Merriott Lyle Distribution / BB-Demo – Training
Callcompleted
Merriott Lyle Distribution: documents · 2025-05-13 13:15
Training call on 13 May 2025 with Tariq Saleem and Neil Ashworth. Neil saw the brain answer a real question and was impressed. He asked how to get about a hundred and twenty branch managers using it.
What was said
What this says
Current to 11 Oct 26Training call on 13 May 2025 with Tariq Saleem and Neil Ashworth. Neil saw the brain answer a real question and was impressed. He asked how to get about a hundred and twenty branch managers using it.
What happened: Laura Penhaligon showed chat, search, pages and dashboards on the customer's own data. Tariq reported no connector problems and said all loads had finished well before seven.
Customer view: Neil said the first answer saved about forty minutes of his Monday morning and called himself impressed. Tariq valued the flagged name-only matches as a worklist.
Commercial: Neil will put the area managers on it next week, which is adoption on the Enterprise subscription. His question on getting branch managers to use it is a value-case moment for the CSM.
Watch: Name-only matches still need tidying, and Tariq builds and checks the pages. Adoption across the branches is not yet shown.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Theme
Training and branch adoption
Importance
praise
Sentiment
positive
Voice
champion
Who was there
BB-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Laura Penhaligon to send the page sharing guide and a note on the match filter and dashboard steps.
- Tariq Saleem to build the overdue invoices tile for the North branches this week and send Neil the link.
- Tariq to work through the name-only match list and close the open how-to ticket.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Getting about a hundred and twenty branch managers to use the brain is an open question for Neil.
- Name-only account matches remain and need tidying by Tariq.
- Pages and dashboards depend on Tariq to build and check them.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- Neil plans to bring the area managers onto the brain next week.
- Shared pages and dashboards by region show the value in terms of questions that replace Monday calls.
Transcript
Tariq Saleem NoneHello, can you hear me alright?
Laura Penhaligon NoneYes, loud and clear. Afternoon, Tariq. Is Neil joining us?- Tariq Saleem NoneHe's just coming out of another meeting. He said to start without him, five minutes at most. Branch directors, you know, there's always one more thing.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneNo problem at all. Before we start, how's the week been? You had the regional stock take, didn't you?
- Tariq Saleem NoneWe did, yes. It's finished, thankfully, so I've got my afternoons back. Right, can I do the housekeeping first? I like to open with the tickets.
- Laura Penhaligon NonePlease do.
- Tariq Saleem NoneWe've got one open ticket with your support team. It's more of a how-to than a fault, a question about how the search handles trade account names. I think today's session probably answers it, so I'll leave it open and close it afterwards if it does.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThat's useful, because account names are exactly where I wanted to start. And nothing else is outstanding? No connector complaints?
- Tariq Saleem NoneNothing. Which connector were you thinking of? All of them have been loading every night, I checked the load log this morning. The branch system and the CRM both completed well before seven.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneLovely. That's the best start to a training session, to be honest.
Neil Ashworth NoneHello, sorry, sorry. Am I in the right place? I can see you but I'm not sure you can hear me.- Laura Penhaligon NoneWe can hear you fine, Neil. Afternoon. Don't worry, we've only been going a couple of minutes.
- Neil Ashworth NoneGood. Tariq's told me what this is. I'll be honest, I'm the one who's going to ask the daft questions, so apologies in advance.
- Tariq Saleem NoneThere aren't any daft questions. Half of mine are mapping questions that sound daft until you look at the data.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneExactly. So here's the plan for the hour or so. I'll show you three things on your own data: asking the brain a question in chat, finding things with search, and then pages and dashboards so you can keep what you find. Neil, you stop me whenever it's not how you'd think about a trade account. Does that work?
- Neil Ashworth NonePerfect. What I want, and I've said this to Tariq a few times, is to open one customer and see what's going on with them. Orders, any disputes, what credit control have said, what the branch has said. Not four different screens.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThat is exactly what it's built for. Right, I'm sharing now. Can you see the brain home page?
- Tariq Saleem NoneYes, I can see it. That's our workspace, with the branch and key-account spaces down the left.
- Neil Ashworth NoneMine's a bit smaller. Is that normal?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneTry zooming the browser out a notch, that's usually it. Mm, there you go. So, chat first. I'm going to type a question the way you'd say it to a colleague. Which of our largest trade accounts in the North have an open dispute and an invoice that's gone past terms?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneGive it a few seconds. It's reading across the CRM, the branch system and the helpdesk, all inside your Snowflake account, so nothing's leaving your environment.
- Neil Ashworth NoneOh. Right. That's a list of actual customers. I recognise three of those.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneAnd each line tells you where it got the answer. See the little source tags? Click one.
- Neil Ashworth NoneThat opens the invoice. And the call note. Is that from our call recorder?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes, that's the conversation your key-account manager had last week, summarised. So you can see the dispute and the conversation in one place.
- Neil Ashworth NoneRight. That's, well, that's about forty minutes of my Monday morning gone. Normally I'd ring credit control, then ring the branch.
- Tariq Saleem NoneCan I ask one thing? Where the answer relies on matching, say the branch system's account code to the CRM organisation, how can I see that it matched properly? I don't want Neil acting on the wrong customer.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneGood question. Open the detail panel on the right. It shows which records were joined and on what key. If it's matched on the account code you'll see that, and if it fell back to name matching it flags it.
- Tariq Saleem NoneOkay. So if I see a name match on something that should have been a code match, that's a mapping question and I'd look at it, not Neil.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneExactly, and you'd tell Deepa before changing anything, as we agreed in the build.
- Tariq Saleem NoneYes. Always.
- Neil Ashworth NoneWho's Deepa again? Sorry.
- Tariq Saleem NoneShe's on my side, the person who owns the account hierarchy. Nobody changes how a parent and a child account relate without her knowing.
- Neil Ashworth NoneSensible. Carry on, Laura, sorry.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneNot at all. Now let me show you how to ask better questions, because the wording matters. Neil, give me a real one. Something you'd actually want to know on a Tuesday.
- Neil Ashworth NoneHm. Okay. Which of my branches have lost a big trade customer's orders over the last few months? Not complaints, just the orders drying up.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneLovely, that's a trend question. I'll type it as you said it, and then I'll add the time window, because otherwise it has to guess what a few months means.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneSo, over the last six months, compared with the six before. Let's see what it does with that.
- Neil Ashworth NoneThat's, wow, that's quite a long list. Is that right? I didn't think it'd be that many.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneWorth checking rather than trusting it blindly. Tariq, would you open the first couple against the branch system?
- Tariq Saleem NoneI'll do the first one now. Hold on. Yes, that matches. Orders really did fall away there. Second one, I'll check the load log for that branch. No, it's genuine, the branch simply hasn't been invoicing that account.
- Neil Ashworth NoneRight, so that's one I need to pick up with the branch manager. That's useful. Slightly worrying, but useful.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThat's the point of it, really. It won't tell you why. It tells you where to go and ask. Now, search. Different tool, same data. Chat is for questions, search is for finding a thing you already know exists.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneTariq, this is your ticket. I'll type a trade account name the way a branch would write it, abbreviated, and then the full name.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneTwo different spellings, same customer. See how they both land on the one organisation? Search resolves them through the account code, not the text.
- Tariq Saleem NoneRight, so that's the answer to the ticket. It isn't matching on the name at all, it's using the code we mapped. I'd assumed it was fuzzy text matching.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneMostly code, with name as a fallback, and the fallback is flagged. So where there's no code, you'll see it. That's your list of things to tidy up.
- Tariq Saleem NoneThat's actually a good worklist. Can I filter it to just the fallback matches?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYou can. Use the filter at the top, match type, and pick name only. I'll leave that with you and you can go through it at your own pace.
- Tariq Saleem NoneGood. I'll close the ticket after this, then, and log that as my own task.
- Neil Ashworth NoneCan I ask something that's probably not in the plan? We have about a hundred and twenty branches. Not everyone's going to be asking questions like this. How do I get the branch managers to use it without it being another system they ignore?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneIt's not off-plan at all. Honestly it's the most common thing I get asked. Two things. First, start with a question each person already asks. If a branch manager already rings credit control every Monday, show them the one question that replaces the call.
- Neil Ashworth NoneMm. Yes, that's the Monday call. They hate that call.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneThen that's your way in. Second thing is pages. Let me show you. A page is a saved view that stays live, so you build it once and it refreshes every night. Let me make one for your region.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneI'll take the question you just asked, orders drying up, and pin the result. I'll call it North, accounts to watch. And now anyone with access can open that and it'll be up to date each morning.
- Tariq Saleem NoneAnd the refresh is the nightly one? Done by seven, so it's there before the branches open?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes, by seven on business days. So a branch manager opening it at half past seven sees yesterday's close.
- Neil Ashworth NoneCan I share that page with my area managers, but not with, say, the southern branches?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes. Sharing follows groups, and since you've got single sign-on set up, the groups come straight from your directory. Tariq, that's the bit you did at go-live.
- Tariq Saleem NoneIt is. So if Neil's area managers are in the right directory group, they'll see it with no extra setup. I'll check the group names match before we share anything, mind. I'd rather check than guess.
- Laura Penhaligon NonePerfect. Last thing, dashboards. Same idea, but charts and counts, for when you want a picture rather than a list.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneI'll drag in orders by branch, and then a second tile, open disputes by trade account. You can see the filters follow the page, so if you pick a branch, both tiles change.
- Neil Ashworth NoneOkay, that I could put on the wall of the regional meeting. Is it hard to build?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneNot at all. Tariq, you try. Build a tile for credit control, overdue invoices by branch. I'll stay quiet.
- Tariq Saleem NoneRight. New tile. Source is invoices. Group by branch, filter on overdue. Hm, which date does it use for overdue, due date or invoice date?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneDue date. It's in the tile definition on the right, so it's worth reading that before you share it, because that's the question every credit controller will ask.
- Tariq Saleem NoneGood. Yes. It's due date. Fine. And there's my tile. That was quick.
- Neil Ashworth NoneWell, I'm impressed, and I don't say that very often. Tariq, can you do that for the North branches before the next regional call?
- Tariq Saleem NoneI'll do it this week. I'll build it, check the numbers against the branch system, and send you the link. Laura, can you send me the short guide on page sharing so I've got it in writing?
- Laura Penhaligon NoneYes, I'll send that after the call, along with a note on the match filter we did and the page and dashboard steps. Anything else you want covered while I've got you both?
- Neil Ashworth NoneNot from me. That was genuinely useful. I'll get the area managers on it next week.
- Tariq Saleem NoneNothing from me either. I'll close the ticket and start on the name-only list tomorrow.
- Laura Penhaligon NoneBrilliant. Thanks both. Speak soon.
- Neil Ashworth NoneCheers, Laura. Cheers, Tariq.
- Tariq Saleem NoneCheers, both.
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