Merriott Lyle Distribution / BG-Demo – Onboarding
Callcompleted
Merriott Lyle Distribution · 30 Apr 2025 09:45
Onboarding call on 30 Apr 2025 with Tariq Saleem. Connector order agreed, account matching in layers, and he confirmed Enterprise at £116k a year. One open ticket on branch system permissions.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Onboarding call on 30 Apr 2025 with Tariq Saleem. Connector order agreed, account matching in layers, and he confirmed Enterprise at £116k a year. One open ticket on branch system permissions.
What happened: Hamza Akhtar and Tariq agreed the connector order, with accounting moved ahead of the call recorder. Account matching will run in three layers and nothing is forced.
Customer view: Tariq has promised credit control the overnight position before their first call. Use has spread from his team to credit control, where one team leader is heavily engaged.
Commercial: Tariq checked the Enterprise price of £116k a year and the two hundred licensed users so he can answer finance. Hamza confirmed the order form and the invoiced figure match.
Watch: Tariq calls matching the gate, because branch staff who see a wrong account will not return. He also says he is the bottleneck on access and sign-off.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Connector order and matching
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- Tariq to send the permissions list and the database team request for the branch system service account.
- Hamza to send the updated plan, the written request for IT and the weekly invite.
- Tariq to introduce Hamza to IT and set up a slot with the credit control team leader.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Trade account references are patchy, mostly missing, and wrong matches would put branch staff off.
- Tariq says he is the bottleneck on access and sign-off, which could slow onboarding.
- A load that succeeds but brings in nothing new could go unnoticed after a source field changes.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Credit control has taken over most questions, which shows use growing beyond Tariq's team.
- Dashboards are included and an area manager view is planned as the first one.
- Single sign-on and SCIM are part of Enterprise and will support the wider rollout.
Transcript
Hamza AkhtarMorning, Tariq. Can you hear me all right?
Tariq SaleemMorning, Hamza. Yes, loud and clear. Give me a second, I've got the load log open on the other screen and it's fighting for space.- Hamza AkhtarNo rush. How's the week been? It's only Wednesday but it always feels like Friday by now.
- Tariq SaleemBusy, but good busy. We had a bit of a scramble on Monday because one of the area managers wanted a list of trade accounts with open disputes and, well, you can guess how long that took by spreadsheet.
- Hamza AkhtarHa. Which is more or less why we're all here.
- Tariq SaleemExactly that. Which is why I'm keen to get moving. Shall I start with the open tickets, then you can take the agenda?
- Hamza AkhtarPlease do.
- Tariq SaleemThere's only one open at the moment. It's about the service account for the branch system. The first test load came through but a couple of the tables were empty, and I think it's down to the permissions on the account rather than anything in the connector itself. But I'll check the load log properly before I say that for certain.
- Hamza AkhtarRight, that's one I saw come in. I had a quick look yesterday. The empty tables are the ones that sit in a separate schema, so I suspect you're right, but let's not guess either. If you can send me what the account is allowed to read, I'll compare it with what the connector expects.
- Tariq SaleemYes, I can do that today. It's a read-only role, so it's a short list.
- Hamza AkhtarBrilliant. So that's the one ticket and it's quite a gentle one. Good place to be a few weeks in. Let me share what I've got for today. Can you see my screen?
- Tariq SaleemI can see a table with a lot of rows. Is that the connector plan?
- Hamza AkhtarThat's the one. It's the plan for the whole rollout, one row per source system, with an owner, an order and a status. I've put what I think the order should be, and you tell me where I'm wrong, because you know the estate and I don't.
- Tariq SaleemGo on then.
- Hamza AkhtarSo first, the CRM. It's already loading, it's the one that's been running nightly since the first week, and the records are indexing. Second, the branch system, which is the one with the open ticket. Third, the helpdesk. Fourth, the call recorder. Fifth, the accounting system, so credit control can see invoices next to the disputes. And then email last, through Microsoft 365.
- Tariq SaleemMm. That order is mostly right. I'd move the accounting system up, before the call recorder.
- Hamza AkhtarOkay, say why.
- Tariq SaleemBecause credit control is the team that's most impatient. They're the ones doing the most manual reconciling today, branch orders against invoices against disputes, and if they see something useful early they'll tell everyone else. The call recorder is a nice to have for the key-account people but they're less desperate.
- Hamza AkhtarThat makes sense. I'll swap them. And it's easier on my side too, the accounting connector is quite quick to set up once the credentials are there.
- Tariq SaleemCredentials I can sort this week. Same arrangement as the branch system, a service account, read-only.
- Hamza AkhtarPerfect. Now, the part I'd like to spend a proper bit of time on is the account matching. Because that's what makes the thing worth having. If a trade account in the branch system and the same customer in the CRM don't line up, then the brain sees two different companies, and the answer to who owes us what is wrong.
- Tariq SaleemYes. That's a mapping question, and honestly it's the one I've been worrying about most.
- Hamza AkhtarTell me what it looks like today.
- Tariq SaleemSo the branch system has a trade account reference, and that's the thing the branches really use. Every counter sale is against that reference. The CRM has its own account record, and when it was set up some years ago somebody added the trade account reference as a field. But it isn't always filled in. For the bigger key accounts it's pretty good. For the long tail of small plumbing firms it's patchy.
- Hamza AkhtarPatchy meaning missing, or patchy meaning wrong?
- Tariq SaleemBoth, to be fair. Mostly missing. Some are wrong because a firm changed its name, or somebody typed it in with a space. I wouldn't say that's the branches' fault, by the way. They're busy serving people at a counter at seven in the morning, they're not going to tidy up a CRM field.
- Hamza AkhtarNo, absolutely. It's a design problem, not a people problem. So here's what I'd suggest. We do the match in layers. First pass is an exact match on the trade account reference where it exists. Second pass uses the company name and the postcode area for anything left, and flags those as probable rather than certain. And third, anything that still doesn't match goes into a list for you to look at, we don't force it.
- Tariq SaleemI like the third part. Forcing a match is how you end up with a dispute attached to the wrong customer, and then someone in credit control rings the wrong person.
- Hamza AkhtarExactly. Better to show a gap than a wrong answer. And the probable ones, I'd want somebody on your side to confirm them in batches. Is that something you'd do or would you hand it on?
- Tariq SaleemI'd do the first batch myself so I understand the shape of it. After that I'd probably ask a couple of the branch administrators to go through their own accounts, because they'll recognise the names far quicker than I will.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's sensible. I can set up a simple view for them, just their branch, so they're not wading through everything.
- Tariq SaleemThat would help. One thing though. If I change anything in the CRM to fix a mapping, I tell my colleague who owns the CRM configuration first. I don't change things under her.
- Hamza AkhtarOf course. Nothing on our side writes back to the CRM anyway. We read, we don't edit. So any fixes happen in your systems, in your time, and the brain just picks them up on the next nightly refresh.
- Tariq SaleemGood. Which brings me to the refresh. When's it actually done by, in the morning?
- Hamza AkhtarSeven o'clock, every business day. So the branches should have fresh data before they open. If it's ever late, tell me or raise a ticket and we look at it straight away.
- Tariq SaleemRight. Because I should say, that's a promise I've already made to a few people internally. Credit control in particular want the overnight position before their first call.
- Hamza AkhtarUnderstood. And Enterprise carries that commitment, including for freshness, so you're covered there.
- Tariq SaleemGood. Good. I'll tell them.
- Hamza AkhtarLet me scroll down a bit. This next block is people and access, which I think is the other half of onboarding. You've got two hundred licensed users in the contract, and at the moment, as I understand it, it's a small group using it. Is that right?
- Tariq SaleemYes. It's mostly my team, a few people from credit control and two or three of the key-account managers who volunteered. It's a pilot group, in effect. It's grown quickly in the last few weeks though, people keep asking to be added.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's a good sign. Word of mouth is usually the best rollout plan there is. So the question is how you want to add people, because adding them by hand won't scale to two hundred.
- Tariq SaleemRight, that's where I wanted to ask about single sign-on. We have an identity provider and I'd rather people didn't have another password. And I've seen SCIM mentioned in the paperwork, is that the automatic provisioning bit?
- Hamza AkhtarIt is. SSO handles the logging in, SCIM handles the joiners and leavers. So when someone's added to a group on your side they get an account, and when they leave the company the account goes with them. Both are part of Enterprise, so there's nothing extra to buy.
- Tariq SaleemWhich connector does that go through? Sorry, wrong word. Which team on your side sets that up?
- Hamza AkhtarMe, with a colleague from our platform side for the identity bit. What I need from you is the details of your identity provider and someone who can make changes to it. Is that you or is it somebody in IT?
- Tariq SaleemIt's IT, a colleague in the infrastructure team. I can introduce you. I'll ask him for a slot, he's usually quite good if you give him a clear request.
- Hamza AkhtarThen I'll write the request up so it's clear. Short and specific, what we need, what it's for, how long it takes.
- Tariq SaleemPerfect. That's the sort of thing that gets done, rather than sitting in a queue.
- Hamza AkhtarNow, groups. Before SCIM goes live it's worth deciding how people are grouped, because it will drive what they see. My suggestion is three to begin with: branch, key account, credit control. Does that match how you think about it?
- Tariq SaleemBroadly. Though branch is actually two things. There are the branch managers, who care about their own trade accounts, and there are the area managers, who look across a number of branches. Same data, different scope.
- Hamza AkhtarOkay, that's useful. So four groups, with area managers seeing across branches. I'll draft it that way and you tell me what I've missed.
- Tariq SaleemI will. I probably have missed something myself, so let's call it a first version.
- Hamza AkhtarFine by me. First versions are the point. So while we're on usage, and this is where I'd normally mention it, the pilot numbers look healthy. The number of people asking questions has gone up a great deal compared with the quarter before. Are you seeing that from your end too?
- Tariq SaleemI am. Not in numbers, I haven't pulled a report, but I hear it. People are asking things like which trade accounts have a dispute and a late invoice at the same time, which is the exact question that used to take an afternoon.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's the sort of question I'd hope for. Who's asking the most? Is it mostly you?
- Tariq SaleemIt was, at the start. Less so now. Credit control have taken it over, to be honest. One of the team leaders there is practically living in it.
- Hamza AkhtarGood, that's healthier than one person carrying it. It might be worth us having a conversation with that team leader. Would they be up for a half hour with me, to hear how they use it?
- Tariq SaleemI think they'd love that. They'd probably spend half of it telling you what's missing.
- Hamza AkhtarEven better. That's the half I want.
- Tariq SaleemHa, right. I'll set it up.
- Hamza AkhtarOkay. Let me move to the helpdesk, because that connector has one decision in it that I want your view on. Do you want every ticket loaded, or only the ones tied to a trade account?
- Tariq SaleemHmm. Which is the bigger set?
- Hamza AkhtarEverything is bigger, obviously, and includes internal requests, things like staff password resets. Tied-to-account is the set you probably care about for disputes and service.
- Tariq SaleemThen tied to a trade account, at least to start. If we load everything we'll get a lot of noise and people will lose trust in the answers. We can widen it later if somebody asks.
- Hamza AkhtarI'd do the same. Narrow first, widen when there's a reason. Noted. And I'll flag in the plan that it's a decision rather than a limitation.
- Tariq SaleemGood, because someone will ask in six months why internal tickets aren't in there and I'd like it written down that we chose.
- Hamza AkhtarWritten down. Right. The call recorder next. This one's quite simple technically, but there's a people question. Whose calls get recorded and pulled in, and are people comfortable with that?
- Tariq SaleemThat's one I'd rather not answer on my own. It's a data protection question as much as a technical one. I'd want our compliance colleague to sign off on which teams, and I'd say start with the key-account team only, because they already know their calls are recorded.
- Hamza AkhtarSensible. Then I'll put it at the end of the plan with that dependency, and nothing on our side will switch it on until you've told me it's been agreed.
- Tariq SaleemYes. Thanks. I'd rather it was slow and clean.
- Hamza AkhtarSame here. Okay, so email, last. Through Microsoft 365. Same sort of point. Which mailboxes?
- Tariq SaleemShared mailboxes, I think. The credit control one, the disputes one. Not individual inboxes. I don't want anyone feeling we're reading their mail.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's a clean line. Shared mailboxes only. I'll note it.
- Tariq SaleemCan I ask something slightly different while we're here?
- Hamza AkhtarOf course.
- Tariq SaleemWhen something goes wrong in a load, what do I see? Because I'm the one who'll be asked. Somebody will say the brain looks wrong this morning and I want to be able to answer in a couple of minutes, not a couple of hours.
- Hamza AkhtarGood question. There's an admin view that shows each connector, when it last loaded, how many records came in and whether that's flat compared with the previous run. If a connector stops loading, or the records indexed stop moving, it's visible there. That's the first place to look.
- Tariq SaleemSo flat records would be a warning sign, not just a failure.
- Hamza AkhtarRight. A failed load is obvious. A load that succeeds and brings in nothing new for days is the quiet one. Usually it means somebody changed something at the source.
- Tariq SaleemThat's happened to me before, with another tool. A field renamed in the CRM and everything carried on loading, just with a column of nothing.
- Hamza AkhtarExactly the case. So my ask is, if you or your colleague are going to change a field or a structure in a source system, give us a heads up. It doesn't have to be formal. An email is fine.
- Tariq SaleemI'll build it into our change process. There's a checklist, I'll add you to it.
- Hamza AkhtarThat would be ideal.
- Tariq SaleemSorry, I just needed to look something up. I was checking the load log for the branch system while you were talking. The empty tables, there are two of them, and they're both in the same schema. So that fits what you said.
- Hamza AkhtarOkay. So then the fix is giving the service account read access to that schema. Is that something you can do or does it go through someone else?
- Tariq SaleemThat's with the database team. But it's a small request. I'll send it over straight after this call and copy you in so you can see when it's done.
- Hamza AkhtarBrilliant. And once it's through, ping me and I'll re-run the load rather than waiting for the night. Then we can check the records together.
- Tariq SaleemWill do.
- Hamza AkhtarRight. Let me do a quick pause on what we've agreed, because I've been typing and I want to read it back. Accounting system moves ahead of the call recorder. Account matching in three layers, nothing forced. Four user groups to begin with. Helpdesk limited to tickets tied to a trade account. Call recorder only after your compliance colleague signs off, key-account team first. Email from shared mailboxes only. Anything missing?
- Tariq SaleemThat's it. Oh, and the single sign-on request to IT.
- Hamza AkhtarYes, thank you. And the request to IT. I'll write that up. Let me add it now.
- Tariq SaleemWhile you do that, can I raise the contract side? Not to reopen anything. I just want to make sure I understand what we've got so I can answer people.
- Hamza AkhtarGo ahead. I'm not the commercial person, so if it's anything detailed I'll pass it to Lewis. But I know the broad shape.
- Tariq SaleemSure. It's Enterprise, annual, a hundred and sixteen and a half thousand, is that right? Somebody in finance asked me and I'd rather not guess.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's what's on the order form, £116,500 a year. And the figure they'll see invoiced is the same. Nothing's out of line there.
- Tariq SaleemGood. That's what I told them. And two hundred users in that.
- Hamza AkhtarTwo hundred licensed users, yes, and plenty of room on the connector count for what we've listed.
- Tariq SaleemRight. That's all I needed. Thanks.
- Hamza AkhtarNo problem at all. Now, training. At some point you'll want more than just your team and a pilot group to know what to do with this. Do you have a view on how people should learn it?
- Tariq SaleemI think short sessions by team, using their own accounts. Not a general demo. People switch off if it's someone else's data. If a credit controller sees their own awkward customers on the screen, they pay attention.
- Hamza AkhtarI agree completely. Forty minutes, say, per team, using real accounts they know. And I'd record the first one so people who can't attend can watch it.
- Tariq SaleemGood idea. The branches work shifts, so they'd never all be free at once.
- Hamza AkhtarThen let's plan credit control first, since they're the keenest, then key accounts, then the branch and area managers once the matching is cleaner. Is that the right order?
- Tariq SaleemI'd say so. Branches last, definitely, because the matching has to be right before they see it. If a branch manager sees a wrong account first time, they won't come back.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's the risk exactly. First impressions with branch staff. So matching is the gate.
- Tariq SaleemYes. It's the gate.
- Hamza AkhtarOkay. I should also mention Daniel, our customer success manager. He'll be your day to day contact once onboarding finishes, and he'll want to set up regular reviews. I'll introduce you properly, he's not on this call but he's across the plan.
- Tariq SaleemFine. I've exchanged a couple of emails with him already. And Lewis, I know, is the one who signed us up.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's right. Lewis stays on the commercial side, Daniel on adoption, and I'm here until the connectors are in and stable. After that I step back.
- Tariq SaleemUnderstood. So, between now and the end of onboarding, what's my biggest risk? Honestly.
- Hamza AkhtarHonestly? Time on your side. The technical work is fine, the connectors are routine. What stretches onboarding is waiting for access, waiting for sign-off and waiting for someone to confirm a batch of matches. If you can get those three moving quickly, everything else follows.
- Tariq SaleemThat's fair. I'm the bottleneck on two of them, so I'll protect some time. Mornings are better for me, before the branches start ringing.
- Hamza AkhtarMornings suit me too. So I'd suggest we keep a short slot like this, same time, once a week until it's done. Thirty minutes. Would that work?
- Tariq SaleemYes. Same time next Wednesday is fine, I'll put it in the diary.
- Hamza AkhtarI'll send the invite. Now there's one more topic, and then we're nearly done. Let me check the time. We've got a bit left. Dashboards. Is that something your people have asked about?
- Tariq SaleemA little. The area managers like pictures. I don't think they'll want to type questions every day. They'd rather open something that already shows them the position.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's common. The questions are for the people digging into things, the dashboards are for the people who just want to see it. Dashboards are part of what you've got. I'd build one with you rather than for you, so that you know how it's put together and can make more.
- Tariq SaleemI'd like that. I'd rather be able to do it than keep asking.
- Hamza AkhtarGood. So the first one could be an area manager view: trade accounts with an open dispute, an overdue invoice or both, by branch. Does that sound like the right one to start with?
- Tariq SaleemThat's the one they asked me for on Monday. So yes.
- Hamza AkhtarThen we have our answer. It needs the accounting system in, which is why moving it up was the right call.
- Tariq SaleemFunny how that works.
- Hamza AkhtarIt is. All right. Let me summarise who does what, and then I'll let you get back to your morning. From me: the updated plan with the new order, the request for your infrastructure colleague, a simple batch view for the branch administrators and the invite for next week.
- Tariq SaleemAnd from me: the permissions list for the branch system service account, the request to the database team, credentials for the accounting system, an introduction to my IT colleague and a slot with the credit control team leader.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's it exactly. Anything you'd like me to chase on my side before next week?
- Tariq SaleemOnly the empty tables. If we get that sorted I'll feel a lot better. Everything else is moving.
- Hamza AkhtarThen that's the priority. And Tariq, for what it's worth, you're ahead of where most customers are at this stage. The CRM was in before we even started, you've got a pilot group using it and you've already thought about who sees what.
- Tariq SaleemThat's kind. I think I've just been burnt before by tools that were switched on and then left. I'd like this to actually stick.
- Hamza AkhtarIt will, if people keep asking it questions. That's really the whole test.
- Tariq SaleemRight. I'll let you go. Thanks, Hamza, this was useful.
- Hamza AkhtarThanks, Tariq. Speak next Wednesday. Have a good day.
- Tariq SaleemAnd you. Cheers, bye.
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