Industry:
Healthcare / Care Provider
Challenge:
Rapid growth left Milewood managing over 50 locations with different systems, suppliers, and processes, creating complexity, inconsistent standards, increased risk, and limited visibility across the organisation.
Results:
A simplified, secure, and scalable IT environment that reduces risk, cuts operational complexity, improves cost control, and supports continued growth.
Key Products:
Cloud & Modern Workplace, Telephony & Communications, Network Infrastructure & Connectivity, Cybersecurity & Device Management
Milewood is a growing UK care provider, supporting individuals across a network of residential care homes and assisted living services.
Focused on delivering high-quality, person-centred care, Milewood combines compassionate support with modern facilities, helping residents live comfortably, safely, and with dignity across its expanding estate.
Milewood is a growing care provider with an expanding number of locations across the UK. As the organisation acquired new care homes and assisted living sites, each location brought its own technology, suppliers, and ways of working.
Individually, these systems often worked well. However, as Milewood continued to grow, managing dozens of different environments across a large estate became increasingly complex. What had once been a practical approach for a smaller organisation was beginning to create operational challenges at scale.
As Milewood continued to grow, managing multiple suppliers, systems, and processes across the organisation became increasingly complex. This made it harder to maintain consistent standards, strengthen security, manage risk, and gain visibility across the wider business. Leadership recognised that technology needed to become a platform for growth, not a barrier to it.
What Milewood needed:
Before improvements could be made, Milewood needed a clear understanding of its existing environment, including areas of risk, opportunities for improvement, and priorities for future investment.
As the organisation expanded, maintaining consistent standards across multiple locations became increasingly important. Milewood needed greater visibility and assurance around security, governance, and compliance.
Different sites had inherited different technologies and processes over time. Bringing greater consistency across the organisation would reduce complexity and create a more scalable model for future growth.
Multiple providers and varying service levels across locations created unnecessary administration and made support more difficult. A more unified approach was needed to improve reliability and simplify management.
With approximately 25 telecoms providers and 16 internet providers across the group, supplier management had become increasingly fragmented. Consolidation offered an opportunity to reduce complexity and improve visibility over costs.
Protecting sensitive data and ensuring consistent security standards across more than 50 locations required a coordinated approach that could scale alongside the organisation.
Milewood needed more than reactive support, they required a partner who could understand the wider business objectives, identify the root causes of operational challenges, and design practical solutions that would support both current requirements and future expansion.
To move forward, Milewood needed more than a series of technology upgrades. They needed a strategic approach that would reduce operational friction, strengthen resilience, and create a technology foundation capable of supporting the organisation's continued growth.
The starting point was gaining a clear understanding of Milewood's technology environment and the challenges it was creating across the organisation.
This meant taking a holistic view of the organisation, assessing infrastructure, connectivity, cybersecurity, suppliers, processes, and governance across the entire estate. The focus wasn't only on identifying technical issues, but on understanding which areas were creating the greatest operational friction, risk, and barriers to future growth.
The findings from the audit provided a clear direction for future improvements, helping Milewood focus on the changes that would make the biggest difference.
This approach balanced immediate priorities with longer-term goals, allowing Milewood to address current challenges while building a technology environment that could support future growth.
Before meaningful improvements could be made, it was important to understand the full scope of Milewood's technology estate.
The initial audit reviewed infrastructure, connectivity, cybersecurity, suppliers, documentation, and operational processes across the organisation. With more than 50 locations consisting of care homes, assisted living properties, and offices, visibility was a challenge in itself.
The review highlighted opportunities to strengthen security, improve consistency, modernise infrastructure, simplify supplier management, and reduce operational complexity.
The audit helped identify how technology was being used across the organisation and highlighted the areas where improvements would have the biggest impact.
This created a clear foundation for future decision-making and helped establish a long-term technology strategy aligned to Milewood's growth plans.
The underlying problem was the operational overhead created by managing a large number of providers, contracts, and systems across multiple locations.
When we started working with them, Milewood had around 25 telecoms providers and 16 internet providers. As new sites joined the group, different contracts and technologies had been inherited, making support, billing, and change management increasingly difficult.
A consolidation strategy was developed to simplify the estate while improving reliability and reducing costs.
This included:
Not every location could be migrated immediately due to existing contractual commitments. Improvements were therefore phased carefully to balance cost, disruption, and business priorities.
Most sites have now been brought onto the unified phone system, with the remaining locations scheduled for migration as existing agreements come to an end.
The result is a simpler, more manageable telecoms and connectivity environment that supports the organisation more effectively while reducing day-to-day complexity.
As Milewood continued to grow, it became increasingly important that technology infrastructure could scale alongside the organisation.
Alongside modernising existing systems, the aim was to create a more reliable and scalable environment for the future.
A legacy server was recovered from a previous provider's storage environment and migrated into Microsoft Azure, providing a modern cloud-based foundation for future services.
Additional improvements included:
These changes created a more consistent infrastructure across the organisation while making it easier to support users, manage locations, and integrate future acquisitions.
For a care provider handling sensitive information across numerous locations, maintaining consistent security standards is essential.
The priority was creating a consistent approach to security across a growing number of sites and devices.
Following the audit, a programme of cybersecurity improvements was introduced, including:
Tablets play an important role in daily operations across Milewood's care settings. Securing these devices consistently helped strengthen protection across the organisation while supporting staff in their day-to-day work.
Together, these improvements created a stronger and more consistent cybersecurity posture while providing a solid foundation for future compliance initiatives.
As organisations grow, maintaining compliance and governance standards becomes increasingly challenging.
The focus was on creating good processes and governance that would help Milewood maintain compliance as the organisation continued to grow.
Specialist partners were introduced to support areas including SharePoint migration and fractional CISO advisory services (part-time cyber security executive). This provided additional expertise while helping Milewood work towards recognised frameworks such as Cyber Essentials Plus and broader best-practice guidance aligned with NIST principles.
Quarterly reviews, roadmap planning, and governance discussions now provide ongoing visibility and help ensure technology decisions continue to support organisational objectives.
This shift has helped move technology management from a reactive model towards a more strategic and structured approach.
Technology challenges are not always technical.
As Milewood's infrastructure became more aligned, attention turned to internal processes that were creating unnecessary delays and administrative overhead.
Many workflows relied heavily on manual approvals and email-based processes, often resulting in requests being passed between multiple people before action could be taken.
To address this, a new automation platform is being introduced to streamline key business processes.
A proof of concept has already been developed, with plans to automate a wider range of workflows across the organisation.
By automating key processes, staff spend less time on administration and more time supporting the business.
One of the most significant outcomes has been the move away from managing multiple disconnected suppliers towards a more joined-up approach.
Today, Milewood works with a single trusted technology partner that understands the wider environment and can support both day-to-day requirements and long-term planning.This includes support across infrastructure, cybersecurity, telecoms, Microsoft licensing, hardware procurement, onboarding new locations, and strategic technology initiatives.
Where specialist expertise is required, it can be introduced seamlessly as part of a coordinated approach.
This allows Milewood to focus on delivering care while knowing its technology environment is aligned, supported, and prepared for future growth.
Security improvements, infrastructure modernisation, and greater standardisation have strengthened Milewood's ability to manage risk across a large and diverse technology estate.
The organisation now benefits from more consistent protection for users, devices, and systems while maintaining greater visibility across locations.
Consolidating suppliers, standardising systems, and centralising management has reduced the complexity involved in supporting technology across the organisation.
Day-to-day operations are now easier to manage, allowing internal teams to spend less time dealing with fragmented systems and suppliers.
The consolidation of telecoms and connectivity services has created meaningful efficiencies while simplifying administration.
Improved visibility, structured billing, and reduced supplier complexity have made technology costs easier to manage and control.
Perhaps most importantly, technology is no longer acting as a barrier to expansion.
With a more consistent approach to infrastructure, security, and onboarding, new locations can be integrated more effectively into the wider organisation.This provides a scalable foundation that supports Milewood's continued growth.
What began as an initial technology review has developed into an ongoing strategic partnership.
Milewood now benefits from regular guidance, proactive planning, specialist expertise, and a trusted advisor capable of helping solve both current challenges and future opportunities.
As Milewood grew, so did the complexity of its technology environment. Different systems, suppliers, and ways of working made it harder to manage technology consistently across the organisation.
By reviewing the entire organisation and introducing improvements across infrastructure, connectivity, security, compliance, and internal processes, Milewood has created a more streamlined and reliable technology setup.
The result is a technology setup that is easier to manage, more secure, and better able to support Milewood as it continues to grow.
Monday 7am-7pm
Tuesday 7am-7pm
Wednesday 7am-7pm
Thursday 7am-7pm
Friday 7am-7pm
