Marlcliff Security Services / BG-Demo – Renewal
Callcompleted
Marlcliff Security Services · 28 Apr 2026 12:45
Finance Director Nigel Fairbrother agreed in principle to renew Growth at £44k plus VAT, against £40k now, after Jade Vowles' dashboard flagged four loss-making contracts. Training and a second admin were agreed.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Finance Director Nigel Fairbrother agreed in principle to renew Growth at £44k plus VAT, against £40k now, after Jade Vowles' dashboard flagged four loss-making contracts. Training and a second admin were agreed.
What happened: Lewis Kerr set out the renewal at £44k plus VAT against £40k contracted. Nigel said he was content to renew and asked for paper showing the same tier, users and connectors.
Customer view: Nigel had said he would not renew a tool nobody uses. He changed position because usage rose and Jade built a margin dashboard that found four retail contracts in the red.
Commercial: Lewis confirmed the order form is a straight renewal with no upgrade. Daniel Okafor said forty licences are held, about nine are active on an average day, and connectors are inside the Growth limit.
Watch: Nigel wants pounds, not percentages, on the paper. Jade is the only admin and Sharon Tilley promised a second name by Friday. Daniel also noted that questions concentrated in one person is a risk.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Renewal agreed, margin dashboard
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
positive
Voice
decision-maker
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Lewis Kerr sends the straight-renewal order form at £44,000 plus VAT, showing the 5 Jun 2026 renewal date.
- Daniel Okafor returns with training dates by the end of the following week.
- Sharon Tilley names a second admin by Friday.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Nine active users against forty licences leaves the value case reliant on wider adoption.
- Jade Vowles is the only admin until a second is named.
- Nigel Fairbrother wants no percentage increases without the pounds shown, so the paper must be explicit.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Training for credit control and area managers could lift use of the forty Growth licences.
- The margin dashboard shows investment in the dashboards builder that supports the renewal.
Transcript
Daniel OkaforAfternoon, everyone. Thanks for making time over lunch, I know it's a tight slot. Let me just check who's here. Sharon, Gavin, Nigel, Jade, and Lewis is with me. Have I missed anyone?
Sharon TilleyThat's all of us. Sorry, I've got a sandwich, ignore the crunching. We had a night shift handover go sideways this week, so I'm slightly frazzled.- Daniel OkaforOh no. Is it sorted?
- Sharon TilleySorted. Alarm activation at a depot, the client heard from us before they heard from anyone else, which is the whole point. Which site, which shift, all in the incident page within minutes. Anyway, that's not for today.
Gavin StokesWhat's changed since we last spoke? That's what I want to know before anything else.- Daniel OkaforFair question, Gavin. Short version, a lot more people are using it. Usage is up by about three quarters on the previous quarter, and no tickets at all from you in the last month, which I read as a good sign rather than silence. Jade has been a big part of that.
Nigel FairbrotherWho is actually using it? Nine people is not forty.- Daniel OkaforYou're right, Nigel, and I won't dress it up. You've got forty licensed users and on an average day it's nine or so active. But that's well up on where it was, and the people on it are the account managers and the control room leads, which is who Sharon wanted.
- Nigel FairbrotherMm. Numbers first, please. I'd rather hear the what and the so-what from Jade than from you two.
Lewis KerrBefore we do that, if I can just confirm what we're here to settle. Your contract runs to 4 Jun 2026 and renews on 5 Jun 2026. I'd like to agree the renewal today in principle, so I can get the order form to you and have it signed by 26 May 2026. Is that still the plan on your side?- Gavin StokesThat's the plan if the numbers stand up. Nigel?
- Nigel FairbrotherIf. Show me before the renewal, not after. That was the deal. Jade, over to you.
Jade VowlesOkay, great, thank you. I've got a few things to run through, and I'll share my screen in a second. First, can everyone see it? It's a dashboard I built last month in the dashboards builder. Second, I'll explain how it's put together, because Nigel said last time he didn't trust numbers he couldn't trace. And third, I want to show the retail ones, because they surprised me.- Sharon TilleyI can see it. Bit small. Can you zoom in?
- Jade VowlesIs that better? Right. So this is contract margin by client. Every row is a client contract. On the left is what we bill by the guarding hour, from the invoices in the accounting system. Then the hours we actually deliver, from the rota and the control room logs, and the cost of those hours. The last column is the margin.
- Nigel FairbrotherWhat's the margin as a percentage of? I never accept a percentage without the base.
- Jade VowlesGood, yes. It's a percentage of billed revenue for that contract over the last full quarter. You can click the cell and it shows the invoice lines underneath. I wanted that because I wouldn't believe it either if I couldn't open it up.
- Nigel FairbrotherGo on.
- Jade VowlesSo if I sort by margin, lowest first, there are four contracts at the top that are in the red. All four are retail clients. Shop-floor guarding, mostly weekend and late opening, plus the callouts when an alarm goes off out of hours. We bill them on the standard guarding rate, but the hours we deliver have crept up, because of extra patrols and a couple of long incident stays.
- Gavin StokesFour. Which four?
- Jade VowlesI can name them in the dashboard, but I haven't put them in the deck for the wider team yet. I wanted to check with you first. I didn't want account managers to open it and see their client flagged red without a conversation.
- Sharon TilleyGood call. Let's get the account managers on it, but properly, with context. Nobody wants a client contract flagged at them cold.
- Nigel FairbrotherI want the names. Send them to me and Gavin separately. And I want to know how long they've been losing money, not just last quarter.
- Jade VowlesI can do that. There's a trend view, which I'll show now. It goes back to when we first had the finance data connected. Can I check, I think this is right, but Daniel, can you confirm the accounting connector has the full history rather than only from go-live?
- Daniel OkaforIt goes back to before go-live, yes. We loaded the history at the start, and it refreshes overnight. So by the time you're in at the start of a business day it's up to date. Just to close the loop on that, I checked the refresh logs this morning and they're clean.
- Jade VowlesLovely. So, trend. You can see two of the four have been sliding for a while. The other two were fine until the new year, then something changed. I think it's the extra patrol frequency, but I don't know that, and I'd rather say so than guess.
- Gavin StokesDon't guess. Find out. What's the plan and who owns it?
- Sharon TilleyI'll own the operational side. I'll sit down with the account managers on those four and look at what we're delivering against what the contract says. If a client has asked for more patrols, someone should have told commercial.
- Nigel FairbrotherAnd I'll own the commercial side. If it's a pricing problem it's mine. If it's us over-delivering because nobody told the control room, that's Gavin's.
- Gavin StokesFine. By when?
- Sharon TilleyGive me two weeks for a first look. I'll report back to this group, not a separate email chain.
- Gavin StokesTwo weeks. Written down, Jade?
- Jade VowlesWritten down. I'll write it up for the team, with owners and the date.
- Daniel OkaforCan I add something, because I think it matters for how you think about the renewal? When Sharon first sponsored this, the idea was account managers, the control room and credit control seeing each client's sites, incidents, calls and invoices in one place. What Jade has just shown is that margin is a natural fifth thing sitting on top of that. You didn't ask us to build it. Jade built it herself in a couple of weeks.
- Jade VowlesWith a lot of help from the training notes, to be fair. I still have questions. Can you show me how the join between the rota and the invoices is built? I used the pages view, but I think there might be a tidier way, and I don't want to break it when I tweak it.
- Daniel OkaforOf course. How is the team finding the builder generally, by the way?
- Jade VowlesHonestly, better than I expected. Which report do they actually use is my constant question, and for the first time I can see that. The weekly client summary gets opened by nearly every account manager on Monday mornings. The margin one, nobody's seen yet. That's why I wanted to show you first.
- Nigel FairbrotherSo the thing I'm paying for has just found me four contracts where I'm losing money. What's that per contract?
- Jade VowlesPer contract, the worst is losing the most on the weekend hours. I can put the figures in a table for you. I don't want to read out numbers from memory and get one wrong, sorry.
- Nigel FairbrotherGood. Don't. Send me the table.
- Jade VowlesToday. Well, tomorrow morning, if that's okay. I want to double check two of the hours columns against the rota.
- Nigel FairbrotherTomorrow is fine.
- Lewis KerrIf I may, this is where I'd put the commercial side. To put a number on it, what we've got on the table is the renewal at £44,000, plus VAT. Today you're contracted at £39,600 a year, and that's what's been invoiced, so the step is the first-term arrangement coming off. Same Growth tier, same forty users, same eight connectors. Nothing else changes.
- Nigel FairbrotherForty-four thousand against thirty-nine six. So it's up. What do I get for the extra?
- Lewis KerrHonestly, the same product. The earlier figure reflected the discount on the first term, and discounts only apply to the first term. I'd rather say that plainly than dress it up as new features. What you're getting for it is a year in which usage has gone up a good deal, and a dashboard that, on your own account, has just flagged four contracts you didn't know were losing money.
- Nigel FairbrotherHm. That's fair. Dry, but fair.
- Gavin StokesNigel, you said usage was the thing. Usage is up. I want it used, not admired. Nine a day is not enough. What gets it to more?
- Daniel OkaforI think that's the right question, Gavin, and I'd be wary of promising a number I don't own. What I can say is where the headroom is. You've got forty licences. The control room and the account managers are the core, but credit control and the area managers are barely on. If Sharon and Jade agree, I could run a training session for those two groups, an hour each, and I'd come back to you by the end of next week with dates.
- Sharon TilleyCredit control, yes. They're the ones who'd love the invoice and call view. Area managers I'd do second. Let's get the account manager leads in the room for the first one, they'll pull the others along.
- Jade VowlesCan I ask a couple more things on that? One, will the training use our data or a demo set? Two, can I sit in so I can write the notes? Three, is there a way to see who has opened what, so I can follow up with people who haven't?
- Daniel OkaforYour own data, always, it's much more convincing. Yes, please do sit in, and I'd be glad of the help. And yes, there's an activity view per user. I'll show you that after the call if you've got ten minutes.
- Jade VowlesPerfect, thank you. I do.
- Nigel FairbrotherRight. Let me say where I am, because I don't want to go round in circles. Last time I said I would not renew a tool nobody uses. That was the position. The position now is that more people use it, and someone I employ has built something that earned its keep in one afternoon. That is more than I expected to say today.
- Gavin StokesGo on.
- Nigel FairbrotherSo. Forty-four thousand. I'm content to renew at that. Put it on paper and send it over. I'll want it to say the same tier, same users, same connectors, and nothing hidden.
- Lewis KerrUnderstood, and thank you, Nigel. I'll send the order form over today, with the price shown plus VAT, so there's no ambiguity. The renewal date on it will be 5 Jun 2026.
- Nigel FairbrotherAnd the thing I said about not accepting a percentage without the base. If your paper says anything is going up by a percentage, show me the pounds.
- Lewis KerrPounds only. It's the same Growth tier at £44,000, against the £39,600 you pay now.
- Nigel FairbrotherGood.
- Sharon TilleyI'll just say, for the record, that I'm pleased. I've been the one pushing this for a long while, and it's nice to have Nigel say something that isn't a question.
- Nigel FairbrotherDon't push it, Sharon.
- Sharon TilleyI wouldn't dream.
- Gavin StokesRight. Before we lose the thread. The renewal is agreed, subject to paper. The four contracts are with Sharon and Nigel, two weeks. The training is Daniel, with dates by the end of next week. Jade sends the table tomorrow. Anything missing?
- Daniel OkaforOne small thing from me, just to close the loop. Jade, you're the admin now, and Sharon and I talked a while back about having a second admin so it isn't resting on one person. Is that something you'd want to look at?
- Jade VowlesI'd welcome it, honestly. Not because I'm planning to disappear, I just don't like being the only person who knows how something's wired. Can I suggest someone from the control room? I'll talk to Sharon.
- Sharon TilleyYes, let's do that. I've got someone in mind. I'll come back to you both.
- Gavin StokesNames and dates, Sharon.
- Sharon TilleyName by Friday. Training slot after that.
- Gavin StokesGood.
- Lewis KerrCan I also check, on the connectors? I want to be sure I'm not about to send you paper that misses a source you've added since the last order form. Daniel, is anything in use that goes beyond the eight in the Growth tier?
- Daniel OkaforNo, you're inside the limit. I looked at it this morning. If you wanted to bring in another source later, we'd talk about it then, and I'd say that's a conversation for after the training, once you know what people actually want.
- Lewis KerrAgreed. I never push an upgrade the usage doesn't support, and it doesn't. So the order form is a straight renewal.
- Nigel FairbrotherAppreciated. That's rarer than you think.
- Lewis KerrI'll take that. Thank you.
- Jade VowlesSorry, one more from my list, if there's time. Can the margin dashboard be restricted so account managers only see their own clients? I think that matters, because I'd rather they see their own accounts first, and then we decide about the rest.
- Daniel OkaforYes, there are permissions on the dashboard. I'll show you how after this call, and it's in the training notes too. It's a sensible instinct, I'd do the same.
- Gavin StokesGood. Anything else? No? Then I'll let you all get back to your day.
- Daniel OkaforThank you all again for your time, it's been a really constructive conversation. Lewis will send the order form today, I'll come back to you on training dates, and Jade, stay on for a few minutes and I'll walk you through the permissions.
- Sharon TilleyThanks, all. Speak soon.
- Nigel FairbrotherSend me the table, Jade. Goodbye.
- Gavin StokesCheers. Bye.
- Lewis KerrThanks, everyone. Kind regards, and speak soon.
- Jade VowlesOkay, they've gone. Daniel, can I ask the permissions question properly, and then the one about the activity view? And is it all right if I record this bit so I can write it up for the team?
- Daniel OkaforOf course, the recorder is on anyway. Right, let me share my screen. Open the dashboard in edit mode, and in the top right you'll see a sharing panel. Have you got that?
- Jade VowlesYes. Sharing, and then a list of groups. Is that where I add the account managers?
- Daniel OkaforThat's it. Rather than adding people one at a time, you create a group and set the filter on the client owner field, so each person only sees rows where they are the owner. It means when someone joins or moves, you change the group and not the dashboard.
- Jade VowlesThat's so much tidier than what I was planning. I was going to build one copy per person.
- Daniel OkaforPlease don't, you'd regret it by the third reorganisation. Try it now on a test group, and tell me what you see.
- Jade VowlesOkay, making the group. Adding myself as a test member. Filter on owner. Saving. Oh, it's only showing me the clients I own, which is none, so it's blank. That's correct, isn't it?
- Daniel OkaforThat's exactly right. Blank means the filter is working. Add one of the account managers as the owner on a test row and it will appear.
- Jade VowlesBrilliant. And now the activity view, who has opened what?
- Daniel OkaforUnder the admin menu, usage by person. You can pick the last thirty days or a custom range, and sort by questions asked or pages opened. I'd start with questions asked, because it tells you who is getting value, not just who is looking.
- Jade VowlesRight, I see it. A few of the account managers are asking lots of questions, and then there's a long tail of people who've barely asked any. Is it a worry if one person asks a big share of them?
- Daniel OkaforIt's worth watching, yes. If it's all one person, the value sits with them. Spreading it is part of what the training is for. Now you can see who to start with.
- Jade VowlesThank you, this is really helpful. I'll write it up properly tonight and send it round, and I'll tell the account managers before I change anything.
- Daniel OkaforThat's the right order. Best wishes, Jade, and well done again on the dashboard.
- Jade VowlesThanks, Daniel. Speak soon.
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