Estate-wide modernisation across 180 retail branches — queue management, digital signage, integrated access control, CCTV upgrade, and branch-wide Wi-Fi refresh. Delivered as a single multi-country programme under contracted SLAs.
The bank operated 180 retail branches across four countries. The branch technology estate had been built up over a decade through ad-hoc upgrades — some branches had modern queue management, others did not; CCTV was a patchwork of five different vendors; digital signage existed in a third of branches with no central content management; customer Wi-Fi was inconsistent or absent.
The commercial trigger was a brand-refresh programme: the bank was rolling out a new retail concept and wanted every branch to deliver a consistent experience. The cost of rebranding without a technology rollout would leave visibly inconsistent customer experience across the estate.
Four challenges shaped the engagement. First, the sheer scale — 180 branches meant roughly one cutover every two working days on average. Second, branches stay open during rollouts — disruption to banking operations had to be minimised. Third, the estate was heterogeneous: urban flagship branches, suburban branches, small-town branches with very different physical layouts and connectivity. Fourth, the logistics: kit had to be procured, configured, shipped, installed, and commissioned across four countries with customs regimes in three of them.
The programme was designed around three pillars. A framework agreement set the commercial and technical standard. Per-site delivery was a standardised process — pre-site survey, kit dispatch, installation, commissioning, handover — delivered in two days per branch. A central programme-management function coordinated the rolling schedule.
Configuration and staging were centralised at our regional warehouse. Every device (queue-management tablet, digital signage screen, CCTV camera, access-control reader, Wi-Fi access point) arrived at the branch pre-configured and labelled for its specific location. Installation teams plugged in, tested, handed over — no on-site configuration work.
Rollout sequencing was optimised for branch type rather than geography: flagship branches first (two per country), then suburban branches in each country in parallel, small-town branches last. This meant every country saw the new concept in its major branches early, which supported the brand programme's marketing rhythm.
"What impressed the board was not just that it got done — it's that you could see the branch-refurbishment schedule, three months ahead, and trust that the dates would hold. That kind of operational predictability is unusual at this scale."
— Head of Retail Network, bank · [VERIFY]Month 1: framework agreement signed, staging warehouse configured, first 8 flagship branches rolled out as pilot. Month 2–3: refinements to process based on pilot learnings, scale-up to 15 branches per month. Month 4–10: steady state of roughly 20 branches per month. Month 11: final branches, programme closure, RunOps transition.
The most significant in-programme issue was a batch of queue-management tablets that failed within days of installation on sites 37–52 — a manufacturing defect. The vendor replacement cycle was slower than contract committed, which pushed three branches into the following week. The programme buffer absorbed the slip and no other dates moved.
All 180 branches rolled out within the 12-month commitment (11 months actual). Customer-satisfaction score on branch experience — measured quarterly by the bank — rose by 16 points in the 6 months following rollout completion. Perceived wait time (survey-based) reduced meaningfully, and the bank reported that the new queue-management system was reducing customer frustration in the highest-volume branches.
Post-rollout, the 180-branch estate has operated under a single managed-services contract with 99.6% availability and contracted response SLAs for incidents.
Queue management platform [VERIFY], Samsung / LG commercial displays for digital signage, IP-based CCTV from [VERIFY], Axis / HID Global access control, Cisco Meraki networking and Wi-Fi 6, Zebra handhelds, centralised content management system, 24/7 service-desk integration.
90 minutes, no slides. A senior partner, your relevant executive, and a whiteboard. We frame the opportunity, the risk envelope, and the engagement shape — then agree whether there's a fit before any proposal is drafted.