A rollout across dozens or hundreds of sites succeeds or fails long before the first engineer arrives. These seven steps come from rollouts our team has delivered across retail, offices and warehouses.
1. Survey before you schedule
Every site is different, even when the floor plans look the same. A short survey – or at least photos of the comms cabinet, power and mounting points – finds the problems that would otherwise stop an engineer on the night.
2. Write one runbook
Put every step in one document: what to check on arrival, the install sequence, the tests, the photos to take and the sign-off. Every engineer works to the same runbook, so every site ends up the same.
3. Pilot two or three sites
Run the runbook on a small number of sites first, ideally with different layouts. Fix what goes wrong, update the runbook, then scale up.
4. Book access and windows early
Confirm access times, keys, alarm codes and site contacts at least a week ahead. Retail and hospitality sites often need out-of-hours work, and those slots fill up fast.
5. Get the kit there first
Ship equipment to arrive before the engineer, and get someone on site to confirm it has arrived. A missing box is the most common reason for a wasted visit.
6. Report every day
A daily report showing sites completed, issues found and the plan for tomorrow keeps everyone aligned and stops small problems growing.
7. Close each site properly
Collect sign-off, photos and test results for every site before marking it done. Leave the site tidy and the old equipment labelled for collection.
Bonus: plan for the sites that fail
Some sites will need a second visit. Build a small amount of spare capacity into the plan so they don’t push the whole programme back.
How Dexis helps
Dexis IT runs multi-site rollouts across the USA, EMEA, Latin America and Asia-Pacific, under our partners’ brands or our own. We can survey, plan, staff and report on your rollout from start to finish. Talk to us about your next programme.