Merriott Lyle Distribution / BG-Demo – Demo
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Merriott Lyle Distribution · 27 Dec 2024 14:30
Second demo for Deepa Chauhan and Tariq Saleem. Deepa called it the right sort of tool and needs paperwork to take upstairs. Lewis Kerr repeated £146k all in, plus VAT. Decision target remains 14 Feb 2025.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Second demo for Deepa Chauhan and Tariq Saleem. Deepa called it the right sort of tool and needs paperwork to take upstairs. Lewis Kerr repeated £146k all in, plus VAT. Decision target remains 14 Feb 2025.
What happened: Hannah Lowe showed matching across branch accounts, a plain-English dispute and overdue query, connector health and access views. Tariq wants to try a proper extract, not the sample.
Customer view: Deepa said it was more useful than she expected and is the right sort of tool for the problem. Her worry is the regions: if branch managers feel watched, it dies.
Commercial: Lewis gave £146k for Enterprise, implementation included, plus VAT, and not the annual subscription alone. Deepa described the date as firm for her but softer for the budget holders.
Watch: Tariq is comfortable only in principle until he sees the connector list and security answers. The implementation timeline was not given.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Enterprise demo, commercials
Importance
upsell
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 to send the proposal with figures split out and the VAT position clear.
- Hannah Lowe to put the architecture, security answers and connector list in writing.
- Tariq Saleem to send the branch system sample layout to Hannah.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- The budget holders are less firm on the 14 Feb 2025 date than Deepa.
- Regional resistance if branch managers feel watched could stall adoption.
- Tariq wants a proper extract, the connector list and security answers before committing.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Enterprise fits all three teams, with single sign-on, SCIM and a security review.
- A January session with credit control and regional directors could build internal backing.
Transcript
Lewis KerrHello, hello. Can you all hear me alright?
Deepa ChauhanLoud and clear. Good afternoon, Lewis.- Lewis KerrGood afternoon. I imagine it's a quiet week at your end.
- Deepa ChauhanVery. Half of head office is off. The branches are open, mind, so the phones still go, and the credit control team are in because month end doesn't care what day it is.
Tariq SaleemAfternoon. Sorry, just getting the screen sorted. I'm in the one meeting room with a working display. Right, I can see you now.
Hannah LoweAfternoon, both. Hannah here, I'm the Solutions Engineer. Lewis has told me a bit about what you're after, but before I share anything, what do you most need to know by the end of the hour?- Deepa ChauhanOne thing, really. I need to see one trade account, all in one place. Orders, disputes, the calls our key-account people have had, the invoices. Today a branch manager rings credit control, credit control rings sales, and everyone is looking at a different spreadsheet.
- Hannah LoweGood, that's exactly where I'd like to start, then. And Tariq, what would you want to be sure of?
- Tariq SaleemHonestly, which connector, and does it load every night. Our branch system and the CRM don't agree on what an account is. That's a mapping question and it's been a pain for years. If your thing just makes a prettier version of the mess, I'm not interested.
- Hannah LoweFair. To be precise, it won't fix the mapping for you by magic, but it will show you where the two systems disagree, and I'll show you how that looks. Lewis, anything from you before I share?
- Lewis KerrJust to confirm what we're working towards. You're looking at Enterprise, for the branch, key-account and credit-control teams together, and the aim is a decision by Friday 14 February 2025. Have I got that right, Deepa?
- Deepa ChauhanThat's the target, yes. I'd say it's firm for me and a bit softer for the people who hold the budget, but yes.
- Lewis KerrUnderstood. Over to you, Hannah.
- Hannah LoweRight. Sharing now. Can you see a page with a search box at the top?
- Tariq SaleemYes, I see it. Bit small.
- Hannah LoweLet me make that bigger. Better? Okay. So what you're looking at is built on the sample extracts Tariq sent over before Christmas. The branch system orders, the CRM accounts, the helpdesk tickets and a handful of call recordings. All of it sits in a Snowflake account, not ours, which I'll come back to.
- Deepa ChauhanMm. Which account are you showing?
- Hannah LoweOne of the plumbing contractors from the sample. I've left the name as it came through so you recognise it. If I type it in, this is the account page. Orders on the left, open disputes in the middle, and on the right the last calls and emails that mention them.
- Deepa ChauhanHold on, go back. That dispute at the top. Which branch raised that?
- Hannah LoweGood question, it's right there. Click on it and it tells you the branch, the date and the ticket it came from. So the short answer is you can see it. The longer answer is that it only knows the branch because your helpdesk export carried a branch code, so the quality is as good as what you feed it.
- Deepa ChauhanThat's fine. I'd rather it told me honestly. Show me where that number comes from, the balance.
- Hannah LoweSure. Every figure has a source link. If I open this one, it points to the invoice rows from the accounting extract and the date they were loaded. Nothing is calculated that you can't trace back.
- Tariq SaleemCan I ask about the match? How did it decide that these two rows were the same trade account? Because in our world one contractor can have three account numbers across three branches.
- Hannah LoweYes. That's the part I wanted you to see, Tariq. Give me a second to bring up the matching view.
- Hannah LoweOkay. So here, it's grouped three branch accounts under one CRM organisation, and it's shown you why. Same company registration reference in the data, same billing contact, similar name. And this one down here it's not sure about, so it's flagged it rather than merging.
- Tariq SaleemRight. So it asks me.
- Hannah LoweIt asks you. And what you decide is written down, so the next person sees the reason.
- Tariq SaleemMm. I like that. I'll check the load log on our side, because I think that one is a genuine duplicate. But yes, that's the right behaviour. I don't want anything changed quietly.
- Deepa ChauhanAnd Tariq, you'd tell me before any of those mappings changed. We agreed that.
- Tariq SaleemAlways. That's not up for debate.
- Deepa ChauhanGood. Sorry, Hannah, carry on.
- Hannah LoweNo, that's useful. Right, let me do the thing I think matters most for your credit control people. I'll ask it a question in plain English.
- Hannah LoweSo I've typed: which trade accounts have an open dispute and an invoice more than a month overdue, and a call with our key-account team in the last quarter. Give it a moment.
- Deepa ChauhanOh. Right. That's, that's what I've been trying to get out of three different reports.
- Hannah LoweIt's a short list, because the sample is small. On your full data it'll be longer. But notice each line says which of the three conditions it met and links to the evidence.
- Deepa ChauhanWhich is what lets us get credit control in the room with the regional directors and nobody argues about whose spreadsheet is right. That's my monthly account-data review, honestly, that's the whole meeting.
- Lewis KerrDeepa, to put a number on it, how many people come to that review at the moment?
- Deepa ChauhanCredit control, the regional directors, a couple of key-account managers, Tariq when he can. Maybe a dozen. And half of it is spent agreeing which numbers to use.
- Lewis KerrRight. That's helpful for how we think about the value case later.
- Tariq SaleemHannah, the nightly part. When does the data refresh? Because the branch managers start at seven and if they see yesterday's figures, they'll stop looking.
- Hannah LoweThe nightly refresh is complete by 07:00 your local time on business days. That's the commitment on every tier, Enterprise included. What I won't promise is that a slow source system never delays it, which is why the freshness shows on every page. Look, top right, last loaded.
- Tariq SaleemOkay. And if a connector breaks? Say we upgrade the branch system and the export format changes.
- Hannah LoweThen the records indexed for that source go flat, and you'd see it before anyone complains. I'll show you the connector health page. This is where you'd look, and it's where we'd look too.
- Tariq SaleemYeah. That's what I'd want. Can I get notified rather than having to look?
- Hannah LoweYou can. I'll put the exact options in writing so I don't describe it wrongly from memory.
- Deepa ChauhanCan I ask about who sees what? Some of the key-account notes are not for every branch. And the regions will ask me, I know they will.
- Hannah LoweYes. Permissions follow your existing groups. On Enterprise you'd connect single sign-on and SCIM, so someone leaving the company drops out of the brain the same day they drop out of your directory. I'll show you the access view.
- Deepa ChauhanRight. So I could say a branch manager sees their own branch and the account summary, but not the key-account notes.
- Hannah LoweThat's the shape of it, yes. I'd want to design it with you rather than promise the exact switches today.
- Deepa ChauhanThat's the answer I wanted. I'm not going to tell the regions it does something until it does it.
- Tariq SaleemSecurity will want to know where the data physically lives. Our IT lead is going to ask me and I'd rather not get it wrong.
- Hannah LoweIt lives in your Snowflake account. We deploy into it and run there, so the data doesn't move to us. For an Enterprise customer I'd also take your team through the security review step by step. If there's a question I'm not certain of, I'll check with a colleague on our security side before I answer, and then put it in writing.
- Tariq SaleemGood. Send it in writing and I'll pass it straight on.
- Hannah LoweWill do. Let me show you one more thing before we get to the commercial side, because I think the call recordings are the part people don't expect.
- Hannah LoweSo this is one of the sample calls, tied to the same contractor. I've asked what the customer said about delivery problems. It's pulled the passages and the date of the call, and you can see it sits next to the dispute from earlier.
- Deepa ChauhanWhich is the thing. The key-account manager knew about the delivery trouble. Credit control chased the invoice anyway. Nobody did anything wrong, they just couldn't see each other.
- Hannah LoweExactly, and that's no one's fault, it's the view. Okay, I'll stop sharing and hand back to Lewis. Any questions on what you've seen?
- Tariq SaleemJust the one. The connectors. How many are we talking about, for what we've described?
- Hannah LoweFrom what you've told me, the branch system, the CRM, the helpdesk, the call recorder, the accounting system, your email, and probably the document store. That's comfortably inside what Enterprise includes. I'll write the list down and we'll confirm it before anything is committed.
- Tariq SaleemFine. I'll send the sample layout for the branch system so you can check the list against it.
- Lewis KerrThanks, Hannah. If I may, a few minutes on the commercials, so nothing is a surprise later. Deepa, are you comfortable talking numbers with Tariq here?
- Deepa ChauhanYes, go ahead. Tariq knows the shape. I'll need to take it to the person who signs off the budget, so just be clear on what's in it.
- Lewis KerrOf course. For Enterprise, the total comes to £146,500, and that's all in. Implementation is included in that figure. It's not the annual subscription on its own, and I'd rather be clear about that so nobody reads it as the yearly price. That is plus VAT.
- Deepa ChauhanSo, the one-off and the first year together.
- Lewis KerrThat's the way to read it, yes. I'll set out the split in the written proposal, with each line shown, because I don't quote from memory on a figure like this.
- Deepa ChauhanPlease do. Show it to me line by line. I'll ask you what's in each one and I'd rather ask you before I ask anyone senior.
- Lewis KerrThat's sensible. And you've heard the other side of it from Hannah today. I won't push you towards anything the usage doesn't support. If the first phase is narrower, we can talk about that.
- Tariq SaleemWhat about the timeline? If we signed in February, how long before branch managers are looking at this?
- Hannah LoweEnterprise implementation is planned over a number of weeks and it depends how quickly the security review and the connectors move. I'd rather give you a proper plan in the proposal than a number off the top of my head.
- Tariq SaleemFair enough.
- Deepa ChauhanCan I say what worries me, so it's on the record? It's the regions. If this lands badly, if a branch manager thinks head office is watching them, it dies. I'd want credit control and a couple of branch managers involved from the start, not told afterwards.
- Lewis KerrThat's a good principle, and it's the kind of thing we'd build into the plan. Hannah, I think that fits the way you'd run onboarding?
- Hannah LoweIt does. The accounts that stick are the ones where the people using it helped choose what it shows. I'll include a short session with the branch managers in the outline.
- Deepa ChauhanGood. Then I think we're in a decent place. It's the right sort of tool for the problem. I need the paperwork to take upstairs, and I need Tariq comfortable on the connectors.
- Tariq SaleemI'm comfortable in principle. I want to see the list and the security answers, and I want to try a proper extract, not the sample.
- Lewis KerrUnderstood. So let me read back what happens next. I'll send the proposal over today, with the figures split out and the VAT position clear. Hannah will put the architecture and the security answers in writing, and the connector list. Tariq, you send the sample layout of the branch system.
- Tariq SaleemYes. I'll get it to Hannah once I'm back at my desk.
- Deepa ChauhanAnd I'll sort a session with credit control and a couple of the regional directors after the new year, so they can see what you've shown us. Would you two join that?
- Hannah LoweHappily. I'll bring the same sample and we can go further on the disputes view, since that's what they'll care about.
- Lewis KerrAnd I'll keep an eye on the date. We're working towards Friday 14 February 2025, so there's room, but not a great deal of it.
- Deepa ChauhanThat's fine. Thanks, both. This was more useful than I expected, to be honest.
- Tariq SaleemCheers. Speak soon, and enjoy what's left of the week.
- Lewis KerrYou too. Goodbye for now.
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