Multi-Site IT Rollouts: What We Learned From 80 Sites

Multi-site rollouts look simple from a spreadsheet. Same brand, same kit, same setup, repeat it twenty times. In reality, every site is its own little world. Different building, different cabling routes, different power, different local electricians, different language on the door of the comms cupboard. The work that looked identical on paper turns out to be twenty individually difficult jobs.

Here is what 80 sites taught us.

1. Standardise the stack ruthlessly

The first lesson, learned painfully on early projects, is that the stack has to be the same everywhere. Same access point model. Same switch. Same firewall. Same camera. Same till. Same kitchen printer. Same labelling scheme on the patch panel.

Why? Because when something breaks at site number 14 at 7pm on a Tuesday, you cannot have the support engineer on the phone wondering whether this site has the new firmware or the old one, whether the cameras are Hikvision or somebody's last-minute substitute, whether the firewall rules are the standard set or some bespoke version. Standardisation is what makes 20 sites supportable by a small team.

• One AP family across the whole estate, usually Ubiquiti UniFi
• One camera platform, usually Hikvision
• One alarm platform, usually Ajax
• One EPOS platform per brand, usually EPOS Now for our hospitality customers
• One naming convention for SSIDs, VLANs, switch ports and patch panel labels

If you cannot get the same kit on a site for some reason, the rule is to escalate it before install day, not after.

2. One project lead, based in one place

Big consultancies dot project managers around different countries. We do not. Every multi-site rollout we run has one project lead, based in Liverpool, who owns the schedule, the kit list, the build pack and the cut-over plan for every site.

Why? Because handoffs are where rollouts go wrong. The site survey was done by one person, the cable was pulled by another, the kit was configured by a third, and now the customer is asking why the till is not connecting. Nobody owns it. With a single project lead, there is one person whose name is on every site, who knows the quirks of each, and who the customer can ring at any time.

3. Local install crews, centrally managed

We do not pretend our Liverpool engineers are going to drive to Tallinn for a single day's install. We use trusted local install crews in each country, vetted by us, briefed by our project lead, and held to our build standards.

What makes it work is the build pack. Every install crew gets the same document. Diagrams of the cabinet, photos of how the patch panel should look at the end, exact firmware versions, exact configuration files preloaded on the switches and APs. We ship preconfigured kit where we can, so the local crew is plugging things in rather than configuring from scratch in a cold comms cupboard.

4. One team for everything beats three contractors

Most operators we work with started out using separate companies for cabling, Wi-Fi, EPOS and CCTV. The problem with that model on a rollout is the joins. The cabler finishes and leaves. The EPOS installer turns up two weeks later and discovers a missing data point in the kitchen. The CCTV installer arrives and the cable they were promised is a Cat5e, not the Cat6 they need. Each contractor blames the previous one. The site loses a day.

We do all of it. One survey covers cabling, Wi-Fi, EPOS, CCTV, alarms and access control. One install visit puts most of it in. One invoice. If something is missing or wrong, we own it because we did all of it. That is the single biggest reason customers stay with us across multiple sites.

5. Cut-over is the dangerous bit, plan it

The install is the easy part. The cut-over from the old systems to the new is where money is made or lost. We always plan cut-overs around the trading pattern of the business. For restaurants that means cutting over on a Monday morning so we have five quiet shifts before the weekend rush. For corporate offices that means a Friday evening with a full team on standby on Monday morning.

We have a written cut-over runbook for every site. It lists every system, the order it goes live, the rollback steps if something does not work, and the names and numbers of the people on call. If a customer ever wants to see why our cut-overs go quietly, the runbook is the answer.

6. Day-two support starts the moment we leave

A rollout is not done when the last cable is terminated. It is done when the customer has been operating on the new kit for a month and they have stopped calling about teething issues. We staff every rollout with day-two support from the day of go-live, with a known contact, a defined SLA and proactive monitoring of the network and the EPOS estate from our office.

Why we exist

There are larger IT companies than us in the UK. There are not many that will run 80 sites across nine countries with a single project lead, a standardised stack, and a 4-hour SLA on day-two support. That is the gap we fill. Enterprise IT, local response, one team for everything. If you are running a multi-site brand and the current rollout is making you nervous, we would like to hear about it.