1,745 stores, connected in 20 weeks

A national retail estate runs on thermostats that were set once and never revisited. Each store had its own schedule, its own overrides, and its own idea of what comfortable meant. Nobody at head office could see any of it. The cost showed up in two places. Energy spend drifted upward with no obvious cause, because a store running its HVAC through the night looks identical on a utility bill to one that isn't. And when equipment failed, the first notice was a call from the store manager — after the sales floor was already too warm. Maintenance worked the same way. A technician was dispatched on a description of the symptom, arrived without knowing which unit was involved, and diagnosed the fault on site. A meaningful share of those visits ended with a reset that took four minutes and cost a full call-out. Scale made all of it worse. Any fix that required a person to walk into a store multiplied by 1,745 before it was finished — which ruled out most of what a smaller operator would simply do.