What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026First demo of B-Viz Growth for Marlcliff. Sharon Tilley liked the joined-up incident view but cannot commit budget without her sign-off person. Open worries: IT and single sign-on, the older control room log, and the deal figure.
What happened: Lewis Kerr and Anya Petrova demoed Growth on Marlcliff's own CRM, helpdesk and control room extracts. Sharon Tilley and Lorraine Coombes saw incident, call and invoice data joined in one view.
Customer view: Sharon said she wants it working on a live incident gap, and Lorraine said she would use the morning view every day. Sharon also said she will not be sold something bigger than needed.
Commercial: Lewis quoted £52k as the total deal including the one-off implementation, not the annual subscription, and promised a proposal splitting the two. Sharon needs her budget sign-off person, and the decision date given was 22 May 2025.
Watch: The control room log is an older system, so a nightly file export may be needed. Single sign-on is Enterprise only, and IT has not yet been asked. The call is from 26 Mar 2025, so later outcomes are not shown here.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Who was there
BG-Demo
Them
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Lewis Kerr to send the proposal with implementation and subscription shown separately, VAT on each line.
- Anya Petrova to send the Snowflake and control room connection note and ask for an export sample.
- Sharon Tilley to speak to her budget sign-off person and IT.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Sharon cannot commit budget without her sign-off person, so the decision sits outside the call.
- The older control room log may need a scheduled file export rather than a direct connector.
- Single sign-on is Enterprise only and IT's view is not yet known.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Credit control and control room sessions could widen adoption beyond account management.
- An on-site training day was requested as an optional priced line.
Transcript
- Lewis KerrHello, can you hear me alright, Sharon?
- Sharon TilleyLoud and clear. Morning, Lewis.
- Lewis KerrMorning. Anya's just joining as well, so we'll have her on in a moment.
- Anya PetrovaMorning, everyone. Sorry, my camera's being awkward. Right, that's it. Can you see me?
- Sharon TilleyWe can. And Lorraine is here with me, she's just getting her laptop open.
- Lorraine CoombesMorning. Sorry, I'm here. Ignore the background noise, the control room is next door and it's been a busy start.
- Sharon TilleyIt has. Incident of the week, since you ask: an alarm activation at a retail unit overnight, and the client was on the phone to their area manager before we'd rung them. Which is exactly what I don't want. What did the client hear from us? Nothing, for the first twenty minutes.
- Lorraine CoombesThat one's mine, actually. It's one of my retail accounts. I only found out when the client emailed me.
- Lewis KerrThat's useful context, honestly, because it's pretty much what we wanted to show you today. Can I just confirm where we are before we start? My understanding is you're looking at Growth, you'd like to see it on your own data this morning, and you're aiming to decide by Thursday 22 May 2025. Is that still right?
- Sharon TilleyThat's right. Decision by then, and I'd want to be live as soon as we sensibly can after. But I want to see it work today, not slides.
- Lewis KerrNo slides. Anya's going to drive. She's loaded the sample extract you sent over from the CRM, the helpdesk and the control room log, so what you see is your own sites and incidents. Anya, over to you.
- Anya PetrovaThanks, Lewis. Quick bit of housekeeping first. Everything you'll see runs inside your own Snowflake account. We don't copy your data out to us, we build the layer in your environment. I'll say a bit more about that at the end because I suspect it matters to you.
- Sharon TilleyIt does. Our clients ask about it. Carry on.
- Anya PetrovaOkay, I'm sharing my screen now. Can you see a page with a search bar and a list of recent items?
- Lorraine CoombesYes, we've got that.
- Anya PetrovaGood. So this is the home page. Nothing clever on it, deliberately. Most people will just start by typing a question. Lorraine, you mentioned the retail alarm. Give me a client name from the extract and I'll ask about it.
- Lorraine CoombesUse the first one on my retail list, the one with the cluster of stores in the city centre.
- Anya PetrovaRight, I'll type: what happened at this client's sites in the last week, and who spoke to them. Give it a few seconds.
- Anya PetrovaThere we go. So it's pulled the alarm activation from the control room log, the patrol visit, two calls logged against that client, and an email that came in afterwards. All in one timeline, and each line links back to where it came from.
- Lorraine CoombesMm. So that's the thing I'd have had to stitch together from three screens.
- Sharon TilleyWhich site, which shift? Can it tell me that?
- Anya PetrovaIt can, if the log has it. Let me click into the incident. Yes, there's the site, the time the alarm came in and the shift that was on. And this gap here, between the activation and the first contact with the client, that's visible too, because the call record is time stamped.
- Sharon TilleyRight. So I could see that gap without asking anyone. That's the bit I like.
- Lewis KerrTo put a number on it, Sharon, how many places do your people currently look to answer that question?
- Sharon TilleyThree at least. Control room system, the CRM, the helpdesk. Lorraine would say four, because she checks her inbox as well.
- Lorraine CoombesFive, if I ring the control room. Which I do, a lot.
- Anya PetrovaHa. Okay, that's helpful. Let me show you the account view, because that's where I think Lorraine will live.
- Anya PetrovaThis is a page for one client. Sites down the left, then incidents, recent calls, open tickets, and over here the invoices. It's built from the extract, so the invoice side is only as good as what you sent, but you can see the shape.
- Sharon TilleyCredit control will want that. They're forever ringing account managers to ask whether a client's upset before they chase a payment.
- Lorraine CoombesThey are. And then I have to go and look it up. If they could see an open incident next to an overdue invoice themselves, that saves a lot of back and forth.
- Anya PetrovaExactly. Let me show you that. I'll ask: which clients have an overdue invoice and an incident open at the same time.
- Anya PetrovaGive it a moment, it's a join across two sources. Okay. In the sample there are only a handful, but it lists them, and for each one you can open the invoice and the incident side by side.
- Sharon TilleyThat's a conversation I'd want credit control to have with the account manager before anyone sends a reminder. Let's get the account manager on it, every time.
- Lewis KerrThat's the pattern we see work. The finance team sees the context, the account manager still owns the relationship.
- Lorraine CoombesCan I ask something? How does it know the invoice belongs to the same client as the incident? Our client names are a mess. Same company, three spellings.
- Anya PetrovaGood question, and it's the honest answer that matters. It matches on identifiers where it can, like account reference or domain, and where it can't it flags the match as uncertain rather than guessing. In the onboarding we spend real time on this, with someone from your side who knows the clients.
- Lorraine CoombesThat'd be me, I expect. Fine. As long as it doesn't silently get it wrong.
- Anya PetrovaIt shouldn't. Let me show you what an uncertain match looks like, one second.
- Anya PetrovaHere. See this little marker? Two records that probably belong together, and it's asking someone to confirm. Once you confirm, that decision sticks.
- Sharon TilleyOkay. I like that it asks.
- Sharon TilleyCan I go back to the calls bit? We record client calls from the account managers and the control room. If I wanted to know what we promised a client about response times, can it find that?
- Anya PetrovaYes. Let me try. I'll ask: what have we told this client about response times, in calls or emails.
- Anya PetrovaSo it's found a call where the account manager mentions a patrol response, and an email that repeats it. It quotes the lines and gives you the date and who said it. It doesn't summarise away the wording, you can read exactly what was said.
- Lorraine CoombesThat's a bit scary and a bit brilliant. I'd rather know what I said than have a client tell me.
- Sharon TilleyQuite. Contracts kept. If we've said it, we need to be able to find it.
- Lewis KerrI'd add that this is also where the order form matters, because what a client signed is the starting point. B-Viz can sit the signed terms next to what was said afterwards, if you load the contracts.
- Sharon TilleyAre contracts in the sample?
- Anya PetrovaNot this time, no. You didn't send any, and I didn't want to pretend. But the file store is one of the sources we can connect, so it would be a normal thing to add.
- Sharon TilleyFair. Go on.
- Anya PetrovaLet me show you the dashboards builder, since that's part of Growth and Starter doesn't have it. This is for people who want a standing view rather than asking each time.
- Anya PetrovaI'll build one live. Say a view for the retail account managers: open incidents by client, last contact date, open tickets. I just pick the fields here, and it draws it.
- Anya PetrovaAnd there it is. Now if I add a filter for a single account manager, Lorraine, say, it narrows to her clients only.
- Lorraine CoombesSo I'd open that first thing in the morning and see who I need to ring.
- Anya PetrovaThat's the idea. Whether it's the right set of fields is something you'd tune with us, but you wouldn't need a developer.
- Sharon TilleyWould the control room use something similar?
- Anya PetrovaYes, a different one. Sites with repeated alarms, long gaps before client contact, that sort of thing. The control room team would decide what matters to them. We'd show them how, rather than build it all for them.
- Sharon TilleyGood. I don't want it to be my team's thing alone, otherwise it dies when I'm on leave.
- Lewis KerrThat's a fair point and worth planning for. We usually suggest a couple of named admins on the customer side, so it isn't resting on one person.
- Sharon TilleyTwo would be sensible. Me and someone from the control room, probably.
- Anya PetrovaOkay. Let me show you something a bit different, because I think it speaks to your clients rather than your staff. Search.
- Anya PetrovaIf I type just a site name, it finds everything that mentions it: incident reports, emails, tickets, call notes. Useful when a new person picks up an account and doesn't know the history.
- Lorraine CoombesAccount managers who know every site. That's the dream, and we've got people who've only just joined who don't.
- Sharon TilleyMm. It's a real issue. We lose a lot of knowledge when someone moves on.
- Anya PetrovaThat's one of the better uses, actually. The history stays with the client rather than with the person.
- Lorraine CoombesCan I try one? Can I type something in?
- Anya PetrovaOf course. I'll stop sharing and you can share yours, or just tell me what to type.
- Lorraine CoombesTell you what, you type it. Ask: which of my retail clients have had more than one incident this month and haven't had a call from us.
- Anya PetrovaRight. More than one, no call. Running it.
- Anya PetrovaOkay, so it's come back with a short list. The sample is small, so don't read too much into the count, but you can see the logic worked. Two clients with repeated incidents and no logged outbound call.
- Lorraine CoombesThat's… yes, I recognise one of those. I did ring them, actually, but on my mobile, so it wouldn't be logged.
- Anya PetrovaAnd that's a good thing to say out loud, because it can only report on what's recorded. If calls happen outside the recorder, they won't appear. It isn't a mistake in the tool, it's a gap in the data.
- Sharon TilleyWhich is a habit issue for us, not for BG-Demo. Noted.
- Lewis KerrIt's worth being clear on that, because it affects how you measure success. If the tool shows you gaps in how calls are logged, that's a finding, not a failure.
- Sharon TilleyAgreed. Right, let's talk about the practical stuff. What would you need from us to get this going, and how long is it?
- Lewis KerrI'll take the commercial side and Anya can cover the technical. For Growth, implementation is a fixed fee, eight weeks, and the subscription is annual. The number I have on the deal at the moment is £51,600, and to put that in context, that is the total for the deal including the one-off implementation. It's not the annual subscription on its own. All plus VAT.
- Sharon TilleyUnderstood, total including implementation. And I'd want that split out clearly when it comes to the proposal. I can't commit budget without the person who signs it off here, so I'll need to take it to them.
- Lewis KerrOf course. I'll send that over today in a form you can forward, with the implementation and the subscription shown separately, and the VAT position on each line. Would it help if I joined a conversation with them?
- Sharon TilleyProbably, yes. Let me speak to them first and come back to you.
- Lorraine CoombesLewis, can I ask about users? How many of us can use it?
- Lewis KerrGrowth includes forty users and eight connectors. Whether that fits depends on who you want in it, so I wouldn't want to say yes or no from memory. Sharon, do you have a rough view of how many people across account management, the control room and credit control?
- Sharon TilleyRoughly that, I'd say, maybe a bit under. Account managers, control room supervisors, credit control, a few in management. Not every operator on the floor, to start with.
- Lewis KerrThen Growth looks reasonable. I'd rather you start comfortable and add more later than buy headroom you don't use. If the numbers change, adding users is a simple add-on.
- Sharon TilleyGood. I'd rather not be sold something bigger than we need.
- Lewis KerrThat's not how I want to do it either.
- Anya PetrovaOn the connectors, then, since that's the technical bit. From what you've told us, the sources you'd want live are the CRM, the helpdesk, the call recorder, the accounting system, and the control room log. That's five, comfortably inside the eight.
- Sharon TilleyThe control room log is the one I'm nervous about. It's an older system. It doesn't have a neat connection, as I understand it.
- Anya PetrovaThat's the one I'd flag too. For the demo I used the export you sent. For live, we'd either connect to it directly if it allows, or agree a scheduled file export that lands in Snowflake. The second works fine, it's just a bit less immediate.
- Sharon TilleyHow much less immediate?
- Anya PetrovaThe standard is that the nightly refresh is complete by 07:00 on business days. If the control room log comes in as a nightly file, it would fit inside that. If you wanted incidents within minutes, that's a different conversation and I'd want to look at what the system can do first.
- Sharon TilleyNightly would be okay for account managers. For the control room, I'd want them to look at their own system for live stuff anyway. This is for the picture around it.
- Anya PetrovaThat's a sensible way to think about it. B-Viz isn't a replacement for the live console, it's the layer that joins it to everything else.
- Lorraine CoombesThat's a relief. I was half worried you'd tell us to throw the control system away.
- Anya PetrovaNot at all.
- Sharon TilleyWhat about security? Our clients are security companies' clients, if you see what I mean. They ask about where data lives.
- Anya PetrovaRight, so this is where Snowflake matters. B-Viz is built and runs inside your own Snowflake account. Your data stays in your environment, under your access controls. We don't hold a copy on our side to be breached. If a client asks you where their incident data sits, the answer is: in our own account, same as now.
- Sharon TilleyThat's a much easier answer than I expected.
- Lorraine CoombesAnd can we control who sees what? Not everyone should see every client.
- Anya PetrovaYes, access can be set by team or by group of clients. I'd want to agree that with you at the start rather than bolt it on. Credit control probably sees invoices, account managers see their own clients, the control room sees incidents.
- Lewis KerrSingle sign-on is an Enterprise feature, so on Growth people would have their own logins. If that's important for your IT team, tell me now and I'll make sure we've talked it through properly rather than finding out in a month.
- Sharon TilleyI'll ask. I suspect a colleague in IT will have a view. Put it on the list.
- Lewis KerrWill do. I'm noting it.
- Lorraine CoombesCan I go back to the demo for a second? Something I wanted to see, which is how it handles a client who has lots of sites. We have a few with dozens.
- Anya PetrovaGood one. Let me share again. I'll pick the largest client in the sample.
- Anya PetrovaOkay, so here's the account view for a client with a long list of sites. I can group by area, or filter to sites with an incident recently. And if I ask a question, it answers at the right level. If I ask about the client, it's the whole picture. If I ask about one site, it narrows.
- Lorraine CoombesCan it tell me which site is the problem site? The one that keeps setting off.
- Anya PetrovaLet me ask it that. Which site for this client has had the most incidents.
- Anya PetrovaThere. It ranks them, and the top one stands out. In your real data, over a longer period, I'd expect that to be more telling. Again, a small sample, so I'd not read much into this one.
- Sharon TilleyThat's the kind of thing I'd bring to a client review. Here's the site that keeps causing trouble, here's what we suggest.
- Lorraine CoombesMm. Yes. I'd have to be careful how I put it, though. Never blame the officers.
- Sharon TilleyNever. It's the site, or the equipment, not the person.
- Anya PetrovaThat's a framing choice for you. The tool just shows the pattern. How you talk about it with a client is yours.
- Sharon TilleyQuite right.
- Lewis KerrCan I pick up on the timeline, Sharon? You said you want to decide by Thursday 22 May 2025. Working back from that, what do you need before then?
- Sharon TilleyA proposal I can forward. Answers on the security side for our IT people. And probably a second look at this with a couple more of my team, so they've seen it.
- Lewis KerrThen I'd suggest this. I send the proposal today. Anya sends a short note on how the Snowflake set-up works and what the control room connection would look like. And we find a second session, maybe with the credit control side included, since they haven't seen it yet.
- Sharon TilleyCredit control definitely. They'd get the most out of it, to be honest.
- Lorraine CoombesAnd someone from the control room.
- Sharon TilleyYes. I'll find out who's free.
- Anya PetrovaI could do a version of the demo tailored to each group. A short one for credit control on invoices and incidents, and a short one for the control room on site history. They'd be much quicker than today.
- Sharon TilleyThat would work. People switch off if it's not about them.
- Anya PetrovaUnderstood. Let me show you one more thing before we run out of time, which is how usage shows up for you as the person running it.
- Anya PetrovaThere's an admin page. It shows which sources are connected, how many records have been indexed, how many questions people are asking, and who is asking them. That last one is useful. If it's all coming from one person, that's a risk.
- Sharon TilleyMeaning if it's all me.
- Anya PetrovaHa, if it were, yes. We'd rather it spread. It's one of the things your customer success manager looks at with you.
- Lewis KerrThat would be Daniel Okafor. He looks after adoption, and on Growth there's a quarterly review, so you'd sit down with him and look at how it's being used and whether it's worth what you're paying.
- Sharon TilleyGood. I like being held to account on that. Otherwise these things become shelfware.
- Lewis KerrWhich is exactly what we don't want either.
- Lorraine CoombesCan I ask about training? Some of my team are not natural with new systems.
- Anya PetrovaSure. The interface is mostly typing a question, so there's less to learn than people expect. But we do run training sessions as part of onboarding, and you can add an on-site day if you'd like people in a room with someone.
- Lorraine CoombesAn on-site day might be wise. I've got a couple of people who need to see it done in front of them.
- Lewis KerrI'll include that as an optional line in the proposal, priced separately, so you can see it and decide.
- Sharon TilleyOkay. Now, what happens if we sign and the control room connection turns out to be harder than you think?
- Anya PetrovaFair challenge. I'd rather deal with that before you sign than after. If you can get me a sample of the export from the live system, or a conversation with whoever looks after it, I can tell you much more precisely. Then we write the connector commitment into the order form so it's clear what's promised and by when.
- Lewis KerrConnectors named in the order form carry a go-live commitment, so there's no ambiguity. I'd want that to be realistic rather than optimistic.
- Sharon TilleyRealistic please. I've been burnt by optimistic.
- Lewis KerrUnderstood. I'll take that as a firm instruction.
- Lorraine CoombesCan I ask one daft thing? Does it get things wrong? Like, would it make something up?
- Anya PetrovaNot daft at all. Every answer links back to the records it came from, so you can check. If there isn't enough in the data, it should say so rather than invent. But I'd encourage your people to click through on anything that matters, especially before it goes to a client.
- Sharon TilleyNever let an incident report sit unsent, and never send one unchecked. Both.
- Anya PetrovaExactly that.
- Lorraine CoombesRight. That reassures me, actually. It's a tool for checking, not a black box.
- Sharon TilleyLet me ask about the incident from this week, since it's what started all this. If we'd had this running, what would have been different?
- Anya PetrovaHonestly, it depends on how you'd set it up. With a dashboard like the one I built, the alarm with no client contact after a set time would show up on someone's screen. Whether somebody acts on it is a process question. The tool gives you the visibility, not the discipline.
- Sharon TilleyNo, quite. That's our job. But I couldn't act on what I couldn't see.
- Lewis KerrThat's a fair summary of what it's for.
- Lorraine CoombesI'd use it. I can say that now. I'd use the morning view every day.
- Sharon TilleyGood to know. That matters more to me than anything on the price list.
- Lewis KerrLet me make sure I've got the next steps right, then. Sharon, you'll speak to the person who signs off budget, and check with IT on sign-in and security. I'll send the proposal today, with implementation and subscription shown separately, VAT on each line, and the on-site training day as an option.
- Anya PetrovaAnd I'll send a short note on the Snowflake set-up and the control room connection, and I'll ask for a sample of that export. I'll also look at diaries for two shorter sessions, one for credit control and one for the control room.
- Sharon TilleyPerfect. Lorraine, can you give Anya a couple of dates that work for people next week?
- Lorraine CoombesYes, I'll check with both teams and email her this afternoon.
- Anya PetrovaLovely, thank you.
- Sharon TilleyDo we have time for anything else? I think we're a bit ahead.
- Lewis KerrWe've got a little while. Is there anything you haven't seen that you'd like to?
- Sharon TilleyActually, yes. Could you show me what a client-facing summary might look like? Something I could use in a review meeting, pulled together from the pieces.
- Anya PetrovaI can have a go. I'll ask for a summary of a client's incidents, calls and open tickets over the last quarter, written so you could talk someone through it.
- Anya PetrovaRight. So it's given a short written summary, then the incidents in order, then the contact history. Everything links back. Now you'd read it and edit it, of course, you wouldn't just send it.
- Sharon TilleyNo, but it saves me an hour of assembling it. Lorraine, you spend a good half day on those, don't you?
- Lorraine CoombesEasily. Before a big review I'm pulling bits from everywhere. This would give me a start.
- Sharon TilleyThat's worth something to me. Time back for account managers to actually talk to clients.
- Lewis KerrThat's a good thing to measure, if you go ahead. How long a review pack takes now, and how long it takes after. Then at the quarterly review with Daniel you've got a real answer on value.
- Sharon TilleyI'll note that down. Baseline first.
- Lorraine CoombesI can time myself on the next one.
- Sharon TilleyDo that. Be honest.
- Lorraine CoombesI'm always honest. It's the problem.
- Anya PetrovaHa. That's the best kind of baseline.
- Sharon TilleyOne more from me. If we went ahead, when could we be up and running? I know it's eight weeks for the implementation, but roughly when does someone like Lorraine get to use it?
- Anya PetrovaUsually the first useful thing, normally the CRM and helpdesk, is visible within the first couple of weeks. The harder connections come later, and the control room one would sit in the middle. By the end of the eight weeks everything agreed in the order form should be live.
- Sharon TilleySo Lorraine would see something early.
- Anya PetrovaShe would. I'd like to make sure people get a win early, otherwise interest drops off.
- Lorraine CoombesThat'd help me sell it to my own team, too.
- Lewis KerrI'll put the stages in the proposal so you can see what arrives when.
- Sharon TilleyGood. I think that's enough from me for today. Lorraine?
- Lorraine CoombesNothing more. Actually, no, one thing. Will you send a recording or notes? I'll forget half of it.
- Lewis KerrThe call recorder has this, so I'll send you the transcript and a short list of actions with the proposal. Then you've both got something to forward.
- Lorraine CoombesBrilliant, thank you.
- Sharon TilleyRight then. You've been very straight with us, which I appreciate. I'm not promising anything, mind. I need to take it upstairs.
- Lewis KerrCompletely understood, and I wouldn't want you to. If there are questions that come up on the way, ring me or email me and I'll sort them. I'd rather you ask than guess.
- Sharon TilleyWill do. Thanks, both.
- Anya PetrovaThanks, Sharon, thanks, Lorraine. I'll get the note over to you this afternoon, and I'll chase the dates once Lorraine's been in touch.
- Lorraine CoombesLovely. Speak soon.
- Lewis KerrSpeak soon. Enjoy the rest of the day, and good luck with the rest of the alarm business.
- Sharon TilleyHa. Thanks. We'll need it. Bye for now.