The 4 biggest water challenges faced by multi-site businesses

Issue #1 – Water supply varies by region

As we explained in our post about deregulation of the water industry, the quality of business water supplies can vary heavily by region. A business with sites in several cities might find that one location enjoys smooth, uninterrupted service, while another regularly suffers low pressure, unpredictable outages, or slow repair times. A lot of this normally comes down to local network infrastructure, varying levels of investment, and how responsive the regional wholesaler is.

If your operations rely heavily on water – commercial laundries, food production units, gyms or hotels – that inconsistency can create significant risk. It can cause otherwise avoidable downtime, delay production, or damage the customer experience. (In the most severe cases, it can even cause temporary shutdowns.) Businesses with moderate water needs are also affected, particularly when interruptions occur during peak periods.

How can changing your water supplier help?

Switching to a national supplier with reach across multiple regions can consolidate your sites under one agreement. This works to effectively reduce the variation in service expectations, providing a single point of contact for all supply issues, and ensures that any problems are resolved quickly across all regions.

Issue #2 – Usage visibility is too fragmented

When each site has its own meter, system, or reporting routine, you may find that it becomes difficult to understand water consumption. Leaks can be missed, or high-usage patterns may stay hidden. That can have a major impact on you or your team’s ability to spot opportunities to reduce waste and cost, because no one has a complete picture of estate-wide usage.

As well as being inefficient, this fragmentation often essentially blocks your wider efforts to manage your water proactively. Without access to real-time insight, you’re naturally shifted into a reactive stance rather than a proactive one – and in almost every case, a reactive stance is more stressful and more expensive.

How can changing your water supplier help?

You may be able to find suppliers that provide cloud-based monitoring platforms linked to smart meters across all your locations, which can be enormously helpful. This setup can give you live usage data, trend analysis, alerts for anomalies, and downloadable reports for clear oversight. What’s more, these are the kind of insights that can provide useful support for your operational decisions, enable tighter budget planning, feed into sustainability reporting, and help you compare sites effectively. As an extra bonus, it can also make things easier for your team, as there’s no need to depend on manual data collection from site-based staff.

Issue #3 – Bills are full of errors and confusion

Like most multi-site businesses, you may receive dozens of water bills every month – possibly in different formats, on different cycles, and perhaps with unexplained charges. Invoices may be based on estimates, include charges for closed sites, or feature duplicated costs – and generally that puts the burden on you to disprove it, which can be highly stressful. Even when issues are spotted, resolving them takes time. You may need to contact multiple retailers, chase corrections, or navigate vague complaint procedures. In the meantime, any inaccurate charges may continue to affect your accounts.

How can changing your water supplier help?

Lots of our customers have benefited from a national supplier to restore order through a single, consolidated invoice that covers all of their locations. That means each site’s usage is clearly itemised, backed by actual readings where possible, and broken down for transparency. Some suppliers also include invoice checks to highlight unusual patterns and prevent overspending. This makes monthly reconciliation a lot faster, and it also gives you or your finance team confidence in the figures provided.

Issue #4 – Emergency responses are too slow

Major issues like leaks, burst pipes or supply failures can all bring a site to a standstill. However, if you inherited your business water supplier (especially different ones for different sites), you may not have been given a clear process to respond. Staff may not know who to contact, what steps to take, or how to escalate issues. Fragmented supplier setups make this worse. Different sites often deal with different teams, each with their own systems and response expectations.

All that is generally an absolute nightmare to manage, because even small delays can cause a lot of damage to your productivity and bottom line. That’s particularly true if you’re in a public-facing location, or places that rely on uninterrupted operations.

How can changing your water supplier help?

Switching your business water supplier can give you the opportunity to consolidate several different suppliers into a single entity. That puts them in a much better position to provide you with a response plan that covers every site. That includes round-the-clock support, one emergency number for the whole estate, and an escalation path that avoids delays. Some also monitor usage patterns and send alerts before an issue causes disruption, or dispatch engineers automatically when a leak is detected. A national contract gives you dependable processes and faster action – no matter where a problem starts.

Those are just some of the most common problems – you may well have experienced a couple more specific ones of your own! And if you’ve already concluded that switching your business water supplier is the right solution, that’s exactly where we can help here at The Business Water Shop. With a network of trusted suppliers at our disposal that spans across the UK, we’re perfectly positioned to get you the most competitive water quotes for your business. In fact, we’re able to save some customers up to 55% on their water bills, and you can count on us to use all our resources and industry expertise to get you the best deal.

It only takes a few minutes to get your online quote – so if you’re thinking about moving to switch business water suppliers, there’s never been a better time to do it!