What was said
What this says
Current to 13 Oct 26Kofi Asamoah, the only admin, agreed the connector order, made the leasing system the master for the client list and accepted a phased user rollout. Remarketing scepticism and the single admin need handling before go-live.
What happened: Hamza Akhtar and Kofi agreed the connector order: leasing system, CRM, helpdesk, then accounting and calls in parallel. The order form has five connectors to start, rising to six with a separate supplier flat file, against eight on Growth.
Customer view: Kofi said the leasing system wins any disagreement over the client list, and he wants to decide each mapping himself. He is the only admin and agreed to name a deputy by the middle of January.
Commercial: Users will be brought in in stages, starting with a handful of account managers and the service desk, towards the 40 users on Growth. The remarketing team is sceptical after a previous reporting tool, so reconciling against their own spreadsheet is the adoption test.
Watch: The CRM owner in sales operations wants read-only access confirmed in writing. The nightly refresh must finish by 07:00, and the source database runs slower at month end.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Who was there
BB-Demo
Them
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Kofi to send the introductions, the mirror job history and the supplier file owner by Friday.
- Hamza Akhtar to send the access requests, the read-only wording and the plan.
- Kofi to name a deputy admin by the middle of January.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Kofi is the only admin, so a absence during a CRM change would stall the build.
- The remarketing team doubts the figures will match their own spreadsheets.
- Access requests left in inboxes over the break would lose the first week of January.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- Three teams are planned across the 40 users on Growth, with connectors headroom after six of eight.
- Live training on the customer's own client data gives the second wave a useful starting point.
Transcript
- Hamza Akhtar NoneAfternoon, Kofi. Can you hear me alright?
- Kofi Asamoah NoneYeah, loud and clear. Afternoon. Sorry, I'm a minute late, I was finishing something in the leasing system and it wouldn't let go.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneNo problem at all, I was only just getting my notes up. How's the week been? Is it winding down over there or is it the usual pre-Christmas rush?
- Kofi Asamoah NoneBit of both, honestly. The service desk is flat out because everyone wants their vehicle changes through before the break, so my inbox is full of requests for extracts. Which is rather the point of doing this, so I shouldn't complain.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneHa, no, that's a good sign for us. Right, shall we start where you normally start? You like to open with the tickets, I remember.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneI do. So, open tickets: there aren't any. Nothing raised with your support desk, nothing sitting with me either. I'd say that's because there's nothing loaded yet to go wrong, so I wouldn't read too much into it.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneFair. And I'd rather you raised things early than sat on them, so if anything looks odd once the first source is flowing, just put it in.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneWill do. I'll check last night's load every morning and tell you if it's short.
- Hamza Akhtar NonePerfect. So what I'd like to do in the forty-odd minutes we've got is three things. One, agree the order we connect your sources. Two, agree who owns what on your side. Three, talk about how we bring the account managers and the service desk in without it turning into a big bang. Does that work?
- Kofi Asamoah NoneThat works. Can I add a fourth? I'd like to talk about the client list. That's the thing that's going to make or break it for us.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneYes, absolutely, let's fold that into the second one, because it's really an ownership question. Go on, what's the problem as you see it?
- Kofi Asamoah NoneSo, the same client shows up differently depending where you look. The leasing system has the contract-hire customer as a legal entity. The CRM has it as an account with whatever name the account manager typed. And the helpdesk has it as the organisation of whoever emailed in. Three systems, three spellings, and a few where the parent and the subsidiary are muddled.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneRight, and that's pretty typical for fleet businesses, because the contract sits at one level and the relationship at another. When you say the leasing system is the master, is that firm, or is it more that it's the one you trust most?
- Kofi Asamoah NoneIt's firm. If the leasing system and anything else disagree, the leasing system wins. That's the one that bills.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneGood, that makes my life easier. So what we'd do is build the client list from the leasing system first, and then map the CRM and helpdesk accounts onto it. Anything that doesn't match cleanly goes on an exceptions list for you to look at rather than us guessing.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneI like that. I don't want a clever matching rule quietly merging two clients that happen to share a name. That's a mapping question, not a bug, and I'd want to decide each one.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneUnderstood. Nothing merges without you seeing it. I'll write that into the plan so it's not just something I said on a call.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneThanks. And if I do change a mapping later, I'll tell you, so we're not both editing the same thing in the dark.
- Hamza Akhtar NonePlease do. Okay, let me share my screen so we're looking at the same plan. Give me a second. Can you see it?
- Kofi Asamoah NoneYeah, I can see the connector list. It's a bit small, but I can read it.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneI'll zoom in. So, on Growth you've got room for eight connectors, and in the order form we've got you down for five to start, so there's headroom for a few more later. The five are the leasing system, your CRM, the helpdesk, the accounting system and the call recorder.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneRight. Can I ask why you've put the call recorder last? Sales would shout for that one first.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneBecause calls are only useful once the brain knows which client they belong to. If we load them before the client list is settled, you get a lot of transcripts that don't attach to anything, and then you've got a clean-up job. So, leasing system, then CRM, then helpdesk, then accounting, then calls.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneMm. That's sensible. I'd swap the last two, maybe. Accounting is mostly me and finance looking at invoices, whereas the service desk have been asking about calls. But I take the point about the client list.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneWe can do that. Honestly, once the client list is stable the order of the last two doesn't matter technically. It's about who's waiting. Let's say calls and accounting can run in parallel in the last stretch.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneFine by me.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneNow the leasing system. I need to ask you the awkward one. How do we get at the data? Is there a database we can read from, or is it extracts?
- Kofi Asamoah NoneWhich source is that from, you mean? It's both, annoyingly. There's a reporting database that mirrors the live system overnight, and that's what I use. But it leaves out a few things, like the maintenance cost detail, which only come through in a flat file that the supplier management team produces.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOkay. So the reporting database is the main feed, and the flat file is a second source feeding the same connector, or a separate one?
- Kofi Asamoah NoneI'd call it separate. Different owner, different timing. If the file's late, I don't want the whole leasing load to look broken.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThat's a good call. It would count as one of your connectors, so that takes you to six, but you've got space. And a late file then shows up as one source behind, not everything.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneThat's what I'd want.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneWhat time does the reporting database finish mirroring? Because the nightly refresh has to be done by seven in the morning your time, and I need to know we're not starting too close to the line.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneI'd have to check, I don't want to guess. I believe it's done well before five, but let me look at the job history and I'll confirm by email rather than say something wrong.
- Hamza Akhtar NonePerfect, that's exactly what I'd rather. If it's done before five we've got lots of room. If it creeps later in the winter, when the batch jobs get heavier, we'd want to know now.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneNoted. It does get slower at month end, so I'll look at those nights specifically.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThat's a really useful detail, thank you. Month end is exactly when someone senior asks a question and the data's half an hour behind.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneHa, yes. That's usually the finance director, and he doesn't ask twice.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneLet's move on to who owns what. On our side, I'm doing the connector build and the mapping work, and Amara Obi is your customer success manager, so once we're live she's your person for adoption and the quarterly reviews. Sophie Ling is the account owner for anything commercial.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneYes, I've spoken to Sophie, she was the one who walked us through the proposal. I haven't met Amara yet.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneI'll get you an introduction, probably in the new year once there's something live to talk about. She'll want to understand who your heavy users are going to be.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneOn our side, it's me for the admin and all the data sources. I'm the only admin for now. I know that's a risk, and I've said so internally, but there isn't anyone else with the time.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneI'd gently push on that one. Not today, but before go-live I'd like a named deputy, even if they only ever press the button when you're on leave. If you're ill the week the CRM changes, we don't want the whole thing waiting.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneYeah. That's fair. I'll talk to my manager. There's an analyst on the team who'd be the obvious person, she already understands the leasing data better than most.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneBrilliant. Let's make that an action for you, a name by the middle of January, and I'll set her up as a second admin when we're ready.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneOkay. Middle of January, I'll put it in my diary.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneNow, users. You've got forty licensed users on Growth. Who are you thinking of, roughly?
- Kofi Asamoah NoneSo the idea was the corporate account managers, who look after the big client relationships. Then the driver service desk, because they field queries about a specific vehicle or driver and currently have to open four different screens. And the remarketing team, who sell the vehicles at the end of the lease. That's most of the forty, with a few spare for me, finance and a couple of managers.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThat's a sensible split, and it matches what Sophie wrote up. My suggestion is that we don't invite all forty on day one. At the moment your average active user count is about one, which is you, and that's fine for the build.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneYes, it's just me poking around at the moment. I've been asking it small questions to see if the pages look right.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneGood, and that's exactly the right use at this point. What I'd suggest is that when the leasing and CRM connectors are stable, we bring in a small group, maybe a handful of account managers and one or two from the service desk, and let them break it for a couple of weeks. Then widen.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneThat's better than what I'd have done, which is tell everybody at once and spend January answering the same question forty times.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneHa, exactly. And the first group tells us which questions people really ask. Those become the starter pages, so the second wave arrives to something already useful.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneCan I ask something slightly awkward? The remarketing team. They're a bit sceptical. They've been burned by a reporting tool before, and they think the figures never match what they see in their own spreadsheets.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneI'd take that seriously, and I'd involve them early rather than late. If one of them gives us a spreadsheet they trust, a real one, we can reconcile the brain's answer against it before they ever see a page. If it matches, you've got a convert. If it doesn't, we'd rather find out in the build than in front of them.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneRight. I like that. I'll ask the team lead for one of their weekly sales sheets, the one they use for the auction decisions.
- Hamza Akhtar NonePerfect. Send it when you have it, and tell me which fields they trust and which they don't. Don't clean it up.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneUnderstood. Untouched, with the mess.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneNow, the CRM. Who owns that on your side? Because I'll need someone who can grant the connection and tell me about any custom fields.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneThat's not me. It's a colleague in the sales operations team. I can introduce you. She's helpful, but she's protective, there were a couple of bad experiences with integrations that wrote things back.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThen it's worth saying clearly: the brain only reads. It doesn't write to your CRM, it doesn't create or edit records. If she wants that in writing, I'll put it in the access request.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneThat would help a lot. Read-only, in writing, and then she'll say yes.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneDone. I'll draft that today and copy you, so you can forward it with your own note. What about the helpdesk? Same sort of arrangement?
- Kofi Asamoah NoneThat's the service desk manager. Different person, much less cautious. She'd probably give you the keys on a handshake. But I'd still go through the proper request so it's recorded.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneAgreed, same request, same wording. And accounting, is that finance directly?
- Kofi Asamoah NoneFinance, yes. They'll want to know exactly which fields. Invoices, payment status, dates. They won't want bank details anywhere near it.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneWe don't need bank details. Invoice headers, amounts, dates, status. I'll list the fields so they can strike through anything they're uncomfortable with.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneGood. That'll go down well.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOkay. Timeline. The implementation on Growth is planned over eight weeks. With the break, I'd like to be realistic. This week and the days either side of Christmas are really just access requests. The real building starts the first full week of January.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneThat sounds right. I'm off from the end of this week until the Monday after the new year, and I suspect everybody else is the same.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThen the gating item is that the access requests are in people's hands before you leave. If they're sitting in an inbox over the break, we lose the first week of January.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneOkay. So what do you need from me by Friday?
- Hamza Akhtar NoneThree things. The introductions to the CRM owner, the service desk manager and finance. The job history showing when the overnight mirror finishes. And the name of whoever looks after the supplier file, so I know who to chase if it's late.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneRight, I'll write that down. Introductions, job history, supplier file owner. Do you want me to send that as one email?
- Hamza Akhtar NoneOne email's perfect, with the subject line mentioning the onboarding so I can find it. And I'll send you the access requests and the plan, today if I can, otherwise first thing tomorrow.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneBrilliant. One more thing from me, if there's time. When something does load wrong, how will I know? I don't want to find out when an account manager rings me.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneGood question. There's a load history you can see as admin, so each source shows when it last completed and how many records came in. If a source goes quiet, the record count stops moving, and that's usually the first sign. I'd suggest you look at it each morning for the first few weeks, which is what you said you'd do anyway.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneThat's my habit already. I'll check last night's load and tell you if it's short.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneAnd if you do see something, raise a ticket rather than emailing me directly, so that it's logged and someone else can pick it up if I'm out. I'll still see it.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneUnderstood. Ticket first.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneIs there anything else on your list that we haven't touched? Because I think I've covered mine.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneOnly the training. Have you got a view on what that looks like? Is it a recorded thing or live?
- Hamza Akhtar NoneLive, and short. When the first group is in, we do a session of about an hour with them on their own data, so it's their clients on the screen and not a demo set. Then another for the second wave, and the service desk ones are a bit more hands-on. Amara will help shape those.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneGood. Real clients on the screen is what will make them listen.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneExactly. Right, I'll let you get back to the extracts. Thanks, Kofi, this has been really useful, especially the point about the supplier file being separate.
- Kofi Asamoah NoneNo, thank you. Cheers, Hamza. Speak soon, and have a good Christmas if I don't catch you before.
- Hamza Akhtar NoneYou too, Kofi. Speak soon. Bye.