Merriott Lyle Distribution / BB-Demo – Qbr
Callcompleted
Merriott Lyle Distribution: documents · 2026-08-13 15:30
QBR on 13 Aug 2026: CFO Malcolm Ridgway questioned £128k a year against just over fifty active users on 200 Enterprise licences and said he may renew for fewer. Stale data after connector sync tickets is part of the story.
What was said
What this says
Current to 11 Oct 26QBR on 13 Aug 2026: CFO Malcolm Ridgway questioned £128k a year against just over fifty active users on 200 Enterprise licences and said he may renew for fewer. Stale data after connector sync tickets is part of the story.
What happened: At the 13 Aug 2026 QBR, Amara Obi said average active users over thirty days were just over fifty against 200 licensed on Enterprise, down on the quarter before.
Customer view: Malcolm Ridgway, the CFO, asked what £128k a year buys and said he may renew for fewer. Deepa Chauhan admitted some licences sit with people who have changed roles.
Service: Two high priority connector sync tickets left the overnight load incomplete on some mornings, so the data was stale. Amara will check the timestamps against the 07:00 refresh commitment and any Enterprise freshness credit.
Commercial: The renewal date on record is 28 Feb 2027. Amara owes Malcolm a written note on usage by team, questions asked, refresh timestamps and a licence recommendation.
Watch: Accounting shows no overdue invoices, so this is a value case, not a payment issue.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Theme
Usage dip, renewal doubt
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
mixed
Voice
decision-maker
Who was there
BB-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Amara Obi sends Malcolm Ridgway a written note by the end of the following week, copying Deepa Chauhan and Tariq Saleem.
- Tariq Saleem sends Amara the load log and a note on the mapping change by the next day.
- Deepa Chauhan invites Amara to the account-data review with credit control and the regional directors.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- The CFO may renew for fewer licences if he cannot defend the Enterprise figure to the board.
- Incomplete overnight loads left stale data, which the customer says has cost trust among branch users.
- Questions asked may rest on a handful of people in credit control and key accounts.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- A clean list of active users gives a true licence base and a basis for bringing branch teams back.
- Fixing data reliability could restore usage rather than shrink the Enterprise contract.
Transcript
Amara Obi NoneHello? Can you hear me all right? I can see Deepa, so I'll assume yes.
Deepa Chauhan NoneLoud and clear, Amara. Good afternoon. Tariq is just finishing something else, he said he'd be two minutes.- Amara Obi NoneNo problem at all. How's your week been?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneBusy. The usual Thursday, everybody wanting everything before the weekend. Honestly I'm glad this is in the diary, it makes me stop and look at the numbers.
Tariq Saleem NoneSorry, sorry. Can you hear me? I had the wrong audio device. Right, I'm here.- Amara Obi NonePerfect, hi Tariq. Malcolm, are you joining us?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneHe's on, I can see him in the lobby. He's let in now, I think.
Malcolm Ridgway NoneAfternoon. Apologies for the late arrival. Right. What has changed since the last one?- Amara Obi NoneAfternoon, Malcolm. Good question, and I'll get to it. Let me introduce myself properly for the recording. I'm Amara Obi, I'm the customer success manager for Merriott Lyle, and Lewis Kerr still looks after the commercial side. What I'd like to start with is simple: what does good look like for you this quarter? Deepa, shall we start with you?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneYes. The one thing I need from today is a straight answer on why fewer people are using the brain. I don't want it to turn into a blame conversation, with the branches or with anyone. I just want to understand it, and then I want to fix it.
- Amara Obi NoneThat's fair, and it's where I wanted to go anyway. Here's what the numbers say. You have two hundred licensed users on the Enterprise tier. Across the last thirty days the average number of people actually active has been just over fifty. And that's down on the quarter before. Not a collapse, but it's a clear dip, and I don't want to skate past it.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneJust over fifty out of two hundred.
- Amara Obi NoneYes. Average active across the month, so it's not the same fifty every day.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneAnd the cost of that is? We pay one hundred and twenty seven thousand five hundred a year. I'd like to know what we're getting for a licence that three quarters of the company isn't touching.
- Amara Obi NoneRight, so, fair challenge. The contracted figure is £127,500 a year, and that matches what's been invoiced, so there's no mismatch on the billing side. On the value side, I'd say usage lags what you actually bought. The tier was built so branch, key-account and credit-control teams see each trade account in one place. If only a slice of those people are in there, you're paying for a lot of potential.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneI'm not interested in potential. Put it in writing. Who is using it, what they're asking, and what it has done for debtor days.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneMalcolm, can I come in? Some of that I can answer. The credit control team are heavy users. They live in it, particularly when an account goes on stop and someone in a branch wants to know why.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneShow me where that number comes from.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThat's my line, actually.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneI know. I borrowed it.
- Amara Obi NoneHa. Okay. So I can split the active users by team and by role, and I'll send that over. I'd rather not guess in the room which groups have dropped off. What I can say is that the drop isn't spread evenly. I can see it more in some groups than others, and I want to be careful not to over-read one month.
- Tariq Saleem NoneCan I bring in the tickets? Because I'd say there's a link. We've got four open or recently open in the last thirty days, and two of those I raised as high priority.
- Amara Obi NonePlease, yes. Go through them. Which connector?
- Tariq Saleem NoneTwo are on connector sync. The branch system and the CRM, the mapping between them, where accounts weren't lining up after a change on our side. I'll be straight, some of that was us. We changed a field and I didn't tell you in advance. The other two were how-to questions from the credit control team about the search. Those were fine, answered quickly.
- Amara Obi NoneThanks. And the two high priority ones were the sync ones?
- Tariq Saleem NoneYes. I'd marked them high because the overnight load was incomplete on a couple of mornings. Records were there but not the latest. People noticed. A branch manager looks up an account at seven in the morning, sees yesterday's picture, and stops trusting it.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThat's the bit that worries me, Tariq. Trust doesn't come back at the same speed it leaves.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneSo the product was available but the data was stale.
- Amara Obi NoneYes, that's the distinction, and you're on Enterprise, so it matters. The nightly refresh is meant to be complete by seven in the morning, your local time, on business days. Enterprise is also the tier where freshness itself is covered by the service credits, not only availability. So I'll go through the timestamps on those mornings and tell you plainly whether the commitment was missed, rather than rely on how the tickets were worded.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneGood. And if it was missed?
- Amara Obi NoneThen there's a credit under the order form, and I'll put it in writing for you with the base it's calculated on. I won't promise an amount on this call before I've looked at the actual mornings.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneSensible. A percentage without the base is no use to me.
- Tariq Saleem NoneI'll pull the load log for those mornings today and send it to Amara. I'd rather not guess at a root cause. The mapping change on our side is my suspect, but it's a suspect, not a finding.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneAnd Tariq, before you change any mapping again, tell me. Not because I'd stop you, but I'd like to warn the account managers. If something looks different on a Monday they need to know why.
- Tariq Saleem NoneAgreed. That's on me. I'll put a short note in the account-data review each month, whatever I've touched.
- Amara Obi NoneThat would help a lot. Can I ask something a bit wider? Who else should have access? Because two hundred licences and just over fifty active tells me either the right people aren't in it, or the wrong people have licences.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneBoth, probably. We rolled it out by role in the first year. Some licences went to people who've since moved on to different jobs, or who simply never found a reason to log in. And some people who'd benefit, a few of the regional directors for one, only ever got the summaries that I forwarded.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneSo we are paying for licences held by people who've left roles.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneSome, yes. I'd rather say that now than have you find it later.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneI appreciate that. Carry on.
- Amara Obi NoneThanks, Deepa. That's helpful, and it's an easy one to start on. I can give Tariq a list of licences with no activity over the quarter, and he and Deepa can decide who keeps one and who doesn't. It might sound like it makes the usage number look worse before it looks better, but it gives you a true base. Malcolm, that's the base you asked for.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneIt is. And I'd want the questions asked, not just logins. A login tells me nothing.
- Amara Obi NoneAgreed, questions asked is the best single measure of value. I'll show it month on month and who's asking them. One thing I'll flag now, so it's not a surprise: when a few people ask most of the questions, that's a key-person risk. If those people move on, the value goes with them. I'll tell you whether that's the case for you.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneRight, and I think it is a bit. A handful in credit control and in key accounts. I'd like to know the real shape of it.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneLet me ask the direct question. We're coming up to the renewal. It's end of February, the twenty-eighth, I believe.
- Amara Obi NoneThe renewal date on the record is 28 Feb 2027, and the contract runs to 27 Feb 2027. So you have time, but I want us to use it rather than leave it to the last month. I'll send the formal notice well ahead, in line with the contract, and I'd like the value case to have landed with you before that.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneI won't renew a figure I can't defend to the board. If fewer than a third of the licences are in use, I'll be asked why we have two hundred. I may want to renew for fewer. I'm saying that now so nobody is surprised.
- Amara Obi NoneThank you for saying it plainly. I'd prefer that to silence. I'll say two things. One, the licence count is something we can look at properly once we've got the clean list of who's active. Two, I don't want to answer a usage dip by only shrinking the contract. If branch teams aren't in there because the data went stale on them, the fix is to make the data reliable and bring them back, not just to remove their seats.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneReasonable. But I need to see the effect, not hear about intent.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneCan I suggest something? Let's get credit control in the room. The monthly account-data review already has credit control and the regional directors. If Amara joins the next one, she can show the usage by team and they can tell us, in their words, what's stopped them using it. That's better than me interpreting it.
- Amara Obi NoneI'd like that. Let's get it in the diary. I'll bring the split by team and the list of inactive licences, and Tariq can bring the load log.
- Tariq Saleem NoneThat works. I'd also like to do a mapping review with Amara beforehand, so I'm not presenting something half-checked to the regional directors.
- Amara Obi NoneYes, let's do that early next week. Same call, thirty minutes should do it.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneOne more thing from me. Has anything been paid late, on either side? Invoices?
- Amara Obi NoneNothing overdue. Accounting shows no overdue invoices, so on the money side you're clean. This is a value conversation, not a payment one.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneGood. Then let me be clear about what I'd like by the end of next week. A short written note. Active users against licensed users, by team. Questions asked, month on month. Anything that missed the seven o'clock refresh and what the order form says about it. And your recommendation on the licence count.
- Amara Obi NoneUnderstood. I'll write that down and read it back. Usage by team, questions asked month on month, the refresh timestamps against the commitment and any credit that follows, and my recommendation on licences. By the end of next week, to you, with Deepa and Tariq copied.
- Malcolm Ridgway NoneThat's it. Thank you. Deepa, you'll take the review?
- Deepa Chauhan NoneI will. Credit control and the regional directors, with Amara and Tariq. I'll send an invite today.
- Tariq Saleem NoneAnd I'll have the load log to Amara by tomorrow, and a note on the mapping change. Cheers, everyone.
- Amara Obi NoneBrilliant. Thanks, all. I know it wasn't the most comfortable QBR, but it's better to have said it. Let's get the next one in the diary once the review's done. Speak soon.
- Deepa Chauhan NoneThanks, Amara. Talk soon.
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