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Standardise everything you can — multi-site lessons for business IT

One lesson from running IT across several nursery sites has followed me straight into business IT: standardise everything you can.

At Little Barn Owls, staff were spread across sites and IT support wasn’t always on hand. If a laptop, an access point, or a firewall played up, the fix had to work remotely or over a quick phone call with a busy practitioner. That only worked because every site was set up the same way: same kit, same configuration, same naming, same simple how-to guides.

As IT & Systems Manager at Genco, the setting is different but the principle holds. When devices, accounts, and systems follow one standard, support is quicker, security gaps are easier to spot, and new starters are up and running on day one rather than day three.

Why “unique” setups cost you every week

One-off builds feel faster when you are standing in a room solving today’s problem. Six months later you have three firewall flavours, four laptop images, and naming that only the person who left understands. Remote support turns into archaeology. Security reviews take longer because you cannot assume what “normal” looks like.

Each exception also trains staff that “our site is different,” which makes the next exception easier to justify. Drift compounds. Soon you are supporting a museum of decisions instead of a fleet.

Standardising isn’t glamorous, and it can feel slower at the start. It pays back every time something goes wrong first thing in the morning and you already know exactly what you’re looking at.

What to standardise first

You do not need perfection on day one. Aim for a short list that removes the most chaos:

• Kit — agreed models for laptops, networking, and core peripherals so spares and guides stay simple.
• Configuration — same baseline policies, Wi-Fi patterns, and security settings across sites or teams.
• Naming — devices, sites, and accounts that a new starter (or a remote helper) can decode without folklore.
• How-to guides — short, identical steps for the tasks people actually call about.

Write the standard down where people will find it. A standard that lives only in one engineer’s head is still a single point of failure — just a quieter one.

From multi-site nurseries to business IT

Nurseries taught the lesson under constraint: limited on-site IT, busy practitioners, children’s services that could not wait for a specialist visit. Business environments often have more tooling — but the same pressure appears as soon as you have multiple locations, hybrid work, or a thin support bench.

Standardisation is how you scale support without scaling confusion. It is also how you see exceptions: when everything should look alike, the odd insecure config stands out. Onboarding gets faster because the machine and the account look like the last successful joiner, not a one-off puzzle.

If you are inheriting a mixed estate, do not boil the ocean. Pick the next refresh cycle, the next site, or the next ten laptops, and make those conform. Consistency grows by replacement as much as by big-bang projects.

Make exceptions visible

Standards only help if exceptions are rare and labelled. When a site or team must differ, document why, who approved it, and when you will revisit it. Untracked exceptions are how fleets turn back into snowflakes — and how the Monday-morning call gets longer again.