Strensall Merchants / BG-Demo – Onboarding
Callcompleted
Strensall Merchants · 28 May 2025 10:15
Second onboarding call. Branch orders and deliveries are live, credit is held in test for a Midlands branch check, and SSO will precede the branch manager rollout. Neil Craven said it is moving faster than he thought.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Second onboarding call. Branch orders and deliveries are live, credit is held in test for a Midlands branch check, and SSO will precede the branch manager rollout. Neil Craven said it is moving faster than he thought.
What happened: Hamza Akhtar showed branch orders and deliveries live, with credit and ledger held at test at Ashok Patel's request. Ashok will reconcile balances on a small Midlands branch before widening.
Customer view: Neil Craven said "it's moving faster than I thought". The shared frustration is that the branch and credit systems use different trade account numbers for one customer.
Commercial: Enterprise gives plenty of connector headroom, with the call recorder and email next. Rollout runs key accounts, then trade credit, then branch managers, and SSO comes first so leavers lose access automatically.
Watch: Refresh is overnight and complete by 07:00, so it is not live, and Neil accepted that. Ashok raised one high priority ticket after a column rename, which turned out narrow. Source changes on the customer side can break connectors.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Connector status and rollout
Importance
neutral
Sentiment
positive
Voice
decision-maker
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Ashok Patel to send the mapping sheet today, the IT contact tomorrow, and run the Midlands branch test next week.
- Neil Craven to name the key accounts and trade credit contacts by the end of the week.
- Hamza Akhtar to send the identity note, load the reference list and propose a date for the key account session.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Unresolved merged accounts and mismatched account numbers could undermine early answers.
- Customer-side system changes, such as the renamed column, can break connectors without warning.
- SSO depends on agreement with the customer's IT contact before the wider rollout.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Call recorder and email connectors follow credit, with ample Enterprise connector headroom.
- A key account working session in York using their own accounts could build adoption.
- Rollout to three user groups moves towards the one hundred and sixty licensed users.
Transcript
Hamza AkhtarMorning, Ashok. Morning, Neil. Can you both hear me all right?
Ashok PatelMorning, Hamza. Yes, loud and clear.
Neil CravenMorning. I'm in the car park at the York depot, so if I go quiet it's the lorries. I've got the laptop on the bonnet. Not ideal.- Hamza AkhtarHa, that's commitment. Take your time, we're not in a rush. I'll give it a minute in case anyone else is joining, but I think it's just the three of us today.
- Neil CravenJust us. Right, before we start, I've got to tell you, a housebuilder account rang me at seven this morning. Site manager, couldn't see why a delivery had gone to the wrong yard. Two branches had touched that order and nobody could tell him which one. That's exactly why we bought this.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's a good one to open with, because it's what the whole onboarding is aimed at. Which branch, which account, what happened to the order, all in one place.
- Neil CravenAye. What's the builder actually seeing, that's what I keep asking. Anyway. Over to you.
- Hamza AkhtarThanks. So the plan for the next forty-five minutes: I want to go through where the connectors are, who owns what on your side, and what happens before we open it up to more people. Ashok, I know you've been in the admin console since we last spoke.
- Ashok PatelYes. Since last time I've changed a couple of things. I tidied the admin group so it's only me and one deputy for now, and I've written down which account number format each of the branch systems uses. That turned out to be the awkward bit.
- Hamza AkhtarGo on, that sounds important. What's awkward about it?
- Ashok PatelThe branch system and the credit system don't agree on the trade account number. Same customer, different key. Some branches pad it with leading zeroes, some don't. So when I say which account number is that, it genuinely depends which system you ask.
- Neil CravenThat's been the problem for years. Credit say one thing, the branch says another, and the customer's stood at the counter.
- Hamza AkhtarRight, and that's the thing the matching layer is for. If you can give me the mapping you've written, I'll load it as the reference list, and then every trade account resolves to one record regardless of where it came from.
- Ashok PatelI can share the sheet today. It's not perfect. There are a few I haven't resolved, mostly old accounts that were merged between branches.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's fine. Better to flag the unresolved ones than guess. We'll put them in an exceptions list and you can decide case by case.
- Ashok PatelGood. I'd rather that. I don't want it quietly merging two customers.
- Hamza AkhtarNo, it won't do that without you saying so. Let me share my screen and show you where we are on the connectors. Can you see it?
- Neil CravenI can see a lot of green.
- Hamza AkhtarGreen is good. So this is the connector list. Branch orders is live and loading. Deliveries is live. Credit and ledger is connected but I've held it at test, because Ashok asked me to.
- Ashok PatelYes. I'll test it on one branch first. I'm not switching the ledger on across the group until I've seen that the balances match what finance report.
- Hamza AkhtarWhich is exactly right. Which branch were you thinking?
- Ashok PatelOne of the smaller ones in the Midlands. Quiet, tidy accounts, and the branch manager is relaxed about being a guinea pig. If the numbers reconcile there, I'll widen it to a handful, then the rest.
- Neil CravenI'll have a word with the manager so he's expecting it. Don't want him thinking head office is poking about.
- Hamza AkhtarThat helps, thanks Neil. And just so it's clear, the reconciliation is read-only. We're reading from the ledger inside your Snowflake account, nothing is written back to it.
- Ashok PatelYes, I checked that in the setup notes. I wanted to hear you say it though.
- Hamza AkhtarFair. And everything stays in your account. We don't copy it out.
- Neil CravenCan I ask a daft question? The calls. We record the key account calls. When does that come in?
- Hamza AkhtarNot daft at all. It's next on the list after credit. The call recorder is the fourth connector I'd suggest, and then email. I want the account picture sorted first, otherwise the calls have nothing to hang on.
- Neil CravenMakes sense. So orders, deliveries, credit, then calls.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's the order. And we've got plenty of headroom, you're on Enterprise so you're nowhere near the connector limit. We can add the rest as you need them.
- Ashok PatelWhich I'll be careful with. More sources means more things that can break.
- Hamza AkhtarRight, and that's a good instinct. Let's make a rule: nothing goes live without a test on one branch and a sign-off from you.
- Ashok PatelAgreed.
- Hamza AkhtarNow, people. You've got a hundred and sixty licensed users, and at the moment only a small group are using it. Neil, I think you said the plan is branch managers, trade credit and the key account team.
- Neil CravenThat's it. Three groups. Key accounts first because they've got the big housebuilders and they'll shout loudest if it's wrong. Then trade credit. Branch managers last, once it's solid.
- Hamza AkhtarLast is sensible. Nothing puts a branch manager off faster than a tool that gives an odd answer in the first week.
- Neil CravenHa, I was one for fifteen years. You get one go with us.
- Hamza AkhtarUnderstood. So for single sign-on, Ashok, that's part of Enterprise. Are you ready to set it up, or is it a conversation with your IT team first?
- Ashok PatelIt's a conversation first. A colleague in IT looks after the identity side. I need to get him the details and agree how groups map to roles. I'd like the roles to follow the three groups Neil just described.
- Hamza AkhtarThat works. I'll send a short note he can use, what we need from the identity provider, and what comes back. Then provisioning of users can follow the groups automatically, so you're not adding people one by one.
- Ashok PatelGood. I don't want to be the bottleneck for every new starter.
- Neil CravenAnd leavers. That's the one that worries me. Somebody leaves a branch and still has access to a customer's credit position.
- Hamza AkhtarExactly, and that's the other half of it. When someone's removed from the group, their access goes too. It's one of the reasons I'd push to get this done before the wider rollout, not after.
- Ashok PatelThen I'll put it ahead of the branch manager rollout. Credit and ledger first, then single sign-on, then the managers.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's a clean sequence. Let me write that down as the plan. Anything you'd change?
- Neil CravenNo. Let's sort it, not talk about it. Though can I ask what the freshness looks like? If a lad at a branch changes an order at lunchtime, when does he see it?
- Hamza AkhtarGood question. The refresh runs overnight and should be complete by 07:00 on business days. So changes made today show up tomorrow morning, not in the next few minutes.
- Neil CravenRight. So it's not a live till.
- Hamza AkhtarNo, it's the picture of the account as of this morning. For the question you started with, who touched that order and where did it go, that's plenty. For what's on the van right now, you'd still ring the depot.
- Neil CravenFair enough. As long as everyone knows that. I'll not promise a delivery off it without checking.
- Ashok PatelI'll put a line on the home page saying when it last refreshed. Then nobody overstates what it shows.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's a really good idea, Ashok. Please do. The data says otherwise is a much easier argument to have when everyone can see the timestamp.
- Ashok PatelHa. Yes, that's the line I use.
- Hamza AkhtarNow, one thing I noticed in the logs. There was a single ticket raised in the last few weeks. Ashok, was that you?
- Ashok PatelIt was. A connector didn't pick up a new delivery table after a column was renamed. I marked it high priority because I wasn't sure how wide it was. It turned out to be narrow.
- Hamza AkhtarYes, I saw. It was sorted and I think the response was quick. If a source changes shape on your side, tell us ahead if you can, even informally, and we'll adjust the mapping before it breaks.
- Ashok PatelI'll add you to the change notes for the delivery system. Then you'll see them as I do.
- Hamza AkhtarPerfect. Better than a ticket.
- Neil CravenCan I steer us onto the training bit? Because I want key accounts using it, and half of them won't read a manual.
- Hamza AkhtarOf course. What I'd suggest is a short working session with the key account team, using their own accounts. Not slides. They ask the questions they'd normally ring someone about, and we show how to ask it.
- Neil CravenThat's the way. They'll want to test it on their worst customer. The one with the complicated rebates.
- Hamza AkhtarThen let them. If it handles the worst one, the rest are easy. I'd like Ashok in the room as well, so he can say yes, that matches the ledger, or no, it doesn't.
- Ashok PatelI can do that, as long as the credit connector is through its test by then. I wouldn't want to put unreconciled balances in front of the key account team.
- Hamza AkhtarAgreed, so the session follows the test. Neil, would you rather it's in York or on a call?
- Neil CravenYork. Get them in a room, with tea. They behave better.
- Hamza AkhtarHa, noted. I'll check what's possible on our side and come back to you on dates.
- Neil CravenRight. Is there anything you need from me, before I lose signal altogether?
- Hamza AkhtarTwo things. Name the person in key accounts who'll be the go-to, someone who'll tell us honestly when an answer looks wrong. And a contact in trade credit for the same job.
- Neil CravenI'll come back to you by the end of the week with both names. I know who I'd pick but I'll ask them first.
- Hamza AkhtarBrilliant. Ashok, from you, the account mapping sheet and the unresolved list. And the contact in IT for single sign-on.
- Ashok PatelMapping sheet today, IT contact tomorrow. I'll do the Midlands test branch next week and send you a screenshot of the balances alongside the ledger.
- Hamza AkhtarThat's all I need. From me, the identity note for your colleague, the reference list loaded once I've got your sheet, and a proposed date for the key account session.
- Neil CravenSounds good to me. Honestly, it's moving faster than I thought. We're getting somewhere.
- Hamza AkhtarIt is, and a lot of that is Ashok's care with the data. It's a good start. Anything else before we stop?
- Ashok PatelNothing from me. I'll send the sheet after this.
- Neil CravenNothing here. Right, I'd better move the car before a wagon takes the laptop with it. Cheers, both.
- Hamza AkhtarCheers, Neil. Thanks, Ashok. Speak soon.
- Ashok PatelThanks, Hamza. Goodbye. Ashok.
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