Brackwell Freight Ltd / BG-Demo – QBR
Callcompleted
Brackwell Freight Ltd · 1 Apr 2026 10:30
The 1 Apr 2026 QBR was encouraging. Questions asked have climbed three months running and are no longer mostly Liam Doherty's. He said he cannot see them going elsewhere, and Gareth signs before December.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026The 1 Apr 2026 QBR was encouraging. Questions asked have climbed three months running and are no longer mostly Liam Doherty's. He said he cannot see them going elsewhere, and Gareth signs before December.
What happened: Marcus Bell ran the quarterly review with Liam Doherty and Aisha Rahman. Usage is up, one how-to ticket was answered the same day, connectors are loading and three dashboards are in regular use.
Customer view: Liam described catching a retail contract problem early, and said he cannot see them going elsewhere. He will say the same to Gareth.
Commercial: The term renews on 1 Dec 2026 and Gareth signs the contract. Tom Ashdown owns the contract side and will be briefed on usage.
Watch: Only two of six depots are really using the brain. Aisha is still learning the admin side, and she mentioned a possible slower overnight refresh on Mondays, which Marcus is having checked.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
QBR: adoption and renewal
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
positive
Voice
champion
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Marcus Bell books the admin walkthrough with Aisha Rahman and the depot sessions.
- Marcus Bell sends Liam Doherty a one-pager for the board and confirms connector headroom in writing.
- Marcus Bell briefs Tom Ashdown on usage before the autumn renewal conversation with Gareth.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Four of six depots are only dipping in, so seat use stays low against the Growth licence.
- Aisha Rahman is still learning the admin side, which leaves thin cover if Liam Doherty is away.
- A possible slower Monday refresh is unexplained, and Marcus has promised only to have it checked.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Depot sessions and a depot dashboard can lift active users ahead of the renewal.
- The caught-early retail contract is a value story Liam can take to the board and to Gareth.
Transcript
Marcus BellMorning both. Can you hear me alright?
Liam DohertyLoud and clear, Marcus. Morning. Aisha, you there?
Aisha RahmanYes, hi, morning. Sorry, I'm just getting my camera to behave. I've already restarted it twice, so I'm hoping that's it.- Marcus BellNo rush at all. We've got a bit of time. How's the week been? Is it still chucking it down in Manchester?
- Liam DohertyChucking it down since Monday. Trafford Park looks like a lake. The drivers are loving it, as you can imagine.
- Marcus BellSame here, I'm about twenty minutes from you and it's the same story. Right, I think that's the camera sorted, Aisha.
- Aisha RahmanOh good. Yes. Sorry about that.
- Marcus BellNot a problem. So, this is the quarterly review. I'm going to share my screen and walk you through what I've pulled from the numbers, and then I'd like most of the time for you two, what's working, what isn't, what you'd like from us. Sound alright?
- Liam DohertyLove that. Go for it.
- Marcus BellOkay, you should see the usage summary now. Shout if it's too small.
- Aisha RahmanI can see it. It's fine on my side.
- Marcus BellGreat. So, headline first. You're on Growth, forty seats, forty-four thousand a year, and the order form and what's been invoiced match, no queries, nothing overdue. That's the boring bit and it's the way I like it.
- Liam DohertyBoring is good. Finance would've been on to me otherwise.
- Marcus BellExactly. Now the part I actually care about. Active users. Across the last month you've got a good number of people logging in on a typical day, and it's up quite a bit on the previous quarter. A fifth or so, give or take.
- Liam DohertyThat's the depots. I've been going round the account managers one at a time, sitting with them for ten minutes and showing them one question to ask. That's it. One question, and they come back the next day.
- Marcus BellWhich question was it?
- Liam DohertyShow me everything open for this customer. Calls, emails, delivery exceptions, in one go. One view, that's the point. Before, they'd have three tabs open and a spreadsheet.
- Marcus BellThat's exactly what I see in the questions asked, actually. Let me flip to that. So here's the questions per month. It's climbed three months running, and what I like is it isn't one person doing all of it. Last time I looked, it was mostly you, Liam.
- Liam DohertyYeah, that was a bit of a worry, wasn't it. I was the whole graph.
- Marcus BellYou were a big chunk of it, yes. Now it's spread across the depot account managers and Aisha's operations side. So if you were off for a fortnight, the usage wouldn't fall off a cliff. That's the key-person thing I always keep an eye on.
- Aisha RahmanIs it me or has the Tuesday review driven a lot of that? We run the operations review every Tuesday and I've started pulling the exceptions straight from the brain instead of exporting it.
- Marcus BellHonestly, yes, I think that's a good part of it. If I look at the day of the week, Tuesday mornings are the peak. It's quite a clear spike.
- Aisha RahmanOh. I didn't realise it showed up that clearly. Sorry, that's a bit embarrassing.
- Marcus BellNo, not at all, it's the best sign there is. It means the brain is part of the routine, not a thing people remember once a month.
- Liam DohertyShe's built that whole routine, to be fair. I just nagged.
- Aisha RahmanI wouldn't say that. Liam set up the structure, I've just been following it. I've tried to keep the pages tidy so people can find things.
- Marcus BellWell, it shows. Okay, next one. Support. You've had one ticket in the last month, and nothing high priority. Aisha, I think that one was yours?
- Aisha RahmanYes, that was me. It was a how-to question, just a small thing I couldn't work out. I'd already tried a couple of options before I raised it, and I attached a screenshot.
- Marcus BellI saw the screenshot, very helpful. And it was answered well inside your Growth response time. Was it all sorted for you?
- Aisha RahmanYes, it was sorted the same day. Thank you.
- Marcus BellGood. One ticket from a user base that's growing is what I'd call healthy, not quiet. If it was one ticket and everybody had stopped logging in, I'd be ringing you in a different tone.
- Liam DohertyHa. You'd have turned up on the doorstep.
- Marcus BellI'd have turned up with biscuits, I'm not an animal.
- Liam DohertyFair enough.
- Marcus BellRight, let me pause there. Before I go on to connectors and the dashboards, what's your own read? How does it feel from the inside? Liam first.
- Liam DohertyHonestly, really good. The reason we bought it was to spot an at-risk retail contract before the customer rings us. And we've had a couple of moments this year where that's exactly what happened. Somebody in a depot saw the exceptions stacking up alongside a tone change in the calls, and we got ahead of it. Before, we'd have found out when the buyer emailed our MD.
- Marcus BellThat's the use case I'd put on a slide. Would you be happy for me to write that up properly? Not naming the customer, just the pattern.
- Liam DohertyYeah, sure. Keep the customer out of it, obviously, but yes.
- Marcus BellOf course. Aisha, same question. How does it feel to you?
- Aisha RahmanIt's good. I think my honest answer is that I'm still learning the admin side. There's a lot in there I haven't touched. I don't want to break anything. So I mostly do the same few things.
- Marcus BellThat's a really fair answer, and I'm glad you said it. Most admins are exactly there at this stage. Can I suggest something? Shall we book thirty minutes, just you and me, and I'll take you through the admin settings, user management, how connectors are set up, what to look at if something looks stale. No pressure, no agenda beyond that.
- Aisha RahmanYes, I'd like that, thank you. I'd rather learn it with someone than guess at it.
- Liam DohertyGood call. And I'd say take Marcus up on it sooner rather than later. If I'm off on a week's leave, I don't want you stuck.
- Aisha RahmanNo, that's what I was thinking too.
- Marcus BellRight, I'll send a couple of slots after this. Let me pop back to the screen. Connectors. You're well within what's included on Growth, and the records indexed have been rising steadily, so nothing has gone flat or stopped loading. Every source is feeding through as it should.
- Liam DohertyCan I ask, what happens if we want to add another one? We've talked about bringing more of the helpdesk side in, properly, for the delivery exceptions.
- Marcus BellShort answer, there's room on Growth for more connectors before you'd hit the limit, so it's a conversation about setting it up rather than a commercial one. If it went beyond that, there's an add-on, but I don't think we're near that. I'd want to check the exact headroom before I promise anything, so let me come back to you in writing.
- Liam DohertyPerfect. That's all I need.
- Marcus BellAnd on the helpdesk side, which system are the exceptions sitting in? Is that Zendesk?
- Liam DohertyYeah, Zendesk. That's already connected, that's what feeds the delivery-exception tickets. What I mean is the older queue the depots still use for a few things. I'd like that in the same place.
- Marcus BellRight, got it. Then it's worth me understanding what that older queue is. Can you or Aisha send me a line on it, and I'll see what the options are.
- Aisha RahmanI can do that. I'll write down what it is and who uses it, and I'll attach a screenshot so it's clear.
- Marcus BellBrilliant, thanks. Dashboards next. You've built a few, which is nice to see. That shows the team investing, not just consuming. Which ones are getting used?
- Aisha RahmanThe main one is the exceptions by depot view that we use on Tuesdays. There's another one that Liam made for the account managers, and I made a small one for the contract warehousing side.
- Liam DohertyThe warehousing one's decent, actually. I'd not looked at it for a while and Aisha's made it properly clear.
- Aisha RahmanOh, thanks. I wasn't sure anybody had opened it.
- Marcus BellPeople have. It's in the views. So that's three dashboards that people actually come back to, which is more than a lot of accounts I look after.
- Liam DohertyCan we get the depots on it, though? Properly. That's still my thing. Out of six depots, we've got two that are really using it and the rest are dipping in.
- Marcus BellYes. That's what I wanted to ask you about. You've got forty seats on the licence and you're using only a part of them on a normal day. So there's lots of headroom. What's stopping the other depots? Is it time, is it habit, is it that nobody's shown them?
- Liam DohertyBit of all three. The two that are on it have a manager who likes data. The others, it's the same old story, they've got a routine and a spreadsheet and they'll tell you it works.
- Marcus BellMm. Would it help if I did a short session for them? Not a big training day, thirty minutes on a call, looking at their own depot's data. People tend to listen when it's their numbers on screen.
- Liam DohertyThat would help a lot. Their own numbers, yes. That's the trick.
- Aisha RahmanI could pull together a list of who's at each depot so you know who to invite. I think I have most of the names.
- Marcus BellThat'd be ideal. Shall we say a rough list by the end of next week, and I'll draft some times around it. I don't want to overload anyone, so a couple of depots at a time.
- Liam DohertyWorks for me.
- Marcus BellRight. Now, you're a Growth customer, so you also get the dashboards builder and the quarterly reviews, which is this. Is there anything you'd like this call to cover differently next time? More numbers, less, different people in the room?
- Liam DohertyI'd say it's about right. Maybe next time we get one of the depot managers in for the second half. Let them say what they want to see.
- Marcus BellI like that. I'll note it. And Aisha, is there anyone on the finance or the commercial side you'd want there?
- Aisha RahmanPossibly Gareth, near the renewal. I wouldn't want to speak for him on the contract, so it would be better to hear it from him directly.
- Liam DohertyYeah, Gareth signs the contract, so he'll want to see it all before December. I'll make sure he's looped in.
- Marcus BellThat's useful, thanks. So, on that, the contract runs to the end of November and renews on 1 Dec 2026. Nothing's due from you on that right now, and I'm not going to get into commercial detail. Tom Ashdown owns the contract side at our end and he'll be in touch in the autumn. I'll make sure he's got the usage picture from today so he's not starting from scratch.
- Liam DohertyGood. And just so you know, from my side, I can't see us wanting to go anywhere else. It's earned its place. I'll say that to Gareth as well.
- Marcus BellThat's really good to hear, thank you. I'll pass it on. Okay, anything else before we start wrapping up? I've got a couple of notes but I'd rather hear yours.
- Aisha RahmanJust one thing, and it's probably a silly question. Is it me, or does the overnight refresh sometimes take a bit longer on Mondays? Not a problem, just something I noticed. I've not seen it go wrong, so I don't want to guess at a cause.
- Marcus BellNot a silly question. I can't see anything that looks off in your records from the last few weeks, and the data's been landing on time. But I'll ask our team to take a look at the Monday pattern, and I'll tell you what they find. I wouldn't want to say why before they've checked.
- Aisha RahmanThat's fine. Thank you. If it happens again, I'll note the time and send it over.
- Marcus BellPerfect, that'd really help.
- Liam DohertyMarcus, one from me. Can we have a bit of a usage report I can show the board? Nothing fancy. Questions asked, who's using it, a line about the contracts we caught early.
- Marcus BellYes, happy to. I've pulled the numbers already, so I'll tidy this into a one-pager and send it over with the notes from today. You can edit it however you like.
- Liam DohertyBrilliant. Love that.
- Marcus BellOkay, let me read back what I've got so I don't drop anything. One, I'll send Aisha some times for a thirty-minute admin walkthrough. Two, Aisha sends me a list of who's at each depot, by the end of next week. Three, I'll set up short sessions for the depots that aren't using it much yet. Four, Aisha writes me a line on the older helpdesk queue, and I come back on connector headroom in writing. Five, I'll ask our team to look at the Monday refresh, and tell you what they find. Six, one-pager for Liam. And I'll brief Tom before the autumn. Did I miss anything?
- Liam DohertyThat's the lot, I think. Aisha?
- Aisha RahmanThat's everything I wrote down too.
- Marcus BellLovely. Thanks both, this was a really encouraging one. I'll send the notes this afternoon.
- Liam DohertyCheers, Marcus. Speak soon.
- Aisha RahmanThanks, Marcus. Bye.
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