Brackwell Freight Ltd / BB-Demo – Check In
Callcompleted
Brackwell Freight Ltd · 2025-04-23 13:45
Head of Revenue Operations Liam Doherty wants the depots on the brain. Marcus Bell tied that to the renewal question of eight active users against forty licences on Growth. Liam agreed a Trafford Park dashboard first.
What was said
What this says
Current to 13 Oct 26Head of Revenue Operations Liam Doherty wants the depots on the brain. Marcus Bell tied that to the renewal question of eight active users against forty licences on Growth. Liam agreed a Trafford Park dashboard first.
What happened: Marcus Bell walked Liam Doherty through usage, two tickets and the renewal on the 23 Apr 2025 check-in. Liam added the depots as his priority.
Customer view: Liam sees clear value in catching retail contracts that are going south earlier. He accepts that eight active users against forty licences is the obvious question from finance.
Commercial: The Growth contract runs to 30 Nov 2025 and renews on 1 Dec 2025. Marcus confirmed the order form and invoices both show forty-four thousand a year with nothing outstanding.
Watch: Questions asked are concentrated in Liam and one analyst, a key-person risk. A late Tuesday refresh cleared itself and Liam declined a written follow-up.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Theme
Depot adoption and renewal
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
mixed
Voice
champion
Who was there
BB-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Marcus Bell to send dashboard time options and book thirty minutes with Liam and an analyst the following week.
- Marcus Bell to send Liam the list of logged-in users who have not been active, and a usage one-pager ahead of the renewal.
- Marcus Bell to brief Tom Ashdown that the renewal conversation is coming.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Eight active users against forty licences on Growth will be questioned by finance at renewal.
- Questions asked rest mainly on Liam and one analyst, so a few weeks of absence would drop usage sharply.
- Depot managers are short of time and any session over half an hour is unlikely to happen.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- A per-depot dashboard built with the dashboards builder in the Growth tier, starting with Trafford Park.
- A usage one-pager gives Liam a value case to put in front of finance before the renewal.
Transcript
Liam Doherty NoneHello, hello. Can you hear me alright?
Marcus Bell NoneYeah, loud and clear. Afternoon, Liam. Can you hear me?- Liam Doherty NonePerfect. Sorry, I'm in a different room, the usual one's got a training session going on. Bit of a squeeze in here but it's quiet.
- Marcus Bell NoneNo worries at all. How's the week been? Raining over there, I'd imagine.
- Liam Doherty NoneOf course it is. Honestly it's been busy. A couple of the retail accounts have been chasing us on delivery exceptions, so I've been living in the brain more than usual. Which is probably a good sign for you.
- Marcus Bell NoneHa, that's what I like to hear. Right, I'll share my screen and say what I want to cover, and then you can tell me what I've missed. Can you see it?
- Liam Doherty NoneYep, I can see it. Looks like your usage page.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat's the one. So, three things. First, I've pulled the numbers on how the team's using it since the last check-in. Second, the two tickets that came in this month, just so we're both looking at the same thing. And third, I want to start the conversation about the renewal, nothing heavy, just so it's not a surprise in the autumn. Does that work?
- Liam Doherty NoneWorks for me. I'd add a fourth, if I can. Depots. Can we get the depots on it properly? That's what I really want out of this call.
- Marcus Bell NoneYeah, definitely. Let's make that the fourth and we'll end on it, because I think the numbers feed straight into it.
- Liam Doherty NoneLove that.
- Marcus Bell NoneOkay. So you're on Growth, forty licensed users, and the contract's the forty-four thousand a year. What I'm seeing is that on a normal working day you've got something like eight people actually in there. That's up a little on the previous quarter, so it's heading the right way, but it's a long way short of forty.
- Liam Doherty NoneYeah. Eight. I know. I mean, I could name them.
- Marcus Bell NoneGo on then.
- Liam Doherty NoneIt's me, two of the analysts in rev ops, the account managers at Trafford Park, and then a couple of the finance people who dip in when a customer disputes something. That's basically it. The other five depots are, well, they've got logins. Whether they use them is another matter.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat matches what I'm seeing. And I'll be honest, it's not unusual. Most customers start with the team that bought it and the wider rollout takes longer than anyone planned. The thing I'd look at is who's asking the questions. Can I show you that?
- Liam Doherty NonePlease.
- Marcus Bell NoneSo this is questions asked, by person, over the last few months. You can see the top of the list. A big share of it is you and one of your analysts.
- Liam Doherty NoneRight. Yeah, that's me being greedy.
- Marcus Bell NoneNo, it's good, you're getting value. But it does mean if either of you were out for a few weeks, the number would drop off a cliff. I'm not saying that to alarm you. It's more that the fix is more people asking, not fewer.
- Liam Doherty NoneNo, fair. That's the one view, that's the point. If it's only me and one other looking at it, it's not one view, it's two people's view.
- Marcus Bell NoneHa, exactly. Can I ask what the blocker is with the depots? Is it that they don't know what to ask, or they don't have the time, or something else?
- Liam Doherty NoneBit of all three, if I'm straight with you. The depot managers are in the yard half the day. They're not sat at a desk. And when they are, they want to know one thing: is this customer about to walk, and what's going wrong with their deliveries. They don't want to learn a tool.
- Marcus Bell NoneRight. So the question is how do we put the answer in front of them without them having to go looking.
- Liam Doherty NoneThat's it. That's it exactly.
- Marcus Bell NoneOkay. Two ideas, and tell me if either's daft. One, the dashboards builder. It's in your tier and, looking at this, you've built hardly anything in it. You could make one page per depot: that depot's retail accounts, open delivery exceptions, recent calls, all together. Two, we do a short session with the depot managers, thirty minutes at most, on their own accounts, so it's not generic.
- Liam Doherty NoneMm. The dashboard one, I like. Who'd build it? Because if it's me, it won't happen, I'll be honest.
- Marcus Bell NoneI'd be happy to jump on a call with you and one of the analysts and we build the first one together. Then you copy it for the other depots. It's mostly changing a filter.
- Liam Doherty NoneRight. So we'd do Trafford Park first, because they're already in there.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat'd be my suggestion. Get it right with people who'll give you honest feedback, then roll it out.
- Liam Doherty NoneYeah. Go on, put me down for that.
- Marcus Bell NoneWill do. I'll come back to you with some times after this. Now, tickets, just quickly. You've had two this month. Neither was high priority and both got a reply well inside what your tier gives you. One was a how-to on filtering by depot, which, funnily enough, is relevant to what we've just said.
- Liam Doherty NoneOh, that was one of the analysts. Yeah. She'd worked it out by the time you replied, I think. She was just checking.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat's fine, that's what the desk is for. And the other one was a sync question on the helpdesk connector. A delay on one morning's refresh, which cleared itself. Does that ring a bell?
- Liam Doherty NoneIt does. Delivery exceptions weren't showing on the Tuesday first thing. I flagged it, but by the time I'd got back to my desk after the stand-up it was there. I didn't chase it because it fixed itself.
- Marcus Bell NoneOkay. Good. Honestly, tell me if it happens again, even if it clears. I'd rather hear about a blip than not. It helps me spot a pattern.
- Liam Doherty NoneWill do. I never let a ticket sit, you know that.
- Marcus Bell NoneI do, yeah. Which is why this is a quiet month on the tickets side. That's all fine.
- Liam Doherty NoneCan I ask something while you've got that up? Is there a way to see which connectors are actually pulling their weight? Because I've got the CRM, the helpdesk, the call recorder, the accounting system and a couple of others, and I couldn't tell you which one my people actually care about.
- Marcus Bell NoneYeah, there's a connectors view. Give me a second. Right, here. So each one, how many records it's indexed, and whether that's still moving. The thing I look for is a connector where the number's gone flat.
- Liam Doherty NoneAnd have we got any of those?
- Marcus Bell NoneNot that I can see. They're all moving. The helpdesk and the CRM are the busiest. The call recorder's steady. Nothing's stuck.
- Liam Doherty NoneGood. That's one less thing.
- Marcus Bell NoneThe Growth tier has room for more connectors, by the way, if there's a system the depots live in that isn't connected. Is there? Something they use day to day that we've not got in?
- Liam Doherty NoneHm. Not really a system, more a load of spreadsheets. The depot managers keep their own sheets of what's gone wrong on a delivery. Ideally that'd go away, but I can't promise that.
- Marcus Bell NoneRight. Which is, in a way, the reason for the dashboards. If the brain's got the exceptions and the tickets already, the sheet's a duplicate. But you can't force people off a sheet.
- Liam Doherty NoneNo. You show them it's quicker and they come round. That's all it is.
- Marcus Bell NoneAgreed. Okay, shall I move on to the renewal? Or is there more you want on the depots?
- Liam Doherty NoneNo, go on. I've got my list, I'll come back to it.
- Marcus Bell NoneSo, the renewal. Contract runs to 30 Nov 2025, and it renews on 1 Dec 2025. I'm not here to talk about price. That's Tom's, Tom Ashdown, and he'll come to you when it's the right time. What I want from my side is that when we get there, the question of whether it's worth it has an easy answer.
- Liam Doherty NoneSure. And is it the forty-four thousand still? I mean, are we on the same page with what the order form says and what's been invoiced?
- Marcus Bell NoneYeah, I checked that before the call. The order form says forty-four thousand a year, and that's what's been invoiced, nothing outstanding. All three line up.
- Liam Doherty NoneGood. Finance'll be pleased. They hate a mismatch.
- Marcus Bell NoneHa, don't we all. So what would help me is knowing what you'd say if your finance director asked you, what do we get for forty-four thousand? What's the answer?
- Liam Doherty NoneOh. Right. Okay, so. The honest answer, we catch retail contracts that are going south earlier than we used to. That's the headline. Before, the first we'd know is the customer phoning the managing director. Now I can see the delivery exceptions pile up, the tone of the calls, the tickets, and we can ring them first.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat's a good answer. Is there a specific one you can point to? An account where it made the difference?
- Liam Doherty NoneThere's a couple. I'd need to dig for the detail, I don't want to get it wrong from memory. But yeah, there was one where the account manager had no idea how many exceptions there'd been, and I could show it in about a minute.
- Marcus Bell NoneWould you be able to write that one down? Just a few lines. Not for me, for you, so when someone asks in the autumn you've got it to hand.
- Liam Doherty NoneYeah. Yeah, I'll do that. Doing things properly, you know.
- Marcus Bell NoneI do know. And I can help with the other half, I can put together a one-pager from the usage data. Questions asked over time, who's asking, the connectors. Something you can drop in front of finance.
- Liam Doherty NoneLove that. That'd save me an afternoon.
- Marcus Bell NoneOkay. Now, one more thing on renewal, and I'll say it carefully. Forty seats and eight active is going to come up. Someone at your end will notice. I'd rather we have a plan for it than be asked about it cold.
- Liam Doherty NoneYeah. No, you're right. It's the obvious question. Why are we paying for forty if eight use it.
- Marcus Bell NoneRight. And the good answer is, because we're rolling out, here's the plan, here's the first depot, here's the numbers going up. That's a much better conversation than a flat line.
- Liam Doherty NoneSo the depot thing's not just nice to have, it's the answer to that.
- Marcus Bell NonePretty much, yeah. I wouldn't put it more strongly than that, but yes.
- Liam Doherty NoneOkay. Then I want to pick a date for Trafford Park. Soon. Can we do it next week?
- Marcus Bell NoneI can look. Early in the week's better for me. Shall we book thirty minutes, you, me and whichever analyst's going to own the dashboard?
- Liam Doherty NoneYeah. I'll bring the one who did the filtering ticket. She's sharp.
- Marcus Bell NonePerfect. And what would you want on that first page? Let's say we're building it now. What does a depot manager need to see?
- Liam Doherty NoneRight. So. Top of the page, the retail customers they serve. For each one, how many delivery exceptions this month against last. Then the open tickets. Then the last call or email, who it was with, what the mood was. That's it. If they've got to scroll, it's too much.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat's clear. Customer, exceptions against last month, open tickets, latest contact. I'll write that down. And I'd keep the first version really plain so it loads fast.
- Liam Doherty NoneYeah. Plain's good. They'll tell us what's missing.
- Marcus Bell NoneWhich is the best way to find out. Right, anything else on usage before I stop sharing? Any questions about the numbers?
- Liam Doherty NoneJust, the people who've got logins but never come in. Can I see who they are? So I can ping them personally rather than a blanket email nobody reads.
- Marcus Bell NoneYes, I can send you that list. Names and when they last came in. I'd say use it kindly, though, some of them might have just been given a login because it was easier.
- Liam Doherty NoneHa, no, I know. I'll be nice. And if some of them shouldn't have one, I'll say, and we can tidy up.
- Marcus Bell NoneGood. Honestly that helps too, then the numbers mean something. Okay, I'll stop sharing.
- Liam Doherty NoneCan I ask a slightly different thing? Not on the list.
- Marcus Bell NoneOf course.
- Liam Doherty NoneThe customers. Could the brain tell me which of our retail contracts is most likely to give us grief at renewal? Like, rank them? Or is that a stretch?
- Marcus Bell NoneHm. I wouldn't call it a ranking, not as a score. But you can ask it things like, which accounts have had the most exceptions and the most unhappy-sounding calls in the last quarter, and it'll give you a list with the reasons. You judge it from there. It won't make the call for you.
- Liam Doherty NoneNo, that's fine. That's what I'd want, a list with reasons. I'll have a go.
- Marcus Bell NoneTry it and tell me how it goes. If the answers are rubbish, I'd like to know, because it might be a data thing on our side or yours.
- Liam Doherty NoneWill do. Sorry, one more. You know the nightly refresh, it's done by seven, yeah?
- Marcus Bell NoneBy seven in the morning, on business days, yes. That's for every tier.
- Liam Doherty NoneRight, so that Tuesday was a late one then.
- Marcus Bell NoneIt would have been, yeah. Short of a proper look I won't say why. I can ask the support team to check it and tell you what they find, if you want it in writing.
- Liam Doherty NoneNo, don't make a thing of it. If it comes back, I'll raise it.
- Marcus Bell NoneFine by me. Okay, let me play back what we've said so we've both got it. One, you and I and an analyst, thirty minutes next week, building the first depot dashboard for Trafford Park. Two, I send you the list of people with logins who haven't been in. Three, I put together a usage one-pager ahead of the renewal. Four, you jot down that example of the account where it helped. And five, I let Tom know the renewal conversation's coming, so he's ready.
- Liam Doherty NoneThat's all of it. You're better at this than I am.
- Marcus Bell NoneHa, I've just got it written down. Is there anything that worries you about the next few months? Anything you want me to know about?
- Liam Doherty NoneNot worried, no. I'd say the only thing is time. Everybody's flat out, so anything that takes more than half an hour doesn't happen. If it's quick and obviously useful, people do it.
- Marcus Bell NoneThat's a useful steer. I'll keep the sessions short, then. And I'll send the dashboard time options this afternoon, so you can have a look before you go home.
- Liam Doherty NoneBrilliant. And will you copy Tom in on the renewal bit? Just so he's not surprised.
- Marcus Bell NoneYeah, I'll let him know where we've got to, and he'll pick up the commercial side from there. I'll keep you posted on that.
- Liam Doherty NonePerfect. Honestly, thanks for the numbers. It's useful seeing it written down, even when it's not flattering.
- Marcus Bell NoneIt's not unflattering, it's just early. You've got the foundation, and the depots are the next step. Right, I think that's us.
- Liam Doherty NoneSame. I'm already late for the next thing, the training session's overrunning next door by the sound of it.
- Marcus Bell NoneGo, go. Speak soon, Liam. Enjoy the rest of the week.
- Liam Doherty NoneYou too. Cheers, Marcus. Speak soon.
- Marcus Bell NoneThanks, bye.
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