Merriott Lyle Distribution / BB-Demo – Qbr
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Merriott Lyle Distribution: documents · 2026-02-09 15:15
On the 9 Feb 2026 QBR, Deepa Chauhan accepted flat usage as a steady core and agreed a staged branch rollout via single sign-on. Seats are under a third used. Renewal is expected to be a short conversation.
What was said
What this says
Current to 11 Oct 26On the 9 Feb 2026 QBR, Deepa Chauhan accepted flat usage as a steady core and agreed a staged branch rollout via single sign-on. Seats are under a third used. Renewal is expected to be a short conversation.
What happened: Amara Obi showed a little under a third of 200 Enterprise seats active, essentially flat on last quarter. Tickets are minor and the connectors have been loading nightly.
Customer view: Deepa sees credit control as heavy users acting as the answer desk for branches. Tariq Saleem said branch managers are held back by the group mapping, which covers only a few teams.
Commercial: Amara confirmed the contracted figure of £116k matches invoices, with nothing overdue. Deepa will take a one-page value summary to the person who signs off spend, and wants Lewis Kerr to come to her first.
Watch: Tariq warned that duplicate account matches would stop branch managers using it within about a week. Dispute resolution times cannot come from the brain alone.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Theme
Branch adoption and renewal prep
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
positive
Voice
champion
Who was there
BB-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Amara Obi to send the usage by team to Deepa Chauhan and Tariq Saleem in the week of the call.
- Tariq Saleem to write up the branch-to-group mapping list for Deepa and send Amara a count of accounts that do not match cleanly.
- Amara Obi to brief Lewis Kerr on the usage picture and plan before the renewal paperwork goes to Deepa.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- Two thirds of the 200 Enterprise seats are untouched, which the customer's senior sign-off may read as poor value at the first renewal.
- Trade accounts that do not match cleanly between the branch system and the CRM could drive new branch users away.
- Dispute resolution benefit cannot be shown from the brain and depends on credit control's own before and after records.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- A staged rollout to a few regional branch groups via single sign-on can widen use within the existing 200 seats.
- Steady page views and heavy credit control use give a stable core for the one-page value summary.
Transcript
Amara Obi NoneHello, can you both hear me all right?
Deepa Chauhan NoneYes, loud and clear. Good afternoon, Amara.
Tariq Saleem NoneAfternoon. Give me a second, the camera's being awkward again. There. Can you see me?- Amara Obi NoneWe can. Good, that's all three of us. Thanks for making time on a Monday afternoon, I know the start of the week is never kind to anyone.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneIt's fine. Monday afternoon is easier than Friday. Nobody's trying to get away.
- Tariq Saleem NoneBranch managers still ring on a Friday at ten to five, mind. But yes, fair.
- Amara Obi NoneHa, I'll take that as a warning. So, I'll say it properly as it's a quarterly review. I'm Amara, I'm the customer success manager looking after Merriott Lyle. I wasn't around for the start of the project, so please tell me where my picture is wrong. What would good look like for you coming out of this quarter?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneRight. The one thing I need from today is something I can take into the account-data review. A plain view of who is actually using the brain, which teams, and what we do about the ones who aren't. Then renewal is only a short conversation afterwards, not a big one.
- Amara Obi NoneThat's a good brief. Tariq, do you want to start with tickets, as usual?
- Tariq Saleem NoneYes. Open tickets first. There's been one in the last month, and it was minor. Nothing high priority, nothing sitting with an engineer that worries me. I'll check the load log again after this call, but the connectors have been loading every night.
- Amara Obi NoneWhich matches what I see. One ticket, none urgent, and the nightly refresh has been landing before the working day starts. So on the service side there's nothing to report, which is what you want.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneGood. I'll be honest, quiet is what I hoped for. Quiet isn't the same as used though, is it?
- Amara Obi NoneNo, and that's where I wanted to go next. Here's what the numbers say. Let me share my screen. Can you see the chart?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneNot yet. Oh, there it is.
- Amara Obi NoneSo this is active users, a rolling thirty-day average. You're licensed for 200 seats on Enterprise. On average you've got a little under a third of those active in a given month. And compared with last quarter it's essentially flat. A tiny dip, one percent at most, which I wouldn't read anything into.
- Tariq Saleem NoneFlat I can live with. I'd half expected it to have slipped over the holidays.
- Amara Obi NoneIt held up. But I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't say it out loud: flat is not growth, and two thirds of the seats are not being touched. I don't think that's a problem with the product so much as a rollout question. Who else should have access?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneWhich accounts and which branches, though? Because it's very uneven. Credit control are heavy users. They live in it when there's a dispute, because they can see the orders, the calls and the invoices for a trade account on one page. Key-account managers use it, mostly the ones who've been with us a while.
- Tariq Saleem NoneAnd the branches are where it falls off. Some branch managers log in, plenty never have.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneRight, and I don't want to go in with a stick. That's not a data question, that's a habit question. If a branch manager gets a ring from a customer about an invoice, they still call head office, and head office goes and finds out. We've simply moved the phone call.
- Amara Obi NoneWhich is the exact thing the account view is meant to cut out. Can I ask, when that call does go to head office, who picks it up?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneCredit control, usually. Sometimes someone in my team, sometimes a key-account manager if they know the customer. It depends who answers.
- Amara Obi NoneMm. So credit control is already doing the right thing with the brain, they're just the ones who end up answering for the branches as well.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneYes, that's fair. They're the answer desk, in effect.
- Tariq Saleem NoneCan I come in on that? Part of why the branches don't log in is access, not attitude. We have single sign-on in the plan, but the group mapping from our directory to the brain only covers a few teams. For a branch manager to get in cleanly, somebody has to sort out which group they sit in. That's a mapping question, and it's on my list.
- Amara Obi NoneThat's really useful. So it isn't that the branches have been told no, it's that getting in has been fiddly.
- Tariq Saleem NoneFiddly, yes. And they'd rather ask someone than fight a login. Can't blame them.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneTariq, before anyone touches that mapping, I want to see it. Not because I don't trust it, I just want to know which branch ends up in which group.
- Tariq Saleem NoneOf course. I wouldn't change it without telling you. I'll write it up as a list, branch by group, and you can mark it up.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThank you. Show me where that number comes from is the thing I always end up asking, so a list I can read is the right way round.
- Amara Obi NoneThen let me offer something concrete, and tell me if it's too much. Rather than switching on every branch at once, pick a handful. A couple of regional groups where the branch managers are keen. We get them in through single sign-on, I run a short walk-through for them, and we look at what changes in how often they ring head office.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneI like that better than a big launch. The regional directors would back it if they could see their own branches in the numbers. How long is the walk-through?
- Amara Obi NoneShort. Under an hour, built around their own trade accounts, not a generic demo. I'd want you in the first one to say why it matters.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneI can do that. I'd want credit control there as well, honestly. Let's get credit control in the room. They can tell a branch manager what they wish branches checked before they ring.
- Amara Obi NoneGood. That's more convincing coming from them than from me.
- Tariq Saleem NoneOne thing I'd flag. If we add branch users, the account matching between the branch system and the CRM has to hold. If a branch manager looks up a customer and sees two records, they'll stop using it in about a week.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneRight, that's the one that would kill it. Is that a risk at the moment?
- Tariq Saleem NoneA small one. Most of the trade accounts match cleanly. There are a few that don't, usually where a customer trades under more than one name. I'd rather fix the worst of those before we invite anyone new, rather than after.
- Amara Obi NoneAgreed. Can you get me a rough idea of how many are affected, even approximate? I'd rather say the real position to the regional directors than oversell it.
- Tariq Saleem NoneI'll pull it from the load log, and I won't guess. Give me a day or two and I'll send you a proper count.
- Amara Obi NonePerfect. Let me stay with the chart one more minute, because there's another thing in it. Page views are steady, and that tells me people who use it keep using it. It's a stable core, not a leaky one. I'd put that on the positive side.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThat's helpful. If someone on the board asks me whether it's dying off, I can say no, it's steady, and the next job is widening it.
- Amara Obi NoneExactly that. Steady core, wider rollout. I wouldn't claim more than the numbers support.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneWhich brings us to the renewal. The contract runs to 27 Feb 2026 and the renewal date I have is 28 Feb 2026. That's not far off, is it?
- Amara Obi NoneIt's a few weeks. Those are the dates I've got too. And just so we're all looking at the same thing, the contracted annual figure is £116,500 and what's been invoiced matches it, so there's no gap between the order form and the invoices. Nothing overdue on the account either.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneGood, that's what I wanted to hear from your side. Finance will ask me the same thing. It's been a year since go-live, more or less. 28 Feb 2025 was the start, if I remember right.
- Amara Obi NoneThat's the date I have as well. So you've had a full year, and this is the first renewal.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneWhich means somebody senior will want to know what we got for the money. And I need to be careful on that. I take it to the person who signs off spend on our side, I don't go round them. I'd like to be able to put one page in front of them.
- Amara Obi NoneThen let's build that page. Here's what I'd put on it. Usage held steady through the year, a stable group of heavy users in credit control and key accounts, no serious incidents, nothing overdue, and a clear plan to widen it to branches. Is that the shape?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneIt's the shape. I'd add one thing. A line on what credit control can do now that they couldn't before. Disputes closed faster, fewer calls bounced between teams. If you can't show it from the data, I'd say so rather than invent it.
- Amara Obi NoneI'll be straight with you on that. I can show you activity and who's asking, but I can't show you dispute resolution times from the brain on its own. That would have to come from credit control's own records. If they can give you a before and after, I'll help you lay it next to the usage.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThat's fair, and I'd rather hear that than be handed a number I can't defend. I'll ask them.
- Tariq Saleem NoneI can help there too. I know which reports they've been running most. That would at least show what they lean on.
- Amara Obi NoneBrilliant. On the commercial side, Lewis Kerr is your account owner, and he'll come to you with the renewal paperwork. I'll make sure he has the usage picture and the plan before he does, so you don't have to tell the story twice.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThanks. I'd appreciate that. And he comes to me first, then the money conversation goes through the right person. That's how I like to do it.
- Amara Obi NoneUnderstood. Nothing goes round you.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneGood. Then one more question, and it's a practical one. If we roll out to a few regional groups and it works, can we do more without a fuss? We're licensed for 200 and we're nowhere near it, so I assume yes.
- Amara Obi NoneOn seats, yes. You've got plenty of headroom, so adding branch managers doesn't change the licence. The thing to watch is connectors rather than users, and Tariq would tell me if a new source was being asked for.
- Tariq Saleem NoneNothing new at the moment. If the branches want something specific, I'll say. Which connector, and why, before anything's wired.
- Amara Obi NoneGood. Then I think we've covered the ground. Let me read back what I've got, and stop me if I've got any of it wrong.
- Amara Obi NoneFirst, I send you both the usage by team, so Deepa has something for the account-data review, and I do it this week. Second, Tariq writes up the branch-to-group mapping as a list for Deepa, and doesn't change anything until she's seen it. Third, Tariq gets me a count of the accounts that don't match cleanly. Fourth, Deepa asks credit control whether they can give a before and after on disputes, and gets them into the first walk-through. Fifth, I brief Lewis ahead of the renewal paperwork.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThat's all of it. I'd add the date for the walk-through, though. Can we say after the mapping list is agreed, not before?
- Amara Obi NoneYes, that order makes sense. Mapping first, then the walk-through, then we look at what moved. And let's get the next QBR in the diary now so it doesn't slip. I'll send an invite before the end of the week.
- Tariq Saleem NoneFine by me. Cheers, both.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThanks, Amara. This was more useful than I expected. Speak soon.
- Amara Obi NoneThanks, both. Best, Amara. Bye for now.
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