Merriott Lyle Distribution / BB-Demo – Demo
Callcompleted
Merriott Lyle Distribution: documents · 2024-12-27 11:45
Deepa Chauhan and Tariq Saleem saw an Enterprise demo on their own extract. Source traceability and customer-owned matching rules landed well. The £146k proposal figure is a total deal value including implementation, not an annual price.
What was said
What this says
Current to 11 Oct 26Deepa Chauhan and Tariq Saleem saw an Enterprise demo on their own extract. Source traceability and customer-owned matching rules landed well. The £146k proposal figure is a total deal value including implementation, not an annual price.
What happened: Hannah Lowe ran the demo on Merriott Lyle's own trade accounts, orders and dispute log on 27 Dec 2024. Lewis Kerr covered the commercial side.
Customer view: Deepa wants one view of each trade account that branch managers can trust and trace. Tariq wants to own the matching rules and the connector load log.
Commercial: Lewis said £146k is the total deal value including the one-off implementation fee, with the split to follow in writing. The order form target is 14 Feb 2025, and Deepa is aiming for company-wide use with a credible first stretch.
Watch: Credit control has not yet seen the product and has no named person. Role mapping and spreadsheet sources are unconfirmed.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Theme
Enterprise demo, traceability
Importance
upsell
Sentiment
positive
Voice
champion
Who was there
BB-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Lewis Kerr sends the quote with implementation and subscription shown separately, with VAT on each line.
- Hannah Lowe sends the architecture note and permissions summary early the following week.
- Tariq Saleem sends the connector list, branch system field list and role setup note.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Credit control and the regional directors have not yet seen the product, and no named credit-control person exists yet.
- Regional roles and the credit-control role do not line up neatly, so the permission mapping is unconfirmed.
- Spreadsheet sources are not promised until Hannah has seen how they are laid out.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- Deepa's stated aim is company-wide use, which fits the Enterprise tier with single sign-on.
- A second session with credit control and regional directors could widen the user base before signing.
Transcript
Hannah Lowe NoneHello, can you hear me all right? I've got Lewis with me, he's just dialling in on the other line.
Deepa Chauhan NoneHi, yes, loud and clear. Hello Hannah.
Tariq Saleem NoneHello. Sorry, my camera's being slow, give me a second. There. Can you see me?
Lewis Kerr NoneWe can. Hello both. Strange week to be on a call, isn't it? I half expected nobody to turn up.- Deepa Chauhan NoneHa. We're on skeleton staff. Half the branches are shut until Monday, so honestly it's the best week to look at this properly, nobody ringing me about an order.
- Lewis Kerr NoneGood. Right, just to confirm where we are before Hannah gets going. You're looking at Enterprise, and as I understand it you want a decision in time for an order form on Friday 14 Feb 2025, if today lands well. Is that still the plan?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThat's still the plan, yes. I need to take something to our finance lead that she can actually read, so what I want today is to see it on our own accounts. Not a slide deck.
- Hannah Lowe NoneThat's exactly how I'd like to run it. So before I share anything, what do you most need to know by the end of the call? Tell me what you'd be annoyed not to have seen.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThree things. One, a single view of a trade account: orders, disputes, calls and invoices together. Two, that a branch manager can act on that view rather than on rumour. Three, that credit control and sales are looking at the same page for once.
- Tariq Saleem NoneMine's less glamorous. Which connector feeds what, and how does it cope when the branch system and the CRM disagree about who an account is. That's the bit that eats my week at the moment.
- Hannah Lowe NoneGood, both of those are in the demo. Let me share my screen. Can you see the Snowflake console, or is it still the wrong window?
- Tariq Saleem NoneSnowflake console, yep.
- Hannah Lowe NoneRight. Starting point, because it matters for Tariq's question. The brain doesn't live in our cloud. It's built and run inside your Snowflake account. The connectors read from your sources, land the records in your account, and the search and chat sit over the top of that. To be precise, your data never leaves your environment to be indexed somewhere else.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneWhich is the first thing our security people will ask, so that's useful. Go on.
- Hannah Lowe NoneFor today I've loaded the extract you sent over, the trade accounts, the branch orders and the dispute log, plus some sample call recordings and tickets so you can see how it joins up. So, let me search for an account. Give me a name, any builder you'd normally have a problem with.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneTry the large roofing contractor in the extract, the one with the long name. Which account, which branch, though? They'll have several.
- Hannah Lowe NoneRight, so that's the thing. It's one account page, and the branches sit underneath it. There. You've got the parent account at the top, then orders by branch, then open disputes, then calls and invoices in a single timeline.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneMm. Okay. Can you scroll back up? I want to see the dispute from the Birmingham branch.
- Hannah Lowe NoneThere it is. Dispute opened, the order it relates to, the delivery note, and the call where the account manager talked to the customer about it. And if I ask in the chat, which of this customer's invoices are overdue and have a dispute open, it should pull those two together.
- Hannah Lowe NoneSo the answer says two invoices, both linked to the same delivery dispute, and it lists the branch that raised them. Next to each sentence there's a source marker.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneShow me where that number comes from. Click it.
- Hannah Lowe NoneOf course. Clicking the marker takes you to the invoice record, with the source system, the load time and the original reference. So you can check it against the accounting system yourself. That's deliberate. If a branch manager can't trace an answer, they won't trust it.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneGood, that's the part I'd have fought for. Last time we tried something like this nobody could say where anything came from, and it died in about a month.
- Lewis Kerr NoneCan I just come in there? That sounds like a requirement worth writing down, because it should go into the scope. Source traceability on every answer. Hannah, you'll put that in the write-up?
- Hannah Lowe NoneI'll put that in writing, yes.
- Tariq Saleem NoneCan I ask the matching question now? Because that account you just showed, in our CRM it's two records. The branch system has one code per branch and the CRM has one per head office, and sales have been creating their own.
- Hannah Lowe NoneYes, and this is where I'd rather give you the honest answer than the nice one. The short answer is that the brain can match them. The longer answer is that it matches on rules you can see, and where it isn't sure it shows a candidate pair rather than merging silently.
- Tariq Saleem NoneSo who decides on a candidate pair?
- Hannah Lowe NoneYou do. Or whoever you nominate. I'll open the matching view. These are pairs it's flagged in your extract. Same trading name, different branch code, similar delivery address. You can accept, reject, or leave it, and the rule that produced the suggestion is shown next to it.
- Tariq Saleem NoneRight. That's a mapping question really, and I'd want to own the rules. I don't want somebody in a branch deciding that two accounts are the same.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneAnd Tariq tells me before any mapping changes. That's the rule, yes?
- Tariq Saleem NoneThat's the rule, yes. Sorry, it's only that I got burnt once by a merge nobody told me about.
- Hannah Lowe NoneThat's fair, and the rule changes are logged, so you can see who changed what. I'd suggest the accounts that are merged get reviewed in your monthly account-data review, Deepa, rather than quietly.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThat's exactly where I'd put it. We run that review every month with credit control and the regional directors anyway.
- Hannah Lowe NoneThen let me show you the bit that would feed it. This is a view of how many accounts have a match confidence below your threshold, by branch. And I'm not going to pretend the extract is a perfect sample. There are far more messy pairs in the real thing, I'd expect.
- Tariq Saleem NoneOh, there'll be plenty. Which connector brought the branch records in, in this demo?
- Hannah Lowe NoneGood, let me go to the connectors page. Each source has its own row. Last load time, records indexed, and a status. If a source stops loading, or the record count goes flat, that's visible here without anybody raising a ticket.
- Tariq Saleem NoneAnd if one fails overnight, what do I see in the morning?
- Hannah Lowe NoneA failed status on that connector, with the load log underneath. For Enterprise the nightly refresh is meant to be complete by seven in the morning on business days, so you'd look then.
- Tariq Saleem NoneOkay. I'll check the load log is something I'd do first anyway. I just want it to be there rather than in an email.
- Lewis Kerr NoneI'll just note that for the service levels section of the proposal, Tariq. The refresh time and what happens when it's missed, so you've got it in the order form and not just on a web page.
- Tariq Saleem NoneThanks, that would help.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneHannah, can I take you back to the account page? I want to see what a branch manager would see, rather than what I see.
- Hannah Lowe NoneSure. Give me a moment, I'll switch to a restricted role. Hang on, it's loading. Right. Same account, but this role is limited to one branch's orders and disputes. The other branches' figures aren't there.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneSo a manager in the Midlands doesn't see what a manager in the North sees.
- Hannah Lowe NoneNot unless you want them to. To be precise, the permissions come from roles in your Snowflake account, so they follow whatever your IT team already runs. I'd want to confirm the exact mapping with Tariq in the implementation, rather than promise it from a demo.
- Tariq Saleem NoneYes, I'd rather see it on paper. We have roles by region and a separate one for credit control, and those don't line up neatly.
- Hannah Lowe NoneThen send me what you have, and I'll draw it so we can see where they overlap. Enterprise also brings single sign-on, so people log in with their usual credentials.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneGood. Our IT will want the security review to be properly done, not a form with ticked boxes.
- Hannah Lowe NoneIt's one of the reasons I do those myself. If there's a question I'm not certain of, I check with our security lead before I answer, and I'd rather take a day than guess.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneAppreciated. Okay, let me ask the chat something myself, if I can. Can you type it? Which of our key-account customers have called us three times about the same order?
- Hannah Lowe NoneI'll type it exactly like that. Oh, it's asking me to clarify which period. Shall I say the last quarter?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneYes, last quarter.
- Hannah Lowe NoneSo it's found a handful. And I'll be straight with you, it's answering from the call recordings I loaded, which is a small sample, so don't read the list as meaningful. But look at the shape. Account, the order, the dates of each call, and who took it.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThat's the shape I'm after. If a credit controller saw that before ringing a customer about an overdue invoice they'd avoid a lot of embarrassment. Let's get credit control in the room for the next conversation.
- Lewis Kerr NoneThat's sensible, and I'd welcome it. If they're going to be users, they should see it before anyone signs. Deepa, would a second session after the new year work, with Hannah showing the credit-control view specifically?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneIt would. Early in January, once people are back. I'll find a slot and include a couple of the regional directors, because they'll have opinions.
- Lewis Kerr NonePerfect. I'll send a short agenda so they know what they're looking at.
- Tariq Saleem NoneCan I ask something about the number of connectors? We've got the CRM, the branch system, the helpdesk, the call recorder, the accounting system, and a couple of spreadsheets that people won't give up.
- Hannah Lowe NoneSpreadsheets we can usually handle, but I'd be cautious about promising them until I've seen how they're laid out. The main systems are straightforward. Send me the list, with who owns each, and I'll tell you which are standard connectors and which need design work.
- Tariq Saleem NoneI'll do that this week. I can put the field list for the branch system in too.
- Hannah Lowe NoneThat would be the most useful thing you could send. The field list for the branch system. Matching quality depends on it more than on anything we configure.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneCan we talk about people, not just systems? When we go live, who does what on our side? I'd rather know the shape of the commitment now.
- Lewis Kerr NoneFair question. Someone with authority over the data, which sounds like you, Deepa, someone who wires up the connectors, which is Tariq, and a named person from credit control. That last one is the one that gets forgotten.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneRight. I'll ask for a name. I don't want it to be somebody's fifth priority.
- Hannah Lowe NoneAnd on our side, I'd be the technical lead through the implementation, with Lewis staying on the commercial side. After go-live your customer success manager takes over, which is Amara Obi.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneGood. Now, I do have to ask about the number, because I'll be asked. Lewis, where are we?
- Lewis Kerr NoneYes. To put a number on it, the figure on the proposal at the moment is £146,500. I want to be careful what that is, because it's easy to misread. That is the total deal value, and it includes the one-off implementation fee. It's not an annual price.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneSo the subscription itself is a smaller figure than that, and it recurs.
- Lewis Kerr NoneCorrect. The implementation is a fixed fee, paid once, and the subscription is annual, in advance. I'm not going to split it out from memory on a call. I'll send that over today with the split in writing, and the VAT position shown on each line, so your finance lead isn't doing arithmetic.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThank you, that's what I need. I'd rather she saw it on paper first than heard it from me.
- Lewis Kerr NoneUnderstood. And I'll say, I'm not going to push you towards anything the usage doesn't support. If after the second session it looks like a smaller scope is the right start, say so and I'll price that too.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneI appreciate you saying that. It's company-wide that I'm trying to get to, but I'd want the first stretch to be credible.
- Tariq Saleem NoneOne more technical thing, if there's time. Stale data. If the branch system load fails for two nights, what stops people acting on old numbers?
- Hannah Lowe NoneA sensible worry. Every answer carries the load time of its sources, so a stale source shows as stale. It doesn't stop anyone acting on it, to be precise, but they can see the age. And the connectors page would show you before they notice.
- Tariq Saleem NoneThat's a fair answer. Better than most.
- Hannah Lowe NoneI'd rather tell you what it does than what you'd like it to do.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneRight. I think I've seen what I came to see. Anything else from you two before we wrap?
- Lewis Kerr NoneOnly the next steps, so we're all clear. Hannah, you're sending the architecture note and the permissions summary?
- Hannah Lowe NoneYes. The architecture diagram, a note on how permissions would map to your roles, and a short list of the questions I'd expect your IT team to ask, with answers. I'll put it all in writing and send it early next week.
- Lewis Kerr NoneAnd I'll send the quote today, with the implementation and the subscription shown separately and co-termed to a start date we agree. Deepa, you're finding a slot in early January with credit control and the regional directors.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneYes. And Tariq, you've got the connector list and the field list.
- Tariq Saleem NoneI'll send both by Monday, and a note on the role setup. Then Hannah can tell me what's standard.
- Lewis Kerr NoneGood. Thanks all, and enjoy what's left of the break. I'll speak to you in the new year.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThanks, Lewis, thanks Hannah. Speak soon.
- Hannah Lowe NoneThanks, all. Bye for now.
- Tariq Saleem NoneCheers. Bye.
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