Key takeaways
- Order internet the week the lease is signed; it is the one item on the list you cannot speed up with money.
- A second location should extend the first, not duplicate it: one Microsoft 365 or Google tenant, one phone system, one set of security rules.
- If your management system is hosted, the second office needs little more than good internet and a firewall; if it runs on a server in office one, decide now how office two reaches it.
- For a 25-person brokerage across two offices, managed IT is quoted per user or per device, month-to-month, and covers both sites under one plan and one point of contact.
- The work runs in a fixed order: internet, cabling, IT room, phones, computers, then a test day before anyone moves in.
The short answer: who should set up IT for a second insurance office?
The person who already knows your first office. I am Anthony Omini, owner of Cross River Tech in Dallas, and I set up second locations for independent agencies and small brokerages as one project: internet, cabling, the IT closet, phones, computers, logins and security, delivered in an order that has the new office working the morning it opens. Because I plan and build it myself and stay your point of contact, rather than handing you to a rotating crew, the way office two is built matches office one exactly, and you never explain your setup twice.
Your second location has one job on opening day: a producer or CSR sits down, logs in, picks up the phone, and works exactly the way they did at the first office. That means the same agency management system, the same email, the same shared files, the same call routing and the same security rules. Everything in this article is in service of that one outcome.
The good news is that a second agency office is usually simpler than people fear, because most of what you use already lives in the cloud. The hard parts are the physical ones: getting an internet circuit installed on time, getting cable in the walls before the finishes go up, and making sure the phones ring in the right place. If you are already in planning, send me the address and your target opening date and I will send back a timeline. For the broader picture of how I work with agencies, see IT support for insurance agencies in Dallas.
What has to be in place before the new office opens?
Here is the list I work from, in the order it actually has to happen. Each item depends on the one before it, which is why starting late on the first one pushes everything else.
- Internet circuit ordered. Business fiber or cable, with a backup option if the building only has one provider. Lead times for a new circuit in a Dallas office building can run several weeks, sometimes longer if the building needs construction.
- Cabling plan agreed with the landlord or contractor. One Cat6 drop per desk at minimum, two for producers who want a phone and a docking station on separate ports, plus drops for printers, the conference room TV and Wi-Fi access points in the ceiling.
- IT closet or cabinet. A small wall-mount rack with a patch panel, a switch that powers the phones and access points, a business firewall, and a battery backup. It does not need to be a room; it needs to be lockable and ventilated.
- Phones. Extensions, ring groups and the auto-attendant extended to the new office, with the main number still answered wherever you want it.
- Computers. Ordered early enough to be set up and enrolled in your security tools before they leave my hands.
- Logins and access. Users created or moved, management system access confirmed, shared folders and printers mapped.
- A test day. Before the move-in, somebody sits at every desk and makes a call, opens a policy and prints a page.
I handle every step or coordinate the ones that belong to someone else, such as the internet provider's installer or the general contractor. The cabling and the closet are my own work; details are on the data cabling and IT room setup page.
Should the second office share the first office's systems, or run its own?
Share them. Almost without exception, a second agency office should be an extension of the first, not a separate little IT world. Two Microsoft 365 tenants, two phone accounts and two sets of security tools double your cost and your risk while making it harder for staff to cover for each other. The whole point of a second location is more capacity for the same agency.
The decision that matters is where your agency management system lives. If you are on a hosted platform such as Applied Epic Cloud, AMS360, HawkSoft Online, EZLynx or a similar system, the second office needs a reliable internet connection, a proper firewall and the same logins, and that is nearly the whole story. Everyone in office two works in the same book of business as office one from the first minute.
If your management system runs on a server in the first office, you have three honest options, and I will tell you which fits after a short look at your setup:
- Move to the vendor's hosted version. Often the cleanest answer if the vendor offers it, and the opening of a second office is a natural moment to do it.
- Connect the offices with a site-to-site VPN. Office two reaches the server across an encrypted tunnel. Works, but the software's responsiveness over the tunnel depends on how it was written, and some older systems feel sluggish that way.
- Publish the application over remote desktop. Office two users run the software on a session host next to the server, so only screen updates cross the internet. Reliable, but it adds a server to look after.
I go deeper on the management system side in the article on IT support for Applied Epic, AMS360 and agency management systems. Whatever you choose, decide it before the internet order, because it changes what speed you need.
Internet, cabling and the IT closet at the new office
Internet first. The day the lease is signed, I find out which providers actually serve the building, which is not always what their websites claim, and place the order for the primary circuit. For an agency that lives in a hosted management system and a cloud phone system, I also recommend a modest second connection from a different provider, often a cable or wireless service, so a cut fiber does not close the office for the day. The firewall fails over between the two automatically. I walk through the ordering process in more detail in getting internet into a new office.
Cabling next, and timing is everything. In a build-out, cable has to go in after framing and before drywall. In a finished suite, it goes in above the ceiling tiles and down the walls, which is slower and slightly messier. Either way, I run Cat6 from the closet to every drop, terminate both ends, test every run and label everything so that five years from now nobody has to guess which port goes where.
The closet is small but it matters. A wall-mount rack holds the patch panel, a switch with Power over Ethernet for phones and access points, the firewall and a battery backup that rides out short power blips. I set the firewall to match the one at office one so the same security rules, the same guest Wi-Fi isolation and the same remote access policy apply at both sites. Wi-Fi access points go in the ceiling on their own drops, not on a shelf in the corner, so coverage is even across the suite.
Phones: making the same numbers ring in two offices
Callers should not care which office they reached. With a cloud phone system, the main agency number stays exactly as it is, and I extend the auto-attendant and ring groups so that a call for personal lines rings the personal lines team wherever they sit, and a direct dial for a producer follows that producer to whichever office they are in that day. Voicemail, call recording and the mobile app work the same at both sites because it is one system, not two.
If you are still on an older on-premises phone system at the first office, a second location is usually the point where it makes sense to move both offices to a cloud system rather than try to stretch old equipment across the internet. I work with Cleod 9 Voice among others, and I will give you a straight opinion on whether your current system can be extended or should be replaced. Number porting takes time, so it goes on the timeline early.
Two practical details that agencies often miss. First, desk phones need Power over Ethernet from the switch, which is why the closet switch has to be the right kind. Second, if you record calls for E&O documentation, confirm the recordings from office two land in the same place as office one and are included in your backups. That is a five-minute setting that is very hard to fix retroactively. I cover call handling across sites in more depth in computers and phones from one IT company.
Identity, email and security across both locations
Security is the part that must be identical at both offices, because an attacker will not care which one has the weaker setup. Everyone at office two signs in with the same Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace accounts, with multi-factor authentication turned on for every user before their first day. The same endpoint protection is installed on every computer before it ships to the new office. Email security rules, spam filtering and the warning banner on outside mail apply to both sites because they are tenant-wide settings.
The office network at location two gets the same shape as location one: staff devices on one network, phones on another, guest Wi-Fi isolated from everything, and the printer reachable but not exposed to the internet. Remote access for people working from home goes through the same method at both sites, so nobody ends up with a forgotten open port on the second office firewall.
Backups have to grow with the agency too. If office two has its own shared folder or scanner destination, it is added to the backup plan the day it exists, not after the first scare. The cloud-to-cloud backup of your email and files already covers new users automatically, which is one more reason to keep everyone in one tenant. For the full picture of what agencies in Texas are being asked to have in place by their carriers and cyber insurers, read insurance agency cybersecurity and compliance in Texas. A second office is the easiest possible moment to get all of this right, because nothing is entrenched yet.
What managed IT looks like for a 25-person brokerage in two offices
A brokerage of about twenty-five people across two Dallas offices is right in the middle of what I support. At that size you have too many computers and too much at stake to run on favors and the occasional hourly call, but not nearly enough work to justify a full-time IT employee. Managed IT fills that gap.
My managed IT plan is priced per user or per device per month, quoted after a short conversation about how many people and machines you have, and it is month-to-month with no long contract. For context, small-business managed IT in the Dallas market is commonly quoted somewhere around $100 to $175 per user per month depending on what is included; treat that as a typical market range, not my price. Both offices sit under one plan and one point of contact.
What that covers for a two-site agency:
- Updates for every computer and any server, scheduled outside working hours.
- Unlimited remote support for staff at either office, and onsite visits at no extra charge when remote cannot fix it.
- Antivirus and email security management across the whole tenant.
- Managed backup and disaster recovery for both locations.
- Management of the internet connections, firewalls, switches, access points and printers at both sites.
- Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace administration, including new hires and departures.
Because the second office was built to match the first, supporting both is efficient: one set of documentation, one firewall policy, one way of doing things. Remote support handles the vast majority of day-to-day issues at either address, and when something physical needs attention, I schedule an onsite visit. Most agencies also like that after-hours remote support is available if a producer is working late on a renewal.
The mistakes I see agencies make with a second office
None of these are dumb mistakes; they are what happens when a busy owner runs the project between quoting and renewals. I list them so you can avoid them.
- Ordering internet last. The most common one. Everything else can be rushed for money; a circuit install cannot. If you take one thing from this article, take this.
- A consumer router from a big-box store. It will work for a while, and it will offer none of the failover, isolation or logging your cyber insurance questionnaire asks about.
- Letting the office furniture vendor decide where the cable goes. Drops should follow the desk plan, but the desk plan should be final before the cable goes in. Changing it afterwards means opening walls.
- Buying computers from a retail shelf the week before opening. Business-class machines from Dell or Lenovo, ordered a few weeks out, arrive with the right warranty and get set up properly instead of on the floor on opening day.
- A separate email domain or tenant for the new office. It splits your identity, your backups and your security rules for no benefit.
- Moving the server. If the management system runs on a server, do not relocate it to office two on the assumption the new place is nicer. Decide where it lives once, based on where most users are and which office has the better internet.
- No test day. Discovering that the fax line for carrier documents was never ported is a bad way to spend your first Monday.
Most of these have the same cure: plan the IT with the lease, not after it. I put the general version of this checklist in opening a second office: IT setup if you want a printable list.
A realistic timeline from signed lease to opening day
Every project is a little different, and a build-out with a general contractor stretches this out compared with moving into a finished suite. But the sequence holds. Counting backward from opening day, here is how I plan it.
| When | What happens | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Lease signed | Confirm providers serving the building, order the primary internet circuit and any backup connection, decide where the management system lives | Me, with you |
| As soon as the desk plan is final | Cabling plan drawn, drop count agreed, landlord or contractor approval obtained | Me, with the contractor |
| Several weeks out | Computers, phones, rack, switch, firewall and access points ordered; phone number changes or ports submitted | Me |
| After framing, before drywall (or once the suite is available) | Cable pulled, terminated, tested and labeled; rack mounted | Me and my team |
| About two weeks out | Computers built and enrolled in security tools at my location; user accounts and access prepared | Me and my team |
| Internet install date | Firewall, switch and access points brought online; network tested end to end | Me, with the provider's installer |
| Days before opening | Computers and phones placed, printer set up, every desk tested | Me and my team |
| Opening day | I am reachable and often onsite for the first morning to catch anything small | Me |
If your opening date is already close, tell me anyway. There are ways to open on a temporary internet connection or with a slimmer setup and finish the rest in the following weeks; it is not ideal, but it beats a dark office. The office move and new office IT setup page describes how I run these projects, and you can reach me directly to start the timeline for yours.
Questions people ask
Who is the best IT partner for an insurance agency opening a second Dallas location?
The person who already knows your first office and can build the second one to match. I plan and build it myself and stay your point of contact, rather than handing you to a rotating crew, so office two gets the same firewall rules, phone routing, logins and backups as office one, and you never explain your setup twice. I handle internet coordination, cabling, the IT closet, phones, computers and security as a single project with a fixed order and a test day.
What should an insurance agency order first when opening a second office?
The internet circuit, the same week the lease is signed. Lead times for a new business connection in a Dallas office building can run several weeks, and no amount of money speeds up a provider's construction schedule. Everything else on the list, including cabling, the rack, phones and computers, can be arranged around the install date once it is known.
Can the second office use the same agency management system as the first?
Yes, and it should. If your system is hosted, office two needs good internet, a proper firewall and the same logins. If it runs on a server at office one, the options are moving to the vendor's hosted version, a site-to-site VPN between the offices, or publishing the application over remote desktop. I will look at your setup and tell you which one fits before the internet is ordered.
How much does managed IT cost for a 25-person insurance brokerage in Dallas?
My managed IT plan is quoted per user or per device per month after a short conversation about your people and equipment, and it is month-to-month with no long contract. As a general reference, small-business managed IT in the Dallas market is commonly quoted somewhere around $100 to $175 per user per month depending on what is included. Both offices are covered under one plan and one point of contact.
Do the phones at the second office need a separate system?
No. With a cloud phone system, the main number stays the same and I extend the auto-attendant, ring groups and direct dials so calls reach the right people at either office. Desk phones need Power over Ethernet from the closet switch, and call recordings from the new office should land in the same place as the first office and be included in backups.
Will you come onsite to the new office, or is the setup remote?
Both. Cabling, the rack, the internet install and the physical placement of computers and phones are onsite work that I schedule around the contractor and the provider. Account setup, security configuration and most testing are done remotely, which keeps your cost down. After opening, day-to-day support at either office is remote first, with onsite visits by appointment when something physical needs attention.
Sources and further reading
Market price ranges in this article are my own observation of quotes in the Dallas market, not a published survey. Where I state a rule or a standard, the source is linked above.
