Multi-Site IT Management: What Goes Wrong Without Standards

Multi-site IT management is looking after IT for several offices or sites as one firm. That covers devices, accounts, software, links and support. It goes wrong when each site has set these up its own way. Head office has to learn each site afresh before it can help, while gaps at one site stay out of sight. For a firm managing IT across multiple locations, the trouble shows up at a few plain moments. One is the week a branch opens; another is the day a person leaves. The wider work of bringing every office onto one IT setup has a page of its own.

What Multi-Site IT Management Takes In

Here, one firm has several places of work. These may be offices, branches, stores, depots or clinics, each with its own staff and equipment. The IT lead sits at head office. Who carries out the hands-on work under that person is a separate choice, compared in whether the firm’s own staff or an outside team does each site job.

As a Signisys working description rather than a standard, the work falls into five areas:

• Devices: the laptops, desktops, printers, tills and scanners at each site.
• Accounts: the sign-ins, and who may open what.
• Software: what is installed, and which version.
• Links: the connection each site uses.
• Support: who a branch team calls, and what happens next.

Links between sites are a subject in their own right, and the page on keeping links between offices dependable deals with them. This article stays with what happens inside each site when the five areas differ from one place to the next.

The Week a New Branch Opens

A new branch has a date to open, and the branch manager has a list of things to get ready. With the date close, the branch manager, or a local supplier, buys what is to hand. That may mean a different laptop model, a different printer and a router set up by the line installer. Each choice is reasonable on the day.

Then the new staff need sign-ins. Whoever is free that week makes the accounts, with names and access rights that follow no shared pattern. Someone sets up a shared folder where it seemed handy at the time.

Head office hears little of this. The branch opens, staff start work, and the setup works well enough. Head office may learn what was set up only when the branch reports its first problem.

An Ordinary Fault, Fixed Twice Over

A printer stops. A sign-in fails, or a shared folder will not open. At a site set up like the others, the IT lead can suggest a fix that worked at another site. At a site set up its own way, though, the IT lead first has to find out what is there.

When the same fault reaches the next site, the setup there may differ, and the fix is worked out again. The IT lead asks which printer, which router and which version, then waits for someone at the branch to look.

A remote site can wait longer when someone has to travel. It can also wait while the IT lead walks a branch colleague through screens the IT lead has not seen. In that case, the delay can come from the uneven setup rather than from the fault itself. Branch IT challenges of this kind can be traced to how each site was set up.

When a Person Joins, Moves or Leaves

A new joiner at one site gets an account through one route. At another site, the route is different, or the joiner shares a colleague’s sign-in until someone makes an account.

A colleague who moves between sites can end up with two accounts. If the first site’s manager does not know of the move, the old account stays open. Whether IT hears of a move in time is one of the checks in the evidence to keep when someone joins or moves or leaves.

When someone leaves, head office closes the access it knows about. Still, access that a site set up locally can stay open after the person has gone.

When Head Office Has to Ask Each Site

The question arrives from a director, an auditor or a supplier notice. For example, which sites run this software version, or where are these devices in use? With uneven sites, the IT lead asks each site, then waits for answers that are hard to compare.

The UK National Cyber Security Centre makes a short point. The UK cyber security agency’s guidance on asset management includes the line: “It’s far easier to protect things that you know about.” The same guidance says that knowing which hardware and software a firm holds helps it answer a question such as whether a vulnerability affects it, when serious weaknesses are announced.

Shadow IT gets a definition there too: IT assets used for business purposes but left out of a firm’s asset and risk processes, or not tied into its corporate IT processes. Equipment bought locally, or set up outside head office’s own route, could be that kind of asset. Until the IT lead knows it is there, it is missing from any answer the IT lead gives head office.

Multi-Site IT Management in a Pharmacy Chain

Take an invented pharmacy chain in India, made up for this article and unconnected to Signisys. Its branches are spread over a few cities and run from one head office.

A pharmacist moves from one branch to another. At the second branch, the pharmacist gets a new sign-in for the stock and dispensing screens. The first sign-in stays open; the first branch manager did not hear of the move.

At another branch, the PC beside one counter runs an older system version that head office had no record of. It came with a local supplier’s setup when the branch opened.

Later, a supplier notice asks the chain to check one software version at each branch. The IT lead at head office phones each branch manager in turn. The answers come back in different forms. One manager reads a number off the screen and another sends a photo. A third asks a colleague to look tomorrow.

No one branch is at fault here. Each difference is tied to the branches having set up IT their own way when they opened.

What a Site Manager Can Note Down

Before anyone writes a standard, each site manager can write three short, dated notes. The notes form a Signisys working description rather than a checklist with marks.

• The last fault at the site, and who fixed it.
• The last person who joined, moved or left, and how their access was handled.
• Equipment on site, and who set it up.

Writing the standards themselves comes next, as separate work, set out in six moves for bringing each office onto one agreed setup. Signisys can compare those notes across sites at the IT lead’s request.

Signisys provides IT consulting and managed cloud services along with an IT service management and operations automation solution. Both mean Signisys has a stake in the topic.

Multi-Site IT Management FAQ: Reader Questions