Merriott Lyle Distribution / BG-Demo – QBR
Callcompleted
Merriott Lyle Distribution · 7 Aug 2025 13:00
On the 7 Aug 2025 QBR, CFO Malcolm Ridgway asked what changed and wants a board-ready measure such as debtor days. Lewis Kerr confirmed £116k a year to 28 Feb 2026 and will put the first-renewal position in writing.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026On the 7 Aug 2025 QBR, CFO Malcolm Ridgway asked what changed and wants a board-ready measure such as debtor days. Lewis Kerr confirmed £116k a year to 28 Feb 2026 and will put the first-renewal position in writing.
What happened: Daniel presented the quarter with Deepa, Tariq and Malcolm present. Active users were fifty-odd against 200 licensed, tickets were minor, and connectors were loading nightly with records indexed rising.
Customer view: Malcolm said quiet is what he pays for, then pressed on the cost benefit for credit control. Deepa could not give a number and would not invent one.
Commercial: Malcolm asked for a measure he can show the board, with the base, and Lewis wants it for the renewal conversation. The executed order form and invoices match at £116k a year plus VAT, the term runs to 27 Feb 2026, and Malcolm asked whether the price changes at renewal.
Watch: Lewis would not quote from memory and promised the position in writing the same day. Deepa still asks a large share of the questions, though less than before.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Proving value before renewal
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
mixed
Voice
decision-maker
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Daniel to bring a proposal on measuring the effect on debtor days, with the source of each figure, by the end of the following week.
- Lewis to send the contract position in writing with VAT shown, copying Deepa, the same day.
- Daniel to offer training dates for northern branch managers once Tariq has checked the account mapping.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- The CFO has no measured benefit yet and wants a board-ready figure such as debtor days before he signs.
- The first renewal brings a price book change that Malcolm will read line by line before signing.
- Deepa still asks a large share of the questions, which is a key-person risk.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Northern branch managers are the next group to bring in, within the 200 licensed users.
- A debtor days measure agreed with finance and credit control would give the renewal a value case.
- Training for branch managers on a real account could deepen adoption on Enterprise.
Transcript
Daniel OkaforGood afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for your time. Let me just check who has joined. I can see Deepa, Tariq, and Malcolm, and Lewis is here from our side. Can everybody hear me all right?
Deepa ChauhanYes, loud and clear. Good afternoon, Daniel.
Tariq SaleemFine here. Afternoon, all.
Malcolm RidgwayAfternoon. I've got you. Just finishing something, give me a minute.
Lewis KerrGood afternoon. No rush, Malcolm. I'm here to listen today, mostly. Daniel has the pack.- Daniel OkaforThanks, Lewis. And how's the week been for everyone? It's been properly muggy down here in London, I can barely think.
- Deepa ChauhanSame in Birmingham. The branches have been asking for fans, which is not a thing I can fix from head office. Busy week, though. In a good way, I think.
- Malcolm RidgwayRight, I'm with you. Before we start, what has changed since the last one? That's what I need from this call.
- Daniel OkaforThat's a fair place to begin, Malcolm. Short version: more people are using the brain than at the last review, and by a fair margin. We've had very little go wrong. I'll take you through the detail, and then we can talk about what's next as you approach the first renewal.
- Malcolm RidgwayMore people. How many is more?
- Daniel OkaforSo the average number of people active in a typical month is up by a big step on the previous quarter. We're at fifty-odd active people on an ordinary day, against two hundred licensed. So there's plenty of room.
- Malcolm RidgwayFifty-odd out of two hundred. A quarter of the seats. Is that good or bad?
- Daniel OkaforHonestly, I'd call it good for this stage. You only went live at the end of February, and the trajectory is what I'd look at, not the level. It's rising steadily. Deepa, would you say that matches what you see in the branches?
- Deepa ChauhanIt does. Which account, which branch, that's the question they keep asking me now, and they're answering it themselves. A few months ago they'd ring me. Now the key-account managers open the account view before they pick up the phone.
- Daniel OkaforThat's lovely to hear. How is the team finding it, day to day? Not just the heavy users.
- Deepa ChauhanMixed, in a healthy way. The key-account people love seeing the orders, the disputes and the calls together. The branch managers are a bit more cautious. They want to know where a number comes from. Show me where that number comes from, that's the line I keep getting.
- Tariq SaleemWhich is a fair thing to ask, and it's mostly a mapping question. When the branch system and the CRM disagree about an account, the brain shows both and says which source each came from. People trust it more once they see that.
- Daniel OkaforYes, and that's by design. Tariq, shall we do your open tickets, since I know you'll want to?
- Tariq SaleemPlease. There were two in the last month. Neither urgent. One was a how-to on a saved search, which your support team answered the same day. The other was about a connector, the load was a little late one night. I checked the load log and it was our side, a change we'd made to the export. Nothing for you to fix.
- Daniel OkaforThank you, that's what I have too. Just to close the loop on the second one, did the refresh complete the following night?
- Tariq SaleemYes. Back to normal the next morning. I didn't need to chase.
- Daniel OkaforGood. Nothing high priority in the month, and nothing overdue on our side that I can see either. Malcolm, I won't bore you with ticket detail, I just wanted you to know the platform has been quiet.
- Malcolm RidgwayQuiet is what I pay for. Fine. Moving on. What is it doing for credit control? That's where the money is.
- Deepa ChauhanCan I take that one, Malcolm? Because I'd rather say it than have Daniel say it.
- Malcolm RidgwayGo on.
- Deepa ChauhanLet's get credit control in the room, that's what I've been saying since before we signed. We now have the monthly account-data review with credit control and the regional directors, and for the first time everyone is looking at the same account. Before, credit control had one story, sales had another, and the branch had a third.
- Deepa ChauhanSo what's changed is the conversation. A regional director can see that an account has an open dispute, a late invoice and a call last week where the customer was cross, all on one page. Before, they'd find out when the account went on stop.
- Malcolm RidgwayAnd the cost of that is?
- Deepa ChauhanI can't give you a number yet, and I'm not going to invent one. It's the sort of thing we'll know after a couple of quarters of data. What I can say is that the disputes are surfacing earlier.
- Malcolm RidgwayEarlier than what?
- Deepa ChauhanEarlier than they used to reach me, or credit control. I don't have a clean measure, Malcolm. If you want one, we should build it, and I'd want credit control to agree it, so nobody thinks it's a stick to beat them with.
- Malcolm RidgwayPut it in writing. A measure I can show the board. Debtor days, ideally. What does that do to debtor days? I'll want the base, not just a percentage.
- Daniel OkaforUnderstood, and I think that's the most useful thing we can take away today. Can I suggest we work on it together with Deepa and the finance team? I'd come back to you by the end of next week with a proposal for what to measure and where each figure would come from.
- Malcolm RidgwayFine. Finance will give you what you need. Who on your side owns it?
- Daniel OkaforI will. I'd rather keep it with me, because I'll be with you at the monthly review anyway, and I don't want it to drift between teams.
- Lewis KerrAnd if it helps, Malcolm, I'd want that measure in front of me too, for the renewal conversation. I'd rather you could say what it's worth, in your own numbers, than have us tell you.
- Malcolm RidgwayGood. That's the right way round.
- Daniel OkaforShall I walk through usage a little more, then? A couple of things that might be useful to you, Tariq, especially.
- Tariq SaleemGo on.
- Daniel OkaforThe connectors you've wired up have all been loading nightly, and the number of records indexed has kept rising month on month, so the brain isn't going stale for you. The questions asked are rising too, and importantly they're not coming from one person. It's spread across the key-account team, credit control and a handful of branch managers.
- Tariq SaleemThat's a good sign for me. If it were one person, I'd be worried, because it'd be Deepa, and then Deepa goes on holiday.
- Deepa ChauhanI do still ask a lot of the questions, to be fair. But yes, less of a share than before.
- Daniel OkaforIt's something I'd keep an eye on, but it's moving the right way. What's the feeling about dashboards, by the way? Has anyone built their own?
- Tariq SaleemA few. Mostly Deepa's team, and one of the regional directors had someone build one for the monthly review. I haven't pushed it. I'd like branch managers to be confident with chat and search first, then dashboards.
- Daniel OkaforThat seems sensible to me. No point building a dashboard that people don't trust.
- Malcolm RidgwayCan I ask something about the security side? Last year there was a lot of paper. Has anything come back since?
- Daniel OkaforNothing that I'm aware of, Malcolm. Everything stays inside your own Snowflake account, so there's no copy of your data sitting with us. Tariq, have you had any questions from your IT colleagues?
- Tariq SaleemNo. SSO is working, and a colleague in IT reviewed the access groups a few weeks ago and had no issues. I'll tell you if that changes.
- Malcolm RidgwayGood. I don't want surprises.
- Lewis KerrOn that, Malcolm, can I say a word about the contract position? Just so there are no surprises on that side either.
- Malcolm RidgwayPlease.
- Lewis KerrTo put a number on it, you're on Enterprise at £116,500 a year, plus VAT. That's what's on the executed order form and it's what we've invoiced, so those match. The term runs to 27 Feb 2026, with renewal on 28 Feb 2026. That's some way off, but I'd rather you heard it from me now than from a reminder letter.
- Malcolm Ridgway£116,500. Does that change at renewal?
- Lewis KerrI won't quote from memory on that, Malcolm. You signed under our earlier price book, and there's a defined treatment for the first renewal. I'll send you the exact position in writing, with the VAT shown, so you can read the schedule. I'll send that over today.
- Malcolm RidgwayDo that. I don't sign anything without reading the schedule.
- Lewis KerrUnderstood. And there's no pressure from me to change anything. You're using fewer seats than you have, so I'm not going to suggest you buy more. If the usage grows into it, we'll talk then.
- Malcolm RidgwayThat's refreshing. Noted.
- Deepa ChauhanCan I raise the next group of users? Because that's partly why I wanted this call.
- Daniel OkaforPlease do.
- Deepa ChauhanThe branch managers in the northern region, they're the next group I'd like to bring in properly. Not all of them, we'd choose. I need three things for that: a short training session, a simple view that starts from the account, and Tariq happy that the branch data matches the CRM for those accounts.
- Tariq SaleemThat last one is my bit. I'd want to look at the account matching for the northern branches before anyone is told to use it. Otherwise we'll get the same account twice and people will blame the tool. Not the branches, the mapping.
- Daniel OkaforI agree, and I'd rather get the mapping right first than rush. Would a training session from us help, say for the first group of branch managers? It's part of what you already have, I'd just need to find a slot.
- Deepa ChauhanYes, please. Not a feature tour. I'd want it to be a real account, a real dispute, and how you'd handle it, start to finish. I won't promise the regions anything until I've seen it work.
- Daniel OkaforThat's a good way to do it. I'll come back to you by the end of next week with a couple of dates, and Tariq, I'll send you a short list of what I'd want checked on the mapping beforehand. Does that work?
- Tariq SaleemThat works. I'll check the load log for those branches in the meantime, so we know what we're starting from.
- Malcolm RidgwayOne more from me. Is there anything that's likely to go wrong that I should hear about now?
- Daniel OkaforFair question. The honest answer is the usual one. If a source system changes, a connector can stop loading, and that's usually the first sign. Tariq tells us when that happens, and we're watching for records going flat. At the moment, nothing is.
- Tariq SaleemAnd I do tell you. I'd rather not guess at a root cause, so I check the log first, then I write it up.
- Malcolm RidgwayGood. That's the answer I wanted. Right. Anything else on the agenda, or can I get on?
- Daniel OkaforJust the next steps, Malcolm, and then I'll let you go. Let me say them back, so we're all clear. I'll bring a proposal on how to measure the effect on debtor days, with where each figure comes from. Lewis sends the contract position in writing today, with VAT shown. And I'll find training dates for the northern branch managers, once Tariq has had a look at the mapping.
- Lewis KerrYes, that's all mine. I'll send that over today, and I'll copy Deepa so it's in one place.
- Deepa ChauhanThank you. And I'll bring credit control into the next review so the measure has an owner on our side as well.
- Malcolm RidgwayGood. Finance will be there. Thank you all.
- Daniel OkaforThank you, Malcolm, and thanks all of you. It's been a really encouraging quarter. Speak soon.
- Tariq SaleemCheers, all. Speak soon.
- Deepa ChauhanThanks, everyone. Bye for now.
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