Network & multi-site · Retail & eCommerce
A national clothing brand had an IT director and a retail footprint bigger than the team could reach, with network and security drifting apart store to store. intSignal co-manages alongside the director — extending the team rather than replacing it.
The problem
A national retail footprint with inconsistent network and security.
What we did
Co-managed IT working under the client's IT director, with national support.
The outcome
NaaS removed per-store network hardware purchase and refresh.
The challenge
A national retail footprint with inconsistent network and security. An IT director needing capacity, not a takeover. Customer and payment-adjacent data raising the stakes on every gap. Store connectivity that couldn't be managed centrally.
The approach
Co-managed IT working under the client's IT director, with national support. Network as a Service, SD-WAN, and FWaaS. Cybersecurity and compliance: SIEM, XDR, EDR, password manager, dark-web monitoring. Microsoft 365 and UCaaS.
The thinking
A retail footprint drifts apart store by store when every location is a little different and no one owns the whole. We chose NaaS and SD-WAN over per-store hardware so the network could be standardised and managed centrally, and co-management under the brand's IT director so we added national reach without taking over. Renting the network as a service, rather than buying and refreshing gear at every store, is both cheaper and far easier to keep consistent.
Why it works
The bigger lesson underneath the numbers is about accountability. Spread the same scope across a dozen small vendors — one for the firewall, one for email, one for the phones, one for each site — and every incident becomes a conference call where nobody is responsible and everybody points sideways. Consolidating to one provider ends that: a single team owns the outcome, a single number gets called, and the systems are unified rather than bolted together at the seams. It also changes the incentives. A large managed engagement is a serious relationship for the provider — real revenue, real stakes — so the provider has every reason to keep it healthy, where a small vendor with a small contract simply doesn't. You stop being one of a hundred accounts spread thin and become the account that matters.
Outcome
Security posture is standardised across every location, stores run on NaaS and SD-WAN instead of per-site hardware, and SIEM/XDR/EDR detection covers stores and corporate alike — centrally managed and nationally consistent.
SD-WAN replaced premium circuits with managed commodity broadband. Co-management scaled coverage without proportional headcount. Bundled security tooling beat separate point products.
How these figures were derived
Effort and outcomes are reconstructed from production systems of record — ticket histories, call detail records, dispatch and SOC/NOC telemetry — read end to end rather than sampled. Cost comparisons are indexed to a baseline, never a fee or rate. Where a figure is modelled rather than measured it is labelled as such, and the model is documented and available to defend on request.
Customer
A national clothing brand
Confidential by contract.
Property management
A national property management company runs 120+ locations with a capable internal team and an IT director who owns the estate. We work under them — adding national reach and specialist depth rather than replacing anyone.
Read ➔Retail & eCommerce
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Read ➔Tell us your environment and priorities — we return scope, ownership, and a plan.