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Merriott Lyle Distribution · 26 Feb 2026 10:15
Deepa Chauhan wanted the Enterprise renewal confirmed the day before the contract ended. She is renewing as is, with no overdue invoices. Her open question is value: regional directors ask if the seats are being used.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Deepa Chauhan wanted the Enterprise renewal confirmed the day before the contract ended. She is renewing as is, with no overdue invoices. Her open question is value: regional directors ask if the seats are being used.
What happened: Daniel Okafor and Deepa Chauhan met on 26 Feb 2026, one day before the contract end of 27 Feb 2026. Deepa's single aim was to know the renewal was in order before the Friday.
Commercial: Daniel said the executed order form and the invoices agree at £116k a year, with nothing overdue. Deepa said they are renewing as is, same tier and scope, and that she would not sign alone because money goes through her finance lead.
Customer view: Regional directors asked whether the company is using what it pays for, and active users are well under the licensed number. The call shows a training gap, not a product gap, and a good share of the questions come from Deepa herself.
Watch: Freshness was the one recurring worry, and Daniel took an action to check the last month of refreshes. Four follow-ups are owed to the customer: renewal timing, a refresh note, a director session and quarterly review dates.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Enterprise renewal and value
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
positive
Voice
champion
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Daniel Okafor to confirm by end of day when Lewis Kerr will send the renewal document to Deepa and her finance lead.
- Daniel to send a plain-words note on the past month of nightly refresh timing.
- Deepa to email names of key-account managers, and Daniel to send quarterly review dates early the following week.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Regional directors question whether the licensed seats are being used, with active users well under the licensed number.
- A good share of the questions come from Deepa Chauhan, so activity depends on one champion.
- Some staff cannot show that overnight data is current, which touches the Enterprise freshness commitment.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- A short session for regional directors on their own branches and dashboards would widen use.
- A quarterly review with directors and credit control gives a place to make the value case.
- Extra users or connectors may follow later as a separate conversation with Lewis Kerr.
Transcript
Daniel OkaforMorning, Deepa. Thank you for making the time. I think it's just the two of us today, is that right? I wasn't sure whether anyone from credit control was joining.
Deepa ChauhanMorning, Daniel. Just me, I'm afraid. They've got the month-end close on, so I'll carry their questions with me. Can you hear me all right? I'm in the small meeting room and the heating is making a noise.- Daniel OkaforClear as anything. How's the week been? It's been properly grey down here, I hope Birmingham is treating you better.
- Deepa ChauhanNo, same. Rain since Monday. Busy though, which is better than quiet. Shall I say the one thing I need from today, so we don't run out of time?
- Daniel OkaforPlease, go ahead.
- Deepa ChauhanThe renewal. I want to be certain it's sitting where it should, because the contract runs out tomorrow and I don't want anything to be a surprise on the Friday. The rest is nice to have, but that's the thing.
- Daniel OkaforCompletely fair, and thank you for putting it first. Just to close the loop on where we are: the contract end is 27 Feb 2026 and the renewal date is 28 Feb 2026. The subscription is Enterprise, two hundred licensed users, and what's been invoiced matches what's on the order form at £116,500 a year. So nothing is out of line on our side.
- Deepa ChauhanGood. Show me where that number comes from, though. Not because I doubt it. Our finance lead will ask me and I'd like to be able to say it's the order form and the invoices agreeing, rather than somebody's spreadsheet.
- Daniel OkaforOf course. It's the executed order form from 28 Feb 2025 that sets the contracted figure, and then the invoices are what accounting actually raised against it. Those two agree at £116,500. I'd always trust those over anything in a CRM field, ours included.
- Deepa ChauhanRight. That's what I'll tell them. And no overdue anything on your side? I know we pay on time, but I'd like to hear you say it.
- Daniel OkaforNothing overdue. You've been very tidy, honestly. I wish all my accounts were.
- Deepa ChauhanCredit control will be pleased to hear someone says that about us. They normally hear the opposite from customers.
- Daniel OkaforHa, I imagine so. Now, on the renewal paperwork itself. Lewis Kerr is the account owner and he holds the commercial side, so that's the document he'll send across. I'll come back to you by end of day with confirmation of exactly when you'll have it in your inbox. I don't want to guess it.
- Deepa ChauhanThat's fine. Money goes through our finance lead anyway, I'd never sign anything off on my own. I just want it to land early enough that nobody is chasing at the weekend.
- Daniel OkaforUnderstood. I'll make sure Lewis knows the timing matters to you. Is there anything in the terms you think might come back with questions? Anything you've heard from your side?
- Deepa ChauhanNot really. I think they want it as it is. Same scope, same tier. The only conversation I've had is that a couple of the regional directors asked whether we are using everything we're paying for. Which is a fair thing to ask, and it's partly why I wanted today.
- Daniel OkaforThat's a good question to be asked, and I'm glad you're bringing it to me rather than sitting on it. Shall we look at usage together? I have the picture here and I can talk you through it.
- Deepa ChauhanPlease. Be honest with me, I'd rather know.
- Daniel OkaforHonest version, then. Active users are up on the previous quarter, a decent step up. It's the kind of growth I like to see because it's gradual rather than a spike after a training day. We're a long way under the two hundred licensed, so there's plenty of headroom, which cuts both ways. It's room to grow, but it also means plenty of people have a login and aren't using it.
- Deepa ChauhanWhich is what the regional directors are picking at. Two hundred seats and a third of them, roughly, active in a typical month.
- Daniel OkaforI wouldn't put a fraction on it just yet, but the direction is right. Can I ask, which teams do you feel are using it most? Is it the key-account managers?
- Deepa ChauhanKey accounts, yes, and credit control have really taken to it. The branch managers are the slower ones. Which account, which branch, that's the question I keep asking. A branch manager gets a call from a trade customer about a disputed delivery and they still ring head office rather than look it up.
- Daniel OkaforMm. That's very common, honestly. The habit of ringing a person is stronger than the habit of looking something up, especially when the person has always answered. How is the team finding it, the ones who do use it? What do they say?
- Deepa ChauhanThe ones who use it say it saves them the reconciling. One of the credit controllers told me she used to open four things to understand one account, the orders, the disputes, the call notes and the invoices. Now she asks the one question and she's got it. She said it, I didn't prompt her.
- Daniel OkaforThat's exactly what it's for. I'd love to be able to use that line, with her permission, when I talk to other customers who are thinking along the same lines.
- Deepa ChauhanI'll ask her. She's shy, mind you.
- Daniel OkaforNo pressure at all. Now, on tickets. There were a couple in the last month, both routine, and nothing high priority. I looked through them before the call. They were how-to type questions rather than anything broken.
- Deepa ChauhanYes, I think one of those was mine. I was trying to work out how to give a regional director a view of just their own branches. Somebody told me it was possible and then I couldn't find where.
- Daniel OkaforRight, and did you get an answer you were happy with?
- Deepa ChauhanI did, quickly. Support were very good. I just think it shows people don't know what's in there. I'm the one who knows, and I had to ask.
- Daniel OkaforI'd take that as a small signal that there's a training gap rather than a product gap. And it ties in with the regional directors' question. If they can't see their own branches easily, they can't see the value either.
- Deepa ChauhanExactly my point. Could we do something for the regional directors? Not a big thing. A short session, thirty minutes, where we show them their own patch.
- Daniel OkaforI think that's a very sensible idea, and a short, specific session works better than a long general one. Let me think about who from our side should lead it. I can do it myself, or I may bring in one of the solutions engineers if you want to see the dashboards side in more depth. I'll come back to you on that.
- Deepa ChauhanDashboards, yes. A couple of my people have built a few already and the directors like pictures more than chat. Though I don't want to promise them something that isn't there.
- Daniel OkaforNo, quite right. What's there today, the dashboards builder, you have it as part of Enterprise, and your own people have shown it works for them. If a director asks for something it doesn't do, tell me and I'll tell you honestly whether it's a yes, a no, or a maybe later. I won't give you a date I don't own.
- Deepa ChauhanThat's all I ask. Lovely.
- Daniel OkaforCan I ask about the monthly account-data review? You chair it with credit control and the regional directors. Is that still running as it was?
- Deepa ChauhanStill monthly, yes. First Tuesday, usually. It's better than it was. The first few, everyone arrived with their own list and we spent the hour agreeing whose list was right. Now we start from the brain's account view and argue about what to do, which is the right argument.
- Daniel OkaforThat's a real change, isn't it. Going from whose number is right to what we do about it.
- Deepa ChauhanIt is. And I try never to let it become a blame conversation. If a number looks wrong, the question is where it comes from, not who typed it.
- Daniel OkaforThat's a good rule. Is there anything that comes up in those reviews repeatedly, that's still a pain? Something where you think, the brain should handle this and it doesn't quite?
- Deepa ChauhanLet me think. Honestly, the thing that comes up most is timing. Somebody looks at an account at nine in the morning and asks whether it's up to date. They want to know the data is from last night. And I say it should be, but I can't always show them.
- Daniel OkaforThat's a fair thing to want. The nightly refresh is meant to be complete by seven in the morning on business days, and on Enterprise that's something you're covered on, not just availability but freshness too. Nothing has been flagged to me as late recently. But I can check the last few weeks properly and tell you what I see rather than reassure you from memory.
- Deepa ChauhanWould you? Because if I can say, we checked and it was in on time every day last month, the directors will stop asking.
- Daniel OkaforI'll do that. Just so I've got it right: you want a short note on the refresh timing for the past month, in plain words, that you can pass to the regional directors.
- Deepa ChauhanPlain words, yes. Not a table. They won't read a table.
- Daniel OkaforPlain words it is. Anything else on that theme? Connectors, systems, anything changed at your end that I should know about? Sometimes a team changes something and doesn't think to tell us.
- Deepa ChauhanHmm. Not that I know of. We've not touched the CRM setup, nothing on the finance side. I'd have heard, I sit in all those meetings. If anything is planned I'll tell you well ahead.
- Daniel OkaforThank you, that's really useful. A broken source tends to show up as the numbers quietly going flat, so it helps when I hear before it happens.
- Deepa ChauhanUnderstood. I'll keep you in the loop.
- Daniel OkaforShall I talk a little about who is asking the questions? There's a point I'd like your view on.
- Deepa ChauhanGo on.
- Daniel OkaforWhen I look at who's asking the brain questions, a good share come from a small number of people. And I suspect you're one of them. Which is lovely, but it does mean if you were away for a month, a fair amount of the activity would go quiet.
- Deepa ChauhanHa. Yes, that's probably true. I'm a bit of a one-woman advert for it. I'd like it not to depend on me, to be honest.
- Daniel OkaforI'd like that too, and I say it with great affection. It's a pattern I see in many accounts where there's one strong champion. It's not a criticism at all. It's more that if we help two or three others become confident users, the whole thing is sturdier.
- Deepa ChauhanSo the regional director session helps with that as well.
- Daniel OkaforIt does. And maybe one or two of the key-account managers who are already keen. If you can think of names, I'd happily work with them directly.
- Deepa ChauhanI can give you names. Let me do that by email, I'll need to check who's actually in the office. Two of them are always out visiting customers.
- Daniel OkaforThat's absolutely fine. No hurry on it, next week would be perfectly good.
- Deepa ChauhanRight. Can I come back to the renewal for a second? I want to check I've understood something.
- Daniel OkaforOf course.
- Deepa ChauhanWe're renewing as is. Same tier, same number of users, same scope. If the regional directors do start using it properly and we want more connectors or more seats later, that's a separate conversation, not a problem for the renewal.
- Daniel OkaforThat's right. The renewal can simply carry on what you have. Anything you want to add later, extra users or connectors, can be discussed separately with Lewis. There's no pressure to decide it now, and you've got a lot of headroom as it stands.
- Deepa ChauhanGood. I don't want to open a big commercial discussion in the last day of a contract. That wouldn't be fair on anyone.
- Daniel OkaforQuite. And I'd rather you felt comfortable than rushed. Is there anyone on your side I should be copying on the renewal paperwork, apart from yourself and your finance lead?
- Deepa ChauhanJust those two. If it goes to anyone else it ends up in a different inbox and gets lost.
- Daniel OkaforNoted. I'll pass that on to Lewis exactly like that.
- Deepa ChauhanThank you. Now, something a bit different. A colleague asked me last week what happens to the brain if we change our CRM in a year or two. Not that we're planning to, I want to be clear. It was a what-if.
- Daniel OkaforIt's a reasonable what-if. The brain is built and run inside your own Snowflake account, so your data and the structure we've built stay with you. A new CRM would need a new connector and some work to map it across, but the rest of what you've built isn't thrown away. I wouldn't want to promise the detail without looking at it properly, but that's the shape of it.
- Deepa ChauhanThat's reassuring enough for a what-if. I'll tell them it's not a cliff edge.
- Daniel OkaforNot a cliff edge, no. Just a piece of work, and I'd want to be involved early if it ever got serious.
- Deepa ChauhanUnderstood. Okay. What else should we cover? I feel we've done the main bits.
- Daniel OkaforTwo small things from me, if I may. The first is a quarterly review. You're on Enterprise, so you're entitled to a proper one, and I'd like to put something in the diary for the spring once the renewal is behind us. That would be the place to look at value more fully, with the regional directors if you want them there.
- Deepa ChauhanI'd like that. Especially with the directors. If they hear the numbers from you rather than from me, it carries more weight.
- Daniel OkaforI'll send a few dates early next week. And the second thing, you mentioned your heating earlier, so I'll keep this brief. Is there anyone new on your team, or anyone leaving? Because I like to know who the admins are, in case we need to reach someone in a hurry.
- Deepa ChauhanHa, the heating. No, nobody leaving, nobody new that I know of. It's the same group. I'm still the main admin and I've got a deputy who knows what to do if I'm off.
- Daniel OkaforThat's perfect. A deputy is exactly what I was hoping to hear.
- Deepa ChauhanLet's get credit control in the room for the quarterly review too. They have views and they don't always get to share them with you.
- Daniel OkaforYes, please. I'd very much like to hear it first hand, particularly from the credit controller you mentioned. Whatever they'd like to tell me, the good and the awkward.
- Deepa ChauhanOh, there'll be some awkward. They always have a wish list.
- Daniel OkaforGood, I'd much rather have the list. A quiet customer worries me more than one with a list.
- Deepa ChauhanFair. Right, let me recap, so I've got it right for my own notes. You're confirming the renewal paperwork timing by end of day, and Lewis sends the renewal document to me and our finance lead.
- Daniel OkaforYes. I'll come back to you today on when, and I'll make sure it's with you with time to spare.
- Deepa ChauhanSecond, you send me a short plain note on how the nightly refresh has been over the last month. Third, we sort out a thirty minute session for the regional directors, and I send you the names of the key-account managers to include.
- Daniel OkaforThat's it exactly. And the fourth, the quarterly review dates from me early next week.
- Deepa ChauhanFour things. I can hold four things.
- Daniel OkaforI'd expect nothing less. I'll put it all in an email after the call so you have it in writing as well.
- Deepa ChauhanPlease do, I'll forward it to our finance lead so they can see the renewal wasn't a surprise.
- Daniel OkaforGood idea. Is there anything else on your mind? Anything you wanted to say that we haven't got to? I don't mind running a few minutes over.
- Deepa ChauhanI don't think so. Actually, one thing. I just wanted to say the team has been good. Support, you, all of it. I know we only really talk when something's wrong or something's due, but it's been a good first year.
- Daniel OkaforThat's very kind of you, thank you. I'll pass it on to the team, they'll appreciate it. And for what it's worth, it's been a pleasure on this side too. You make my job easy.
- Deepa ChauhanDon't say that, you'll jinx it.
- Daniel OkaforHa. I'll touch wood. Right then. I'll let you get back to your day, and I'll let the month-end people get back to theirs.
- Deepa ChauhanThey'll thank you. Thanks, Daniel. Speak soon.
- Daniel OkaforThank you, Deepa. Best wishes, and have a good weekend. Speak soon.
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