Marlcliff Security Services / BG-Demo – Onboarding
Callcompleted
Marlcliff Security Services · 30 Jun 2025 14:30
Second onboarding call. Sharon Tilley described a weekend incident the account manager only learned of from the client. Kamal Hussein led on access, client-code mapping and a second admin. Nothing was committed on budget.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Second onboarding call. Sharon Tilley described a weekend incident the account manager only learned of from the client. Kamal Hussein led on access, client-code mapping and a second admin. Nothing was committed on budget.
What happened: Laura Penhaligon set out four blocks: access, connectors, data checks and rollout. Finance goes first as a proving run, with the control room straight behind.
Customer view: Sharon wants account managers to see incidents before the client rings. She accepted the nightly refresh but asked about something faster later.
Commercial: Laura restated the order form: Growth, £40k a year, forty licensed users, term to 4 Jun 2026. Sharon said anything affecting budget goes through the proper channel, and she would commit nothing on the call.
Watch: Client codes differ across three systems for about two thousand clients, and one admin is a single point of failure. Call recordings are sensitive, so access roles need agreeing.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Onboarding access and mapping
Importance
neutral
Sentiment
positive
Voice
champion
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Laura Penhaligon to send the runbook, role definition and summary, and book a control-room export follow-up.
- Kamal Hussein to pull the three client lists and nominate a second admin.
- Sharon Tilley to send the access rules and choose test clients.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Client codes differ across the control room, finance and CRM, so the mapping needs account manager review.
- A single admin is a single point of failure until Kamal Hussein names a deputy.
- Nightly refresh may fall short of expectations set by weekend incidents.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Sharon Tilley asked about faster-than-nightly data, which could be a later conversation.
- A successful test on the retail client incident could prove the value to account managers.
Transcript
Laura PenhaligonHello, hello. Can you hear me all right? I've got the recording going, so apologies in advance for anything I say.
Kamal HusseinYeah, I can hear you. Afternoon, Laura.
Sharon TilleyAfternoon. Sorry, two minutes, I'm just getting out of a corridor. Right. Better. Can you see me?- Laura PenhaligonI can see you and I can hear you, so that's the technical part done. How's your Monday going?
- Sharon TilleyBusy. Honestly, it's been the incident of the week and it's only half past two on Monday. Do you want the short version?
- Laura PenhaligonPlease. I think it helps me to hear what you're actually dealing with, because it shapes what we build first.
- Sharon TilleySo, an alarm activation at one of our retail clients over the weekend. The control room did everything right, keyholder called, patrol dispatched, all logged. But the account manager found out on Monday morning when the client rang her, and she had nothing in front of her. No incident, no site notes, nothing. What did the client hear from us? Nothing. They heard from their own shop manager.
- Kamal HusseinAnd the control-room log and the account manager's client list don't share a key. That's the bit I keep coming back to.
- Sharon TilleyWhich is exactly why we bought this. Sorry, I don't want to turn this into a rant. It's just fresh.
- Laura PenhaligonNo, that's useful, honestly. That's the picture I want in my head: an account manager opens one place and sees the client, the sites, the incident from Saturday night, the calls and where they are on invoices. So let's use today to get the plan for that straight.
- Laura PenhaligonKamal, you normally open with the tickets, I gather. Anything open?
- Kamal HusseinNothing open. Which is a bit of a false comfort, because we haven't connected anything yet. I've got a short list of questions instead, if that's all right.
- Laura PenhaligonPerfect. Let me share my screen and put the plan up, and you can throw questions at it as we go. One second. Can you see the plan?
- Sharon TilleyI see a table. Make it bigger? There we go. Thanks.
- Laura PenhaligonSo the contract first, just so we're all reading from the same page. You signed the order form on 5 Jun 2025, you're on Growth, and the annual figure is £39,600. That includes forty licensed users, and the term runs to 4 Jun 2026. The implementation is the fixed-fee piece we agreed up front, so none of what we do over the next few weeks changes that number.
- Sharon TilleyGood. I'll say it now so nobody's surprised later: anything that moves the budget goes through the proper channel on our side. I'm not going to commit anything on this call.
- Laura PenhaligonUnderstood, and I'm not asking you to. I'm only describing what's already in the order form.
- Laura PenhaligonThe plan has four blocks. One, access and the Snowflake set-up. Two, the connectors, in the order we agreed. Three, checking the data against what you know to be true. Four, getting people using it, starting with the account managers and the control room. Does that order feel right?
- Kamal HusseinMostly. I'd want to talk about block one properly, because that's where I could break something.
- Laura PenhaligonGo on.
- Kamal HusseinB-Viz runs inside our Snowflake account, yes? So it's our environment, our roles, our data staying where it is. What I need to know is what you want from me, in terms of accounts and permissions, and what happens if I need to take something away again.
- Laura PenhaligonYes, that's right. It all lives in your account. What we ask for is a dedicated role and a warehouse for the build, with read access on the source schemas and write access only on the area B-Viz owns. Nothing touches your live systems directly. The connectors read from them.
- Kamal HusseinRead only on the sources. Good. And if we want to pause it?
- Laura PenhaligonYou revoke the role and it stops. It's in the runbook I'll send you after, with the backout steps written down. I'd rather you had that before we start than after.
- Kamal HusseinRight. That's what I wanted to hear. I don't change anything live without a backout, so if it's written down I'm comfortable.
- Sharon TilleyThat's Kamal in a sentence. Never guesses.
- Kamal HusseinI'll take that.
- Laura PenhaligonHa. It's a good habit in this job, believe me. So for block one, Kamal, you're the owner on your side. I'll send you the role definition tomorrow, you review it, and we get the environment ready this week.
- Kamal HusseinThat works. I'll check it against our access policy before I create anything.
- Laura PenhaligonBrilliant. Block two, the connectors. Looking at the order form, the ones you've asked for are the rostering system, the control-room system, the finance system, the call recorder and the CRM. Is that still the list?
- Sharon TilleyYes. And if I had to rank them by pain, control room first, then the CRM, then finance. Rostering and the call recorder are important, but they're the second wave.
- Kamal HusseinI'd flip two of those. Finance is cleaner than the control room. If we start there, we get a connector live quickly and we learn how the client list behaves.
- Sharon TilleyHmm. I see the logic. But what do I tell the account managers? They're not waiting for invoices, they're waiting for incidents.
- Laura PenhaligonCan I suggest both? The finance connector is quick to bring up, so we do it first as a proving run, probably within the first few days, and the control room follows straight after. Account managers would see incidents only a little later than your first choice, and we'd have a cleaner client list underneath when they do.
- Sharon TilleyHow much later is a little?
- Laura PenhaligonDays, not weeks. I'd rather not promise a precise day until Kamal has looked at the control-room export. The order form has a commitment for each connector, and I'll hold us to those.
- Sharon TilleyFine. Finance first as a trial, control room straight behind. Kamal, you happy?
- Kamal HusseinHappy. Though the control-room one is where I'll need to check a few things. Can I ask about client codes?
- Laura PenhaligonPlease do. That's the thing I was going to raise anyway.
- Kamal HusseinSo we've got the same client in three places. The control room has its own code. The finance system has an account reference. And the account managers' CRM records have the company name, typed by whoever created them. Which client code is that, when someone says a client name? Depends who you ask.
- Sharon TilleySadly, true. And some clients have several sites under one account, some have a separate account per site. It's grown over the years.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's very normal, and it's actually the heart of the job. What we do is build a mapping table: one row per client, with the control-room code, the finance reference and the CRM record side by side. B-Viz then uses that to join everything. The question is who owns it.
- Kamal HusseinI'd start it. I can pull the three lists and match what's obvious. But someone in the business has to confirm the odd ones.
- Sharon TilleyLet's get the account managers on it. They know their clients better than any spreadsheet. I'll ask the team leads to nominate one person each to review the doubtful matches.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's ideal. Kamal drafts, the account managers confirm, and I'll set up a simple review sheet so they only see the rows that need a decision. How many clients are we talking about, roughly?
- Sharon TilleyAbout two thousand business clients, give or take. Most of them will match on the first pass, I'd hope.
- Kamal HusseinI'd expect the majority to. It's the ones with a trading name and a registered name that cause trouble.
- Laura PenhaligonYes, those and the ones that merged or moved sites. I'll give you a list of the usual suspects so you can look for them up front.
- Sharon TilleySorry, can I go back a second? Sites. Which site, which shift? That's what the control room asks every single time. Will B-Viz know the site as well as the client?
- Laura PenhaligonIf the control-room data carries the site, then yes. The mapping gives us the client level, and the site comes through from the control-room records underneath. Kamal, does the export have a site field?
- Kamal HusseinIt does. There's a site name and a shift pattern against each incident. I'll check how consistent the site names are, because I suspect they were typed in by hand.
- Sharon TilleyThey were. By people on a night shift, with a kettle.
- Laura PenhaligonThen we'll find out quickly. That's what block three is for: we load it, then we compare what B-Viz says with what you know. You pick a few clients you know inside out, and we check that their sites and last incidents look right.
- Sharon TilleyI'll use the retail client from this weekend. I know exactly what should show.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's a perfect test. If B-Viz can show that incident next to the account manager's notes and the client's last call, we've proved the point.
- Kamal HusseinCan I ask about refresh? When the data comes in, how often does it update? Because the control room is live all night.
- Laura PenhaligonThe standard is a nightly refresh, so by the start of the working day the account managers have everything up to the previous evening. It isn't a live feed. So for the Saturday night incident, they'd see it on Monday morning, rather than at four in the morning.
- Sharon TilleyHmm. That's still a lot better than finding out from the client. But I'd like to understand if there's anything faster later. Not today, I'm just flagging it.
- Laura PenhaligonNoted, and I'll write it down as a question for later rather than promise something. For now the nightly refresh is what you've bought, and I'd like to make that rock solid first.
- Sharon TilleyFair.
- Kamal HusseinOne more on that. If a nightly load fails, who finds out? I don't want to discover it on a Tuesday when someone says the numbers look old.
- Laura PenhaligonGood question. During onboarding I'll watch the loads myself and tell you the same day if one is late. After that, you'd see freshness in the admin view, and I'll show you where when we get there. If something's wrong, raise a ticket and say which connector. You'll get an update every time.
- Kamal HusseinGood. I'll check the connector first anyway, before I raise anything.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's what I'd hope. Right, block four, people. You've got forty licences. Sharon, who do you want in first?
- Sharon TilleyThe account managers, definitely. Then the control-room supervisors, not every operator. Credit control after that, because they'll want invoices next to incidents. I'd rather not hand it out to everyone and find nobody uses it.
- Laura PenhaligonThat's sensible. A smaller group that's really using it beats forty people who log in once. I'd suggest a first group of account managers and supervisors, and we add credit control once the finance data's settled.
- Kamal HusseinI'll be an admin, obviously. Should Sharon be one too?
- Sharon TilleyNo. Kamal does the admin, I'll be a user and the person who chases. Though if Kamal's ever away, who covers?
- Laura PenhaligonGood thing to raise now. I'd recommend a second admin, even if it's a deputy from IT, so you're not relying on one person. It doesn't cost anything extra as far as the order form goes, it just needs a name.
- Kamal HusseinI can nominate someone from my team. I'll put it in the runbook so the hand-over is clean.
- Sharon TilleyDo that. I don't want a single point of failure for something the account managers are going to rely on.
- Laura PenhaligonGreat. So, to pull out the owners. Kamal owns access and the Snowflake set-up, the client mapping draft and the connector checks. Sharon owns the account manager nominations and the choice of test clients. I own the build, the loads and the runbook. Does that match what you heard?
- Sharon TilleyYes. Add the second admin to Kamal's list.
- Kamal HusseinAlready did.
- Laura PenhaligonLovely. Is there anything on your minds that I haven't touched? Security, data, anything the account managers have been muttering about?
- Sharon TilleyOnly that some of the call recordings are sensitive. Clients talking about their premises, alarm codes sometimes, keyholders. I want to be sure that isn't open to everyone.
- Laura PenhaligonFair point, and worth deciding up front. Access follows the roles you set in Snowflake, so we can limit who sees call content. Kamal, we'd agree that with you when we do the role definition, and Sharon, you decide who should see what.
- Sharon TilleyI'll write it down tonight: account managers see their own clients, supervisors see everything for the control room, credit control sees finance only. Is that workable?
- Laura PenhaligonIt's a good starting point. Send it over and Kamal and I will turn it into roles. We can always adjust it once people are using it.
- Kamal HusseinSend it to me directly and I'll check it before anything is created.
- Sharon TilleyWill do. Right, I need to run, there's a client call at three that I can't move. Anything else from me?
- Laura PenhaligonNot from me. I'll send a summary this afternoon with the runbook and the role definition. Kamal, I'll book a short follow-up with you this week for the control-room export.
- Kamal HusseinFine by me. I'll have the three client lists pulled by then.
- Sharon TilleyBrilliant. Thanks both, this has been useful. Speak soon.
- Laura PenhaligonThanks, Sharon. Bye for now. Kamal, stay on for two minutes if you can, there's one small thing about the admin view.
- Kamal HusseinYes, I'm here.
- Laura PenhaligonIt's nothing heavy. I just want to show you where connector status and freshness sit, so you know what you're looking at on day one. Let me share it again.
- Kamal HusseinGo ahead. I'll make notes for the runbook.
- Laura PenhaligonSo this is a demo environment, not yours yet. Here's the connector list, each with a status and a last-loaded time. If one goes quiet, it shows up here before anyone notices in the answers.
- Kamal HusseinThat's what I'd check first, then. Last-loaded time per connector. Good.
- Laura PenhaligonExactly. And if you ever change something in a source system, a field name, a new version, tell me or raise a ticket beforehand if you can. That's the usual reason a connector stops loading.
- Kamal HusseinI always write the change down first. I'll add a line to the runbook: tell B-Viz before touching a source. Is that fair?
- Laura PenhaligonThat's more than fair, thank you. Right, I'll let you go. Summary and role definition coming your way today and tomorrow.
- Kamal HusseinThanks, Laura. Speak soon. Kamal.
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