Merriott Lyle Distribution / BB-Demo – Demo
Callcompleted
Merriott Lyle Distribution · 2024-12-17 11:15
Deepa Chauhan wants one trade account view across orders, disputes, calls and invoices. Lewis Kerr quoted £146k all in, ex VAT, including implementation. Decision target is 14 Feb 2025; proposal promised the same day.
What was said
What this says
Current to 13 Oct 26Deepa Chauhan wants one trade account view across orders, disputes, calls and invoices. Lewis Kerr quoted £146k all in, ex VAT, including implementation. Decision target is 14 Feb 2025; proposal promised the same day.
What happened: Hannah Lowe demoed the brain on Merriott Lyle sample extracts: account timeline, a plain-English query with source links, and a credit control dashboard. Tariq Saleem probed where it runs, the nightly load and account-code mapping.
Customer view: Deepa said credit control and key-account managers on one screen is what she has tried to get for about two years. She wants all three teams on it from the start, and Tariq said single sign-on is a must.
Commercial: Lewis placed them on Enterprise and quoted £146k as the whole deal, implementation included and not an annual price. Deepa called the 14 Feb 2025 date a target rather than a promise.
Watch: Visibility of credit control call summaries, a mapping change log and batch timing were left for written follow-up. The budget holder is not on the call.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Theme
Enterprise demo, single account view
Importance
upsell
Sentiment
positive
Voice
decision-maker
Who was there
BB-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Lewis Kerr to send the proposal with one-off and subscription parts split out.
- Hannah Lowe to send access options, change-log detail and security questionnaire answers.
- Tariq Saleem to send the branch system batch schedule.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Deepa described 14 Feb 2025 as a target, not a promise.
- Role-based visibility of credit control call summaries is unresolved and may worry the regional directors.
- Account mapping changes and the branch system batch window still need design work.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- Enterprise fit for branch, key-account and credit-control teams together, with single sign-on and a security review.
- A credit control session in January could widen internal support.
Transcript
Lewis Kerr NoneMorning, everyone. Can you all hear me alright?
Deepa Chauhan NoneMorning, Lewis. Yes, loud and clear. Tariq's just joining, I can see him in the lobby.
Tariq Saleem NoneSorry, sorry. I had a mapping job running and the laptop decided to update itself. Morning, all.
Hannah Lowe NoneMorning, Tariq. No harm done, we've only just started. Lewis, shall I wait before I share my screen?- Lewis Kerr NoneYes, give me a minute to set the scene. Deepa, Tariq, thanks for making the time before Christmas. I know it's a busy fortnight for you.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneIt's always busy. Year end for the branches and everyone wants their account queries sorted before the shutdown. So this is a good week to be looking at it, honestly.
- Lewis Kerr NoneGood. So, just to confirm where we are. You're looking at Enterprise, you'd like to have a decision in the new year, and the date we've pencilled in for that is Friday 14 February 2025. Is that still right, or has anything moved?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThat's still right. I'd say the date is a target rather than a promise, but it's the date I've given upwards. The one thing I need from today is to see a single trade account the way a branch manager would see it. Orders, disputes, calls, invoices, all in one place. If I can see that, I can go back and make the case properly.
- Hannah Lowe NoneThat's a good place to start. Before I share anything, what would you most like to know about how it's put together? I can go through the architecture first, or I can show you the account view and then explain what's underneath.
- Tariq Saleem NoneAccount view first, I think. Then I'll want the architecture. Which connector feeds what, and where the matching happens. That's the bit that's hurt us before.
- Hannah Lowe NoneFine. Sharing now. You should see a browser. Can you see it?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneYes, I can see it. A bit small. Can you make it bigger?
- Hannah Lowe NoneIs that better? I'll zoom in a bit more. Right. What you're looking at is the brain, running on the sample data we loaded from the extracts you sent across. So these are your trade accounts, not made-up ones. I've picked one with a bit of history so there's something to see.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneWhich account, which branch? Sorry, force of habit. I'd like to know which branch that one belongs to.
- Hannah Lowe NoneIt's a plumbing contractor that buys from two branches, and you can see both on the page. To be precise, the account is one record in the brain, and the branch system's two account codes both point at it. That's the matching Tariq mentioned. I'll come back to how it's done.
- Tariq Saleem NoneMm. That's the part I'd want to see the rules for. But go on, let's see the page first.
- Hannah Lowe NoneSo, top of the page is the summary: who looks after the account, which branches serve it, the current position on invoices. Underneath you get a timeline. Orders as they came in, then a dispute raised by the customer about a delivery, then two calls from your credit control team, then the invoices, with the ones that are overdue marked.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneRight. So this is the thing. If I'm the key-account manager and I ring that customer, I know that credit control spoke to them on Thursday and that there's a dispute still open. I'm not walking in blind.
- Hannah Lowe NoneExactly that. And the calls are from the call recorder, so you can open the summary of each one without listening to the whole thing. If the dispute came in by email, it sits in the same timeline.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneCan I ask a silly question? Who can see the call summaries? Because credit control conversations are sometimes a bit blunt, and I don't want every branch manager reading everything.
- Hannah Lowe NoneNot a silly question at all. The short answer is that visibility follows roles you set, and it can be set by team. The longer answer is that it depends on how you want to model it, and I'd rather not wing it in a demo. I'll put that in writing, with the options, so you can decide who sees what.
- Deepa Chauhan NonePlease do. That's one for the regional directors as well.
- Lewis Kerr NoneNoted, Hannah. I'll make sure that goes into the proposal pack as well so it's all in one place.
- Hannah Lowe NoneNow, the bit people usually like. I'll ask it a question rather than clicking about. Give me a second to type. Which trade accounts have an open dispute and have also had a credit control call in the last fortnight?
- Tariq Saleem NoneThat's a join across three systems, that one. We'd usually do it with a spreadsheet and some patience.
- Hannah Lowe NoneRight, it's thinking. Yes, here it comes. A list of accounts, each with the dispute, the call, and a link back to the source record. And this column here tells you where each statement came from, so you're not just trusting it.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneShow me where that number comes from. Click on the first one.
- Hannah Lowe NoneOf course. So that opens the underlying dispute record in the helpdesk extract, and the call summary next to it. You can see the dates match what the answer said.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneGood. That's what I need to be able to say to Credit Control. They don't trust anything they can't trace.
- Tariq Saleem NoneOkay. Architecture, then. I'll be the awkward one. Where does this actually run? Because I've had vendors say it's in their cloud and then it turns out our data's been copied somewhere.
- Hannah Lowe NoneThat's the right thing to ask. It runs inside your Snowflake account. We don't hold a copy on our side. The connectors land the data in your account, the brain is built there, and the queries run there. If you switched us off tomorrow, the data stays where it is, with you.
- Tariq Saleem NoneAnd we already have a Snowflake account, so there's no new platform for me to run.
- Hannah Lowe NoneCorrect. We'd want a dedicated area in it, with roles we agree with you, and then we load into that.
- Tariq Saleem NoneFine. Next one. The nightly load. Our branch system finishes its batch late some nights. What happens if the brain refreshes before it's done?
- Hannah Lowe NoneThe refresh is designed to be complete by 07:00 your time on business days. If the source isn't ready, the connector picks up what's there and the brain says when it was last refreshed, so nobody is misled. The longer answer is that we'd look at your batch window in the design stage and set the schedule around it. I wouldn't promise anything specific about your branch system until I've seen its load pattern.
- Tariq Saleem NoneThat's a fair answer. I'll send you the batch schedule. Which connector would that be, in your terms?
- Hannah Lowe NoneWhichever one we build for the branch system. For the CRM and the helpdesk and the call recorder those are standard. The branch system is the one where we'd do some design with you.
- Tariq Saleem NoneRight. That's a mapping question, then. The account codes. Two codes in the branch system, one account in the CRM, and sometimes the other way round.
- Hannah Lowe NoneYes. What I showed you, with the two codes pointing at one account, is a mapping table that sits in your Snowflake account. You own it. When a match is wrong, you or Tariq's team correct it in the table, and the brain follows on the next refresh.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneAnd that's the thing I'd want to be careful with. If Tariq changes a mapping, I want to know about it before the branch managers see an account jump.
- Tariq Saleem NoneI'd tell you first. I always do. But yes, a change log on the table would help, so it's not just me remembering.
- Hannah Lowe NoneThere is a record of changes. I'll confirm exactly what it captures and put that in the write-up, rather than say from memory.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneGood. Hannah, can you show me the credit control view? The one where they see everything overdue by account.
- Hannah Lowe NoneYes. Give me a moment, I need to switch pages. Right, this is a dashboard built on the same data. Overdue invoices grouped by account, with the last contact date and the open disputes next to each.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneSo credit control and the key-account managers could be looking at the same screen in the same meeting. Which is what I've been trying to get for about two years.
- Lewis Kerr NoneThat's a good point to make. Deepa, you mentioned a monthly account-data review. Is that where you'd see this being used first?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneYes. I chair it. Credit control, sales and the regional directors. At the moment we each bring our own spreadsheet and spend half the meeting working out whose is right. Let's get credit control in the room with one view and see what changes.
- Lewis Kerr NoneUnderstood. I'll come to commercials in a moment, but one thing on scope, because it affects how we describe this. You'd want branch, key-account and credit-control teams all on it from the start, not one team first?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneAll three. That's the whole point. If it's only one team, it's another tool.
- Lewis Kerr NoneThen Enterprise is the right fit, and I'm saying that because of what you've just described, not because it's what I'd like to sell. It's company-wide, it includes single sign-on and user provisioning from your directory, and it comes with a security review that Hannah runs with your IT team.
- Tariq Saleem NoneSingle sign-on is a must for us. I don't want another set of passwords for branch staff to forget.
- Hannah Lowe NoneUnderstood, and that's included at Enterprise. For the security review, I'd send you our standard questionnaire answers first, so your IT team can see what's covered before anyone sits in a meeting. If there's a question I'm not certain of, I check with our security lead before I answer it. I'd rather be slow and right.
- Tariq Saleem NoneGood. That's the answer I wanted. Last place I dealt with, someone told me something was bank-grade and couldn't tell me what that meant.
- Hannah Lowe NoneI'm not going to say that to you. I'd rather tell you precisely what the controls are and what they're not.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneLewis, so we're clear on money. I can't go round anyone on that, so I need the numbers in a form I can pass up the chain. What's the number?
- Lewis Kerr NoneTo put a number on it, the total for the deal as it stands is £146,500. That's the whole value, with the implementation included, so please don't read it as an annual price. I'll split it out properly in the proposal so the one-off part and the subscription part are separate. And those figures are before VAT.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneOkay. So £146,500 all in, ex VAT, and you'll split it for me. That's what I'll tell them.
- Lewis Kerr NoneThat's right. And I won't quote anything from memory beyond that. The proposal will have the exact lines. I'll send that over today.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneToday, really? It's the seventeenth. I wasn't expecting it until after the break.
- Lewis Kerr NoneToday. It means you have it over the break if you want to read it with a coffee, and your sign-off has a fair run at it before the middle of February.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneFine. Thank you. Right, before we finish, can we go back to the dispute view? One more thing I'd like to see. I'd like Tariq to see it as well, from his side.
- Hannah Lowe NoneOf course. Tariq, what would you want to see from the admin side?
- Tariq Saleem NoneWhich connectors loaded last night, how many records, and whether any stopped loading. I'll check the load log myself usually, but if it's in one screen, I'd use it.
- Hannah Lowe NoneThat exists. I'll show you now. This is the connector status page. Each source, last load time, records indexed, and a flag when the count has gone flat for a while. A flat count is how you'd spot a source that's stopped feeding without anyone complaining.
- Tariq Saleem NoneThat's useful. I'd have found that out from a branch manager shouting. Much better to see it first.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneAnd that never turns into a blame question, Tariq. If a branch's data goes quiet, we ask why, we don't ask who.
- Tariq Saleem NoneAgreed. It's usually a system change nobody told me about.
- Lewis Kerr NoneThen let me close it out so we don't overrun. Hannah, you're sending the access options and the change-log detail, plus the questionnaire answers. Tariq, you're sending the batch schedule. Deepa, you'll look at the proposal and tell me who needs to see it. Is that fair?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneYes. And I'll get credit control a slot in January so they can see this themselves. If they're convinced, it's easy. If not, I'd rather hear it from them than guess.
- Hannah Lowe NoneI can run that session, or a shorter version of this demo, whichever suits. Just tell me who'll be there.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneWill do. Thanks, all. That was useful.
- Tariq Saleem NoneCheers. Speak soon.
- Lewis Kerr NoneThanks, everyone. Kind regards, and have a good Christmas if we don't speak before then.
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