Saltia Hardware Distributors / BG-Demo – Discovery
Callcompleted
Saltia Hardware Distributors · 19 Nov 2025 08:30
Discovery call on 19 Nov 2025. Saltia jumps between three or four systems to answer store queries. Lewis Kerr proposed Starter at £28k for year one including implementation; Jacinta Hoad asked to see a demo first.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Discovery call on 19 Nov 2025. Saltia jumps between three or four systems to answer store queries. Lewis Kerr proposed Starter at £28k for year one including implementation; Jacinta Hoad asked to see a demo first.
What happened: Lewis Kerr ran a discovery call with Jacinta Hoad and Grant Mattner on 19 Nov 2025. They described a distributor selling to independent stores across South Australia.
Customer view: Staff jump between three or four systems for each store query, and Grant said a lookup could take twenty minutes. They also want metrics on query patterns, which they do not track today.
Commercial: Lewis proposed Starter at £28k for the first year including implementation, then £22k a year. Jacinta asked to see it first, so a demo on Saltia's own data was pencilled in for early December, subject to Grant checking with the team.
Watch: The custom shipping system needs an API review before a connector can be designed. The call shows no objection to price, but no commitment either.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Joined-up store account view
Importance
neutral
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- Lewis Kerr to send a calendar invite and implementation information the same day.
- Lewis Kerr to get system and sample data detail from Riley Tran ahead of an early December demo.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- The custom-built shipping system needs an API review before a connector can be promised.
- Grant questioned the £28,000 upfront figure and neither attendee committed to a price.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Starter fits a customer service team of about six or seven people, with room to grow if it works well.
- Query-pattern metrics Saltia does not track today could justify dashboards later.
Transcript
Lewis KerrRight, audio check, can you hear me?
Jacinta HoadYes, loud and clear.
Grant MattnerGood morning, Lewis.- Lewis KerrMorning. So we've got Jacinta and Grant from Saltia, is that everyone?
- Grant MattnerYes, that's us.
- Lewis KerrGreat. So I'm Lewis, I work with BG-Demo. We build a data brain, essentially a queryable layer over all your systems. What I'd like to do today is just understand what's going on in your business and see if that's something that could help you.
- Jacinta HoadRight, so what exactly is the brain?
- Lewis KerrGood question. It connects to all your systems, CRM, accounting, shipping, whatever else you use: pulls the data into a central place, and you can ask it questions. Search, chat, dashboards. Rather than logging into five different systems, you ask once and get an answer.
- Grant MattnerOK. So tell me about your business model first, what are we working with?
- Lewis KerrGood idea. Why don't you walk me through it?
- Grant MattnerWe're a hardware and garden products distributor in South Australia. We sell to independent stores, hundreds of them across the state. It's quite a complex business because we're managing accounts, credit, delivery, disputes.
- Lewis KerrRight. So what's the biggest pain point you face today?
- Jacinta HoadThat's easy. Visibility. When a store calls with a query, we're jumping between three or four systems to get a complete picture. CRM for account info, shipping for delivery status, accounting for payments and credit, tickets for disputes.
- Lewis KerrSo you're not getting a joined-up view of a single store?
- Grant MattnerExactly. Takes forever. And usually the stores are on the phone waiting, so it looks slow to them.
- Lewis KerrHow often does that happen?
- Jacinta HoadSeveral times a day. Delivery issues, payment questions, credit reviews. Every store has something going on.
- Lewis KerrAnd how long does a typical lookup take?
- Grant MattnerCould be twenty minutes, could be longer. Depends how tangled the situation is.
- Lewis KerrRight. So there's real time cost there, plus the customer experience suffers. What systems would we need to connect to?
- Jacinta HoadSalesforce for accounts, our own custom shipping system, and Xero for accounting.
- Lewis KerrSalesforce and Xero we've got connectors for. The shipping system, is that cloud or on-premise?
- Grant MattnerCloud. Custom-built by an agency, we maintain it now.
- Lewis KerrOK. That matters, we'd need to see the API eventually. But what I'm hearing is a real visibility problem across customer accounts.
- Jacinta HoadThat's the core of it, yeah.
- Lewis KerrSo if you could solve this, what would that actually enable you to do?
- Jacinta HoadResponse time. We could answer questions faster without hopping between systems.
- Grant MattnerAnd metrics. How many queries are we getting, what's the pattern, which stores are friction points. We don't track that today.
- Lewis KerrBoth the day-to-day pain and the lack of visibility into the bigger picture?
- Jacinta HoadExactly.
- Lewis KerrOK. So how many people would need to use this? Like, is it just you two or broader?
- Jacinta HoadIt'd be the customer service team, that's about six or seven people. Maybe more eventually if it works well.
- Lewis KerrAnd who's your admin? Who would manage the system on your side?
- Grant MattnerRiley Tran. Manages our systems and the shipping platform.
- Lewis KerrGood. I'll want to speak with Riley about the shipping system setup so we can design the connector properly. So here's what we'd do: we'd build this data brain for you, it sits in Snowflake, which is your data warehouse. Nightly refresh of your data, you query it through chat or search, and if you want to go further, you can build dashboards. All in your own Snowflake account, so your data doesn't leave your environment.
- Grant MattnerAnd you manage the infrastructure?
- Lewis KerrWe manage the brain and the connectors. You manage the data and the questions. We do check-ins every six months to make sure it's delivering value.
- Jacinta HoadWhat would that cost?
- Lewis KerrGood question. For you I think Starter tier is the right fit to begin. That's 28,000 all-in for the first year, that includes the implementation fee. Then annually after that, it's 22,000 a year.
- Grant Mattner28,000 upfront?
- Lewis KerrThat's the package. You get 15 users, four connectors, plus implementation to get you live and trained. Does that feel like the right ballpark for you?
- Jacinta HoadI'd like to see it first, honestly. How would that work?
- Lewis KerrPerfect. So what I'd like to do is run a demo in early December, I'll use your data, so you see it on something real. I'd need a bit of detail from Riley about your systems, and some sample data. Would early December work?
- Grant MattnerShould be fine. Let me check with the team.
- Lewis KerrGreat. I'll send over a calendar invite with a few times and also some info about how we work, what to expect from implementation, so you're not going in blind.
- Jacinta HoadGood. That all makes sense.
- Lewis KerrAnything else you'd like to ask now?
- Grant MattnerNot really. Keen to see the demo.
- Lewis KerrPerfect. I'll get that over to you today and we'll sort a time. Speak soon.
- Jacinta HoadCheers, Lewis.
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