Merriott Lyle Distribution - QBR

Merriott Lyle bought Enterprise so that branch, key-account and credit-control teams could see each trade account's orders, disputes, calls and invoices together in one place, rather than reconciling them by hand across systems. That remains the outcome we are measured against.

Usage: where we are

• Active users, measured as a thirty-day average, sit at just over fifty. Against two hundred licensed users, that is a quarter of the licence in regular use.
• The thirty-day average is down on the prior quarter. The trend matters more than the level here, and the direction is the wrong one.
• The business is spread across about one hundred and twenty branches, so a base of around fifty regular users suggests the brain is being used by a core group rather than being part of everyday branch routines.

What this deck does not show. The usage data in front of us covers active users only. Questions asked, records indexed and connector status are not part of this review, so I am not drawing conclusions on them. I will bring those figures to the follow-up so we can see who is asking questions and whether any source has stopped loading.

Value: what the brain is for

The original case rested on three groups of people working from the same view of a trade account.

• Branch teams: seeing a customer's recent orders and any open dispute before a conversation at the counter or on the phone.
• Key-account teams: having calls, emails and invoices alongside the order history when preparing for a review with a large trade customer.
• Credit control: seeing disputes and call notes next to the invoice before chasing payment, so that a chase does not land on an account with an unresolved delivery problem.

A fall in active users puts the third of these most at risk, because credit control only gets value when the whole picture is current and the teams around them are using it too. If the value case is going to be defended at renewal, it needs concrete examples from your own teams, and I would like us to collect them together.

Support and service: this quarter

• Four tickets in a month is modest for an Enterprise customer of this size, and on its own it could read as health. Set against a falling user count, I would rather treat it as a point to look at than as reassurance.
• Two of the four were high priority. I will go through both with your team, confirm the category of each (connector sync, data freshness, how-to or service query), and check the response times against the Enterprise service level.
• Enterprise is credited for both availability and data freshness. If either of the high-priority tickets touched freshness, we will look at whether a service credit applies and tell you plainly.
• Your account is fully up to date on invoices, which is appreciated. There is nothing on the commercial side that is holding anything back.

What we think is going on

I do not want to guess at causes this deck cannot support, so these are hypotheses to test with your team, not conclusions.

• Rollout depth. Adoption may have stayed with the teams who championed the brain first, without reaching every branch group.
• Trust in the data. If people met stale or incomplete answers, even once, they may have gone back to their old routines. The two high-priority tickets could be related.
• Change of people or process. A reorganisation or change of role in a team can quietly take regular users out of the picture.
• Training and habit. New joiners may not have been shown how to ask the brain a question.

I would value your view on which of these rings true. You know the branches far better than I do.

Proposed actions

I will come back to you by the end of next week with the ticket review, so you are not waiting on me for that.

Looking ahead to renewal

Your current term runs to 27 Feb 2027. I would much rather we spend the coming months making the brain visibly useful to more of your people than arrive at the renewal conversation with a usage gap and a hurried story. Our aim is that, by the time we sit down, you can say with confidence what the brain is worth to Merriott Lyle, and that the numbers back it up.

If the usage picture improves, there is also a conversation to be had about whether the licence is sized correctly for how you actually work. We will only raise that if the evidence supports it.

What we need from you

• A named contact in operations to work with on the branch-by-branch picture.
• Ten minutes with whoever raised the two high-priority tickets, so we understand the impact on their day.
• Your honest view on where the brain is not earning its place.

Summary

• The commercial relationship is healthy: contracted annual recurring revenue of £128k and no overdue invoices.
• Usage is the concern: active users are well below the licensed two hundred and falling on the prior quarter.
• Support volume is low but includes two high-priority tickets that we will review in detail.
• The next step is a joint look at who is using the brain, who is not, and why.

Just to close the loop: how is the team finding it? That is the question I most want to hear your answer to.

Best wishes, Daniel