful.
- Craig AshwellAwful traffic this morning, I nearly missed the start. Rain all the way from Reading. Anyway. Go on.
- Priya RamanHa, I'll take the train any day. Right, quick recap so we're all on the same page. We've done discovery, you've seen the outline of Growth, and today is the brain on your own data, then we talk through the proposal. The total deal value we've pencilled is £51,600, that's the whole deal with the implementation in it, and the date we've been working to is Friday 9 August 2024. Happy to make this easy, so shout if anything's unclear.
- Craig AshwellFine. Just so you know, nothing's signed on our side yet. I want to see it work first.
- Priya RamanCompletely fair. That's what today is for. Hannah, over to you.
- Hannah LoweThanks. Before I share anything, what do you most need to know by the end of this call? I'd rather show you the right thing than the whole product.
- Craig AshwellVariations. Where's the variation? A client asks for a change, we do the work, and three months later nobody can find what they signed. I want to pick a project and see what the client has signed against what we've built.
- Hannah LoweRight, that's clear. Sunil?
- Sunil KapoorMine's the client list. The project system has one name for a client, the commercial side has another, and finance has a third spelling. So a report from one doesn't tie to the ledger. I'd like to know what the brain does with that.
- Hannah LoweGood, I'll make sure we get to that, and I'll be honest about what it does and doesn't do. Let me share my screen. Bear with me, give it a second to load.
- Craig AshwellTake your time.
- Hannah LoweRight. This is loaded with the sample extracts we were given from your project and commercial systems, so these are your clients and your projects, not a made-up fit-out. If I search for one of your landlord clients, the first thing you get is a client page, and on it the projects, the variations, the calls, the emails and the invoices all sit together.
- Craig AshwellHang on, scroll back up. That's the whole history for one client on one page?
- Hannah LoweTo be precise, it's everything from the connected sources that we've indexed. If a source isn't connected, it isn't there. But for the ones we've loaded, yes.
- Craig AshwellOkay. Now ask it my question. Variations.
- Hannah LoweTyping it in the chat. Which variations on this project have been instructed but not yet signed by the client? Let's see.
- Hannah LoweSo it comes back with a short list. Each line has the variation, who raised it, the date, and a link to the record it came from. And here's the bit I'd point at: two of these have a call note and an email that mention the change, but no signed variation behind them.
- Craig AshwellThat's it. That's exactly the thing. What has the client signed? Nothing. And we're on site doing it.
- Priya RamanCraig, that's the one you flagged on the discovery call, isn't it? The work gets ahead of the paperwork.
- Craig AshwellEvery time. Go on, Hannah, can it tell me who instructed it?
- Hannah LoweIt can tell you who the email or the call note says gave the instruction. It won't decide whether that person had the authority to instruct. That's still a human call. The short answer is yes, it surfaces it. The longer answer is that you'd still want your project manager to confirm.
- Craig AshwellFair enough. That's honest. Fine.
- Sunil KapoorCan I ask something on that? When it says a variation is in an email, which project code is it pinned to? Because in our data the code is sometimes missing from the email and only in the system.
- Hannah LoweGood question. It links on what's in the record. If the email carries the code, it uses that. If it doesn't, it falls back on the client and the project name and the people on the thread, and it tells you how it matched. I'll put that in writing for you, because the exact matching rules matter to someone in your seat.
- Sunil KapoorYes please. I'd want to see where it's guessing.
- Hannah LoweIt's not guessing silently, that's the design. Let me show you what I mean with the client names, since that was your point as well.
- Hannah LoweSo here, in the sample, the same landlord shows up under two slightly different names, one from the project extract and one from the commercial one. The brain flags these as probable matches and shows you both. It does not merge them for you without somebody agreeing.
- Sunil KapoorRight. So I'd still be the one reconciling it.
- Hannah LoweYou'd confirm it once, and from then on the brain treats them as one client. It's a one-off tidy rather than a monthly chore. But yes, you'd be the one confirming.
- Sunil KapoorThat's acceptable. I'll reconcile it, that's fine. I just don't want a tool that quietly picks one and moves on.
- Craig AshwellHe's been burnt before.
- Sunil KapoorSeveral times.
- Priya RamanHa. Noted. And that's one of the reasons the implementation has a proper data-mapping stage, to keep momentum without cutting corners.
- Hannah LoweYes. That's where we'd sit with Sunil and go through the client list properly before anyone relies on an answer.
- Craig AshwellOkay, show me the credit side. Our credit control people chase invoices and they never know what's going on with the project. They ring a client about an invoice and the client says, well, the variation's not agreed.
- Hannah LoweRight, that's the combination this is built for. Let me pull up an invoice view for one client. Give me a moment.
- Hannah LoweSo this is the invoice list for the client, from the accounting system. Now I'll ask, for this client, which unpaid invoices relate to work with an unsigned variation.
- Hannah LoweAnd there we go. It brings back the invoices, and next to each one it shows the project and the variation status. So before someone picks up the phone, they can see that this one is likely to be disputed because the paperwork isn't there.
- Craig AshwellLet's get paid for what we've built. That's all of it. If the credit team know that before they ring, they ring the right person about the right thing.
- Priya RamanAnd Craig, that's a good point for the proposal, how the commercial and credit teams use it together.
- Craig AshwellYes. One thing, though. On the cash side, I'd rather our finance lead was on the next call. I'm not going to talk about collections without her in the room.
- Priya RamanCompletely understood. Shall we say the next call includes your finance lead? Happy to make it easy, we'll fit round her diary.
- Craig AshwellDo that. I'll ask her this week.
- Sunil KapoorHannah, can I ask about the set-up? Where does the data actually live? Our finance people will ask me that before anything else.
- Hannah LoweSensible first question. The brain is built and run inside your own Snowflake account. So your data isn't copied off to a BG-Demo environment somewhere. It stays in your account, under your controls, and we work inside it.
- Sunil KapoorAnd if we don't have that set up yet?
- Hannah LoweThen that's part of the implementation conversation and I'd rather not wave my hands. I'll write down exactly what we'd need from your side and what we'd do, so you've got it on paper for your finance colleagues. If there's anything in there I'm not certain of, I'll check with our security lead first rather than guess.
- Sunil KapoorGood. That's what I wanted to hear.
- Craig AshwellRight, what else have you got? Dashboards. Priya said there were dashboards.
- Hannah LoweYes, the dashboards builder comes with Growth. Let me show you a quick one. I'll build a view of open variations by client, and you'll see it's built from the same questions you've just been asking.
- Hannah LoweOkay, so it's picked the fields, I add a filter for unsigned, and there. That's a dashboard your commercial team could look at on a Monday.
- Sunil KapoorThat took a minute. Honestly, I'd rather not build reports the brain can already answer. Do I need dashboards then?
- Hannah LoweFair challenge. For ad hoc questions, no, just ask. Dashboards earn their place for the things somebody wants to look at every week without typing a question. A weekly review of open variations is a good example.
- Craig AshwellI want that one. Every Monday, before the project meeting.
- Sunil KapoorThen I'll own that one. Just that one to start with.
- Priya RamanThat's a sensible start. Small, useful, and you can add from there.
- Craig AshwellCan I ask something on who's going to use it? Not just me and Sunil. I want the project managers asking it questions.
- Hannah LoweThat's the real adoption point, and I'd be doing you a disservice if I said it happens by itself. The projects teams need to see an answer that helps them in their first week. We'd normally pick a couple of live projects and build the first questions around them.
- Craig AshwellRight. Pick the ones that worry me most.
- Priya RamanAnd we have a customer success manager, Marcus, who'd look after the adoption side once you're live. I'll make sure you meet him before we sign anything, so you're not buying a stranger.
- Craig AshwellGood. I like to know who I'm calling.
- Sunil KapoorOne more from me. The nightly refresh. If something changes in the project system during the day, when does the brain know?
- Hannah LoweThe data refreshes overnight, so a change made today is there for the morning, not within the hour. If someone asks about something that changed this afternoon, they'd see yesterday's picture. That's worth knowing before you promise the project managers anything.
- Sunil KapoorOvernight is fine for us. I just don't want anyone assuming it's live.
- Hannah LoweAgreed, and I'll make that line explicit in the write-up.
- Craig AshwellOkay. I've seen enough to know it does what I need. Priya, what happens now?
- Priya RamanThanks, Craig. So, from our side, I send the written proposal this week, so you have it in front of you with time to read it. The commercial shape is the one we've talked about, Growth, with the implementation included in the total. If we can get this over the line by Friday 9 August 2024, we keep the plan tight. But I'd rather you had the answers first.
- Craig AshwellThat's fine. The answers come first. What do you need from us?
- Priya RamanThree things. Sunil, could you send a short sample of the client list from each system, so Hannah can show the matching properly next time? Craig, your finance lead on the next call. And both of you, a couple of the live projects you'd want the first questions built around.
- Sunil KapoorI can do the client list. I'll send it with the project codes alongside so you can see where they're missing.
- Hannah LoweThat would be ideal, thanks. And from me, the written note on how matching works, where the data lives, and the refresh timing. I'll send that as soon as the call's done.
- Craig AshwellGood. Anything else, Sunil?
- Sunil KapoorNo, that's everything for now. It was a useful hour. Well, forty-five minutes.
- Craig AshwellFelt longer, in a good way. Thanks, all.
- Priya RamanThanks both. Speak soon. Best, Priya.
- Hannah LoweThanks, both. Speak soon.
Callsmade from