Merriott Lyle Distribution / BG-Demo – Onboarding
Callcompleted
Merriott Lyle Distribution · 7 May 2025 13:00
Onboarding call on 7 May 2025 with Deepa Chauhan and Tariq Saleem. They agreed connector order and owners, a pilot set of accounts, and a test of done: the Monday spreadsheet stops. The open ticket was a grant on their side.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Onboarding call on 7 May 2025 with Deepa Chauhan and Tariq Saleem. They agreed connector order and owners, a pilot set of accounts, and a test of done: the Monday spreadsheet stops. The open ticket was a grant on their side.
What happened: Hamza Akhtar set the order as CRM, branch system, credit control and accounting, then calls, helpdesk and email. Deepa left with an owner against each connector to take to the regional directors.
Customer view: Deepa wants one version of each trade account and no more rumour. She chose the pilot set herself and made the Monday spreadsheet stopping the measure of done.
Commercial: Hamza confirmed that security review support, single sign-on and SCIM sit within the Enterprise plan. The two hundred licensed users will come in three waves.
Watch: The call recorder has no named owner and the backup window is unconfirmed. Hamza gave no firm date for a first real account view, only a few working weeks from the credentials arriving.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Sequencing and pilot accounts
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 fix the dispute schema grant and create the read-only CRM user.
- Deepa to name the pilot accounts, ask finance and credit control for names, and find the call recorder administrator by the end of the week.
- Hamza to send the plan and CRM checklist the next day, then the one page summary and security answers early the following week.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- A stale or wrong account view would cost trust with branch managers, which Deepa says could last a year.
- No one is yet named to administer the call recorder, and the branch system backup window is unconfirmed.
- Hamza gave no firm date for a first view of real accounts, which the directors keep asking for.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Retiring the Monday spreadsheet gives a visible win Deepa has set as the test of done.
- Rollout in three waves of the two hundred licensed users can deepen use after the first wave.
- Security review support and single sign-on with SCIM are included, and support a clean Enterprise rollout.
Transcript
Hamza AkhtarHello, hello. Can you hear me alright? I've got the recording banner showing so I think we're live.
Tariq SaleemYes, loud and clear. Good afternoon, Hamza.
Deepa ChauhanAfternoon both. Sorry, I'm just getting my headset sorted. Can you hear me now?- Hamza AkhtarPerfectly. Good afternoon, Deepa. Is it as grey in Birmingham as it is here? It's been drizzling in London since about breakfast.
- Deepa ChauhanWorse, I think. We've had the sort of rain where you get wet just walking from the car park to the lifts. But it's Wednesday, so we're over the hump, aren't we.
- Tariq SaleemI've eaten lunch at my desk, so I haven't been out at all. I've no idea what it's doing.
- Hamza AkhtarVery wise. Right, thanks both for making the time. This is the onboarding call, so the point is to agree how we bring your sources into the brain, in what order, and who on your side owns each one. I'll share a plan on screen in a bit. Deepa, you usually have a priority, so do you want to go first?
- Deepa ChauhanYes. The one thing I need from today is an order of connectors and a name against each, in words I can take to the regional directors. They keep asking me when they'll see something, and I'd like to say something more useful than soon.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's a good thing to build the call around. We'll leave with exactly that.
- Tariq SaleemBefore we do, can I just run through the open tickets? There's only the one, but I'd like it off the list.
- Hamza AkhtarGo on.
- Tariq SaleemIt's the one about permissions on the service account for the branch system extract. It could read the order tables but not the dispute tables, so the first test load came back with half the picture. I raised it last week and someone replied, but I haven't seen what changed on your side.
- Hamza AkhtarRight, I've got it open here. Nothing changed on our side, to be honest. It was a grant on your side, in the role you created for us. Our support team asked you to add the dispute schema to the read role, and they've marked it waiting on you.
- Tariq SaleemAh. So it's mine. Fair enough. I thought it was waiting on you. I'll check the load log and the grants this afternoon and close it.
- Deepa ChauhanTariq, does that mean the disputes would have been missing from anything we looked at so far?
- Tariq SaleemFrom the test load, yes. Nothing anyone has relied on. It was a first pass to see the shape of the tables.
- Deepa ChauhanOkay, good. I just don't want a branch manager seeing a trade account with orders but no disputes and thinking that's the whole story. That's exactly the rumour problem we're trying to get away from.
- Hamza AkhtarAgreed, and that's a reason to be strict about the order we do things in. Let me share my screen. Can you see the plan?
- Tariq SaleemYes, I see a table with connectors down the side.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's the one. So the way I'd sequence it is the CRM first, because everything else has to hang off the account records in there. Then the branch system, so orders and invoices. Then the credit control side, so disputes and payment history. After that the call recorder and the helpdesk, and last the email and documents.
- Deepa ChauhanWhy the calls and the helpdesk after the branch system? Our key-account managers would probably say calls matter most to them.
- Hamza AkhtarThey might, and they're right that it's valuable. But calls and tickets are only useful if the brain knows which trade account they belong to. If we load them before the matching is right, you get a lot of calls floating about with no home. So we get the account spine solid first, then everything lands on it properly.
- Deepa ChauhanMm. Okay. That makes sense. Which account, which branch, that's the question every time.
- Tariq SaleemThat's a mapping question, and it's the biggest one we've got. Can I explain where we are?
- Hamza AkhtarPlease. I'd rather hear it from you than guess.
- Tariq SaleemSo the branch system holds an account per branch. If a plumbing firm buys from four of our branches, it has four account codes there. The CRM, on the other hand, has one parent account for the firm, with the branch relationships underneath. Most of the time the codes line up through a cross-reference field that the key-account team filled in. But it's not complete, and in some regions it's been maintained better than others.
- Hamza AkhtarAnd I think that's what we saw in the test load. Some branch accounts came through with a match to the parent, some with none, and a handful matched to more than one.
- Tariq SaleemRight. The ones with more than one are mostly where a firm changed its trading name and we ended up with two parents.
- Deepa ChauhanWhich is exactly why I want one version of each trade account. Can I ask something that might be naive? When the brain can't match, what does it do? Does it guess?
- Hamza AkhtarIt doesn't guess, no. Anything it can't match with confidence goes onto an exceptions list, and it's held out of the account view until someone decides. That list is where I'd like Tariq's team to spend the first couple of weeks, with you deciding the rules.
- Tariq SaleemI'd want that. And one condition from me: I don't change a mapping without telling Deepa first. If we merge two parents, the key-account managers will notice their account lists change.
- Deepa ChauhanThank you, Tariq. Yes, let's keep that as a rule. And let's not let the exceptions list turn into a list of whose region is untidy. It's just data.
- Hamza AkhtarCompletely. I'll word it neutrally in the plan, just account and reason. No region labels in the reason column.
- Deepa ChauhanPerfect.
- Hamza AkhtarOkay. Let me scroll down. While I do, Tariq, for the CRM connector, I need to check what I've got in the plan is right. You're the admin on the CRM, and you'd be the one to create the connection user and approve the scopes.
- Tariq SaleemYes. Which connector first, did you say? The CRM?
- Hamza AkhtarThe CRM, yes. And it's a read-only user, so it doesn't write back into your records. At this stage the brain only reads.
- Tariq SaleemGood, because I'd have wanted to know if it wrote. I'll set that up. Is there a list of the objects you want?
- Hamza AkhtarIt's in the checklist I'll send after the call. Accounts, contacts, opportunities, activities, and any custom object you use for the branch relationships. If you've got custom ones I don't know about, tell me and I'll add them.
- Tariq SaleemThere's one for branch relationships, and one for credit holds. I'll put the names in an email.
- Hamza AkhtarBrilliant, that's the sort of thing that normally surfaces in week three, so well done for having it now.
- Tariq SaleemIt surfaced in week three of the last project. I'm just remembering it.
- Deepa ChauhanWhich is why he's good at this.
- Hamza AkhtarOkay, so the second item. The branch system. Tariq, who looks after that at your end? Is that you, or does a team own the system?
- Tariq SaleemA separate team owns the system itself, in IT. I look after the extract and the data that comes out of it. So I can sort the account and permissions, but if the extract needs to change shape, I'd have to go to them.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's fine. Let's put you as owner for the connector and a colleague in IT as the contact for system changes. Does that feel right?
- Tariq SaleemYes. I'll tell them this week that they'll be hearing from us.
- Deepa ChauhanAnd credit control? Because they're going to be the loudest voice in the room once the disputes show up beside the orders.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's my next question. Who's the person there? Because someone has to say whether a disputed invoice is shown in full or summarised.
- Deepa ChauhanI'll nominate someone from the credit control team. I'd rather ask the head of credit control to pick than pick for them. Let's get credit control in the room, in the next week or so, so they feel it's theirs and not something done to them.
- Hamza AkhtarI'd be glad to join that, and I can show them the disputes view on your test data so it's concrete.
- Deepa ChauhanThat'd help. Show me where that number comes from is going to be the first thing they say.
- Hamza AkhtarFair, and the brain shows the source of each figure, so you can click through to the invoice or the dispute record. That's by design.
- Deepa ChauhanGood. That's the bit that wins them over.
- Tariq SaleemCan I ask about the Snowflake side while we're on the plan? I want to be sure I've understood where everything sits.
- Hamza AkhtarPlease.
- Tariq SaleemEverything runs inside our own Snowflake account. So the extracted tables, the matched account layer, the indexes. None of it leaves.
- Hamza AkhtarCorrect. It's built and run inside your account, under roles you control. We work in there with the access you give us, and you can see what we've created and remove it. That's also what your security colleagues will want to look at.
- Tariq SaleemYes, and they'll have questions. They'd like to see it written down.
- Hamza AkhtarUnderstood. Security review support is part of the Enterprise implementation, so I'll put together the answers to the questionnaire and a short architecture note. If they come back with follow-ups, send them to me and I'll deal with them directly.
- Deepa ChauhanDo you need anything from me on that?
- Tariq SaleemJust to tell them it's coming, I think. They respond better when it's flagged from the top.
- Deepa ChauhanI can do that. I'll mention it in my note to the head of IT, so it doesn't look like a surprise.
- Hamza AkhtarOkay. Third area, which is users. You've got two hundred licensed users on the Enterprise plan, and obviously you won't switch two hundred people on in one morning. How do you want to bring them in?
- Deepa ChauhanIn waves. I've been thinking about this. First wave is the key-account managers and the credit controllers, because they're the people who'll tell us if it's right. Second wave is the regional directors and a handful of branch managers, picked by the directors. Third wave is everyone else once we've seen what questions people actually ask.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's close to what I'd have suggested, so I'll write it in as your plan, not mine. One thing worth thinking about: a small group of branch managers in the second wave who are sceptical, not just keen. They find the problems the keen ones walk past.
- Deepa ChauhanHa. I know exactly who. I'll make sure a couple of those are in.
- Tariq SaleemOn access, you included single sign-on and SCIM with the Enterprise plan, yes?
- Hamza AkhtarYes, both are in. Single sign-on so people use their normal company login, and SCIM so that when someone joins, moves or leaves, their access follows automatically.
- Tariq SaleemThen I'd rather set that up before wave one than after. Otherwise I'll be creating accounts by hand and removing them by hand, and that's how somebody who's left still has access.
- Hamza AkhtarI couldn't agree more. It means we need someone in IT who runs the identity provider. Is that the same colleague as the branch system, or a different person?
- Tariq SaleemDifferent. I'll find out who and introduce you by email.
- Hamza AkhtarLovely. I'll add it as an action under your name, and I'll send you a short note on what we need from them: the metadata, the groups, and the attribute mapping.
- Deepa ChauhanHamza, can I ask the question I've been saving? When will I actually see something with real accounts in it? Not a demo. Our accounts.
- Hamza AkhtarHonest answer: once the CRM and branch system connectors are loading nightly and the matching rules are agreed, which I'd expect to take a few working weeks from the credentials arriving. I'd rather not give you a specific day today and then miss it. What I can do is show you a first account view on a small set of accounts as soon as the first matched load is done, and we iterate from there.
- Deepa ChauhanThat's fair. And I'd rather have a small set that's right than a big set that's rumour again. Can I choose the small set?
- Hamza AkhtarPlease do. What would you pick?
- Deepa ChauhanA mix. A few big trade accounts that buy from lots of branches, because they're the hardest to match. Some mid-sized ones with an open dispute, so credit control can see themselves in it. And a couple of small ones where nothing unusual is going on, as a control, so we know what boring looks like.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's a better pilot set than most I see. List of three, as always.
- Deepa ChauhanHabit.
- Tariq SaleemI'll pull account codes for whichever ones she names, so we're matching on the real identifiers and not trading names.
- Hamza AkhtarRight, let me talk about freshness, because it's the thing that makes or breaks trust in a tool like this. The brain refreshes overnight, and the aim is that it's complete by 07:00 each business day. So when a key-account manager opens it in the morning, it reflects yesterday.
- Deepa ChauhanAnd if it doesn't? If one of the connectors fails overnight, how will we know? I don't want a branch manager finding out at nine o'clock in front of a customer.
- Hamza AkhtarTwo things. The load log records every connector's run, and Tariq can see that, and we'd set up an alert to him if a connector fails or if the number of records indexed stays flat, which is how a quiet failure usually shows. And the account view itself shows when each source was last refreshed, so a user can see how current it is.
- Tariq SaleemI'd want that visible to the users. I'll check the load log each morning for the first few weeks anyway.
- Deepa ChauhanGood. Because a tool that's wrong once without telling anyone loses the branches for a year.
- Hamza AkhtarI agree. Which is the reason the freshness stamp is on the page and not hidden away in a settings screen.
- Tariq SaleemOkay, a practical thing. The accounting system. Is that a connector in this first set or later?
- Hamza AkhtarI'd put it in with credit control, so third. Invoices and payments sit naturally beside the disputes. Who owns it at your end?
- Tariq SaleemFinance. I'll need to ask them for a read-only user. I don't have admin on it, and I wouldn't ask for it.
- Deepa ChauhanI'll ask the finance director's team to nominate someone. If it comes from me, it won't sit in a queue.
- Hamza AkhtarGreat. Then I'll put Deepa as the sponsor of that request and Tariq as the technical owner, and a name from finance to be added.
- Hamza AkhtarLet me recap before we go further, because we've covered quite a lot. CRM first, owned by Tariq, read-only user, objects list coming from him. Branch system second, Tariq owns the extract, a colleague in IT owns system changes, and the dispute permission is fixed this afternoon. Accounting and credit control third, Deepa sponsoring, finance and credit control each naming someone. Then calls, helpdesk, and email. Is that how you heard it?
- Tariq SaleemYes. Although I'd say the helpdesk might be quicker than you expect. It's a small number of queues and the data's clean.
- Hamza AkhtarThen we may well pull it forward. I'll keep it flexible. If the earlier ones go smoothly, there's no reason to hold it back.
- Deepa ChauhanAnd the call recorder? Who's the owner there? Because that sits with the sales operations people, not with me.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's my gap, I don't have a name. Can you find out who administers the call recorder?
- Deepa ChauhanYes, I'll ask sales operations and come back to you by the end of the week.
- Tariq SaleemCan I raise something that's slightly off the plan? The nightly load window. We run a backup job on the branch system in the small hours, and I don't want the extract colliding with it.
- Hamza AkhtarGood catch. What time does the backup finish, roughly?
- Tariq SaleemI'd have to check. I think it's before four in the morning, but I won't say for sure. I'll look in the schedule and tell you.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's all I need. If the extract starts after it ends and still finishes comfortably before 07:00, we're fine. If it's tight, we can look at an incremental extract.
- Tariq SaleemOkay. That's an action for me then.
- Deepa ChauhanHamza, can I ask about something the directors will bring up? They'll ask what the brain does that our existing reports don't. I want a straight answer I can repeat.
- Hamza AkhtarThe straight answer is that your reports each show one system. The brain lets someone ask a question across all of them in plain English, like which of our larger trade accounts have an open dispute, a fall in orders, and a call with the branch in the last month. And it answers from the one matched account, with the source behind each answer. Nobody has to open four screens and reconcile them by hand.
- Deepa ChauhanRight. Which is the spreadsheet that gets emailed round on Monday mornings.
- Tariq SaleemDon't. I'll be the one building it again this Sunday.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's the first thing I'd like to retire. If by the end of onboarding that spreadsheet isn't needed, that's a win we can all point at.
- Deepa ChauhanI'd love that. I'll put it on my list as the test, then. When the Monday spreadsheet stops, we're done.
- Hamza AkhtarI like that as a measure. Simple, and everybody understands it.
- Hamza AkhtarOne more topic and then actions. Your account manager Lewis and Daniel, who looks after you on the customer success side, are both aware of this plan. Daniel will pick up the regular check-ins once we're live, and I'm the person for the build until then. So if something feels stuck, I'd like you to come to me first and not wait for a meeting.
- Deepa ChauhanThat's helpful, thank you. I do like knowing whose door to knock on.
- Tariq SaleemSame. Fewer handovers is better.
- Deepa ChauhanOne thing, and I'll be careful how I put it. The monthly account-data review with credit control and the regional directors is coming up. I'd like to be able to show something there, even if it's just the plan and the pilot accounts. I won't promise the regions anything that doesn't exist yet.
- Hamza AkhtarI think that's the right line. Show them the plan, the order, the owners, and the pilot set, and tell them what they'll see first. I can write you a one page summary in plain language for that meeting, if it helps.
- Deepa ChauhanIt would. Plain language, no jargon, and the names of who's doing what.
- Hamza AkhtarDone. It'll be the same content as the plan, just shorter.
- Hamza AkhtarOkay, actions. I'll go through them and you tell me if I've got one wrong. Tariq: close the open ticket by fixing the dispute schema grant this afternoon; create the read-only CRM user and send me the object names including the branch relationship and credit hold ones; check the backup schedule and tell me when it finishes; and find out who runs the identity provider in IT. Is that right?
- Tariq SaleemThat's right. And I'll copy Deepa on anything that touches a mapping.
- Hamza AkhtarThank you. Deepa: name the pilot accounts; nominate someone in credit control and ask finance for a name for the accounting system; find the call recorder administrator by the end of the week; and flag the security review to IT. Anything missing?
- Deepa ChauhanI'd add that I'll tell the head of IT it's coming, so that's the flag. Otherwise yes, that's all of it.
- Hamza AkhtarAnd mine. I'll send the plan with the connector order and owners, the checklist for the CRM and the branch system, and the one page summary for your review. I'll also draft the security questionnaire answers and the architecture note. I'll get the plan and checklist to you tomorrow, and the rest early next week.
- Tariq SaleemTomorrow is fine. If I can have the checklist first, I can do the CRM user before the weekend.
- Hamza AkhtarThen you'll have it first thing. Let's also book a short check-in for next week, so we're not waiting for problems to turn into emails. Thirty minutes, same three of us.
- Deepa ChauhanYes please. Thursday suits me better than Friday, if you can.
- Tariq SaleemThursday's fine with me.
- Hamza AkhtarThursday it is. I'll send the invite after this.
- Deepa ChauhanCan I just say, I came into this call a bit nervous about what the regions would make of it. I feel better. It's a lot clearer than it was an hour ago.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's good to hear. And honestly, you've got a head start. You've already got a pilot set, a rule for mappings, and someone who knows the load log inside out. That's not always the case at this stage.
- Tariq SaleemI'd say I know the load log. I don't yet know the brain's version of it. I'll learn.
- Hamza AkhtarI'll walk you through it as soon as the first load runs. It's not complicated.
- Deepa ChauhanRight, I need to get to my next one, so I'll let you both go. Thanks, Hamza. Thanks, Tariq.
- Tariq SaleemCheers, both. I'm off to fix that grant.
- Hamza AkhtarSpeak to you tomorrow with the plan. Thanks, everyone, and enjoy what's left of the afternoon.
- Deepa ChauhanBye for now.
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