Penmaen Software / BG-Demo – Discovery
Callcompleted
Penmaen Software · 9 May 2024 12:45
Cerys Llewellyn wants one operator-level view of tickets, renewals and usage. CFO Huw Bevan asked about adoption, overhead and cost, and committed to nothing. Tom Ashdown gave Growth at £52k all-in as a verbal estimate.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Cerys Llewellyn wants one operator-level view of tickets, renewals and usage. CFO Huw Bevan asked about adoption, overhead and cost, and committed to nothing. Tom Ashdown gave Growth at £52k all-in as a verbal estimate.
What happened: On 9 May 2024 Tom Ashdown ran a discovery call with Cerys Llewellyn and Huw Bevan. No demo was given and no decision was taken.
Customer view: Cerys said the team cannot say early enough which leisure operators will renew. Today it is three tabs and a spreadsheet that is out of date the day after. Huw asked who actually uses such a tool and what the overhead would be.
Commercial: Tom pointed to Growth with eight weeks of implementation and forty users. He quoted £52k all-in, implementation included, as the total and not a yearly figure, to be confirmed in writing.
Watch: Tom's 11 Jul 2024 decision date was his guess. The evidence does not show whether a proposal, demo or order followed.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Operator-level renewal visibility
Importance
upsell
Sentiment
neutral
Voice
decision-maker
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Cerys Llewellyn sends the list of day-to-day users and first operators early the following week.
- Tom Ashdown sends a note on the set-up, the Snowflake point and the cost breakdown.
- Tom Ashdown books a demo on Penmaen's own data.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Huw Bevan doubts adoption and worries about the overhead on Penmaen's side.
- The £51,600 figure is a verbal estimate and no proposal has yet separated the one-off from the subscription.
- Cerys Llewellyn wants to prove value on the team's own data before asking internally.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Growth fits several teams, with forty users and a dashboards builder for a renewals view.
- Joining tickets, CRM and usage at operator level answers the problem Cerys described.
- Running inside Penmaen's own Snowflake account addresses the finance and security concern.
Transcript
Tom AshdownHello, hello. Can you both hear me all right? Cerys, Huw, afternoon.
Cerys LlewellynAfternoon, Tom. Yes, loud and clear. Huw's just joining, I can see him on the other tab.
Huw BevanAfternoon. Apologies, I was finishing something. Can you hear me?- Tom AshdownPerfect, no drama. How's your week been? Anything exciting down in Cardiff, or is it all spreadsheets?
- Huw BevanSpreadsheets, mostly. Month-end is close.
- Cerys LlewellynAnd mine's been a lot of questions from the team. They asked me this week how many of our leisure operators are actually likely to renew, and honestly I couldn't answer without a day's digging. That's really why I asked for this call.
- Tom AshdownThat's a good place to start, actually. So let me say how I'd like to use the time, and tell me if it's wrong. I'd like to understand how your customer success team works today, which systems you pull from, and what a good answer would look like. I'm not here to demo anything yet. Is that all right?
- Cerys LlewellynThat's all right. Let's start with the team who'll use it. There are a handful of us. Each of us looks after a group of operators, the gyms and leisure centres, and we're trying to keep an eye on who's healthy and who's at the edge.
- Tom AshdownAnd when you say at the edge, what are you looking at now to tell?
- Cerys LlewellynTickets, mostly. How many, how quickly we answered, whether it's the same issue coming back. Then the renewal date in the CRM. Then usage of our own product, per operator, which sits somewhere else again. I've seen this work when it's all in one view. At the moment it's three tabs and my memory.
- Tom AshdownRight, yeah. Three tabs and memory, I think that's most people, to be fair. Who builds the picture today? Is it you?
- Cerys LlewellynOften me, or one of the team in a spreadsheet before a quarterly review. It's out of date the day after.
- Huw BevanMay I ask something? Who is actually using the thing, in a company like yours or ours, once it's in? I've seen tools bought and then not opened.
- Tom AshdownFair question, and I'd rather you asked it now. The honest answer is it depends on whether it's built around a job people do every week. If the team opens it before every operator call or review, it sticks. If it's a dashboard somebody looks at once a month, it doesn't. That's why Cerys's starting with the team who'll use it matters.
- Huw BevanMm. And what would we lose if we did nothing?
- Cerys LlewellynTime, mainly, Huw. And visibility on renewals. I don't want to say we'd lose customers, because I don't know that. But I couldn't tell you early enough.
- Huw BevanUnderstood. Let's not rush.
- Tom AshdownNo, no rush at all. So, can I ask about the systems? Without naming anything fancy, where do your tickets live, where do your renewals live, and where does the product usage come from?
- Cerys LlewellynTickets are in our helpdesk. Renewals and contacts are in the CRM. Usage comes out of our own platform's reporting, and that's the awkward one, because it's by account, and we think in terms of operator, which can have several accounts.
- Tom AshdownOkay. So an operator is the unit you care about, and the systems all think in different units.
- Cerys LlewellynExactly that. A leisure operator might have six sites, each with its own account on our side, and one contract. So to see how Operator X is doing, someone has to add things up.
- Tom AshdownRight. And that's a thing we're good at, joining it up so the question is asked at the operator level. I'll want to see an example of that from your side before we go further, so we do the demo on your own data and not a made-up one.
- Huw BevanWould that mean people from our side doing work? I have to think about the overhead.
- Tom AshdownSome, yeah, I won't pretend otherwise. Somebody technical needs to give us read access to the sources. After that it's mostly us. We build and run it inside your own Snowflake account, so the data stays with you, which tends to settle the nerves of finance and security folk.
- Huw BevanIt stays in our environment?
- Tom AshdownIt does. Yours, not ours. We work inside it.
- Huw BevanGood. I'd want that written down at some point.
- Tom AshdownLeave that with me. I'll put it in the follow-up.
- Cerys LlewellynCan I ask how long before we see something useful? Because my team will lose patience if it's months.
- Tom AshdownFair. For the tier I think suits you, Growth, the implementation is about eight weeks, and you'd see the first useful views before that, as the sources come online. I'll confirm the detail in writing rather than quote it off the top of my head.
- Cerys LlewellynThat's fine. And Growth, that's several teams, yes?
- Tom AshdownSeveral teams, yeah. Forty users, so you'd have headroom if finance or the account managers want a look as well. And there's the dashboards builder, so you can make the renewals view yourselves.
- Huw BevanI'd like to understand the scale of the cost. Roughly. I won't hold you to it.
- Tom AshdownNo, course. Again, I'll confirm it in writing, but the way it's sitting on my side is Growth at £51,600 all-in, implementation included. So that's the total for the deal, not a yearly figure. I'll break it out properly in the proposal so you can see what's the one-off and what's the subscription.
- Huw BevanUnderstood. Thank you. And you'd want a decision by when?
- Tom AshdownThe date I've pencilled is Thursday 11 July 2024, but that's my guess, not a deadline. If you need longer, you need longer.
- Huw BevanGood. I won't decide anything today, you'll understand. I'd want to see what the team would use first.
- Cerys LlewellynThat's fair, Huw. And I'd want the same, honestly. I've seen this work, but I'd want to prove it here before I ask for it.
- Tom AshdownThat's exactly how I'd want you to do it. So, next steps, to see if we're agreed. One, Cerys, you tell me who in the team would use it day to day, and which operators you'd want to look at first. Two, I send you a short note on the set-up, the Snowflake point Huw raised, and the cost breakdown. Three, we get something in the diary for a demo on your own data. Does that work?
- Cerys LlewellynWorks for me. I'll have the list of names and operators to you early next week.
- Huw BevanFine. Thank you both.
- Tom AshdownBrilliant. Cheers, both, I'll get that note over. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon.
- Cerys LlewellynDiolch, Tom. Speak soon.
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