Case StudyProject Services
Project Management Merger and Acquisition

Context

In 2013 Investec Private Bank agreed the sale of their Trust Business Units, Investec Trust Jersey, Investec Trust Mauritius and Investec Trust Switzerland to Salamanca Group. CBO were engaged to lead the project management role for the separation of all IT services for the three acquired businesses from Investec Private Bank. The scope of IT services across all three offices included:

  • Server infrastructure
  • MPLS connectivity
  • WAN, LAN and WiFi connectivity
  • Network hardware
  • Desktop infrastructure
  • Mobile and tablet devices
  • Service desk
  • Telephony and voice recording
  • Operating system software and support agreements
  • All business applications
  • DR and BCP functions
  • IT support and maintenance contracts

CBO’s Approach

The IT Separation Project was an extremely complex IT separation due to the project scope, which included three offices, each with their own IT functions and services, as well as a heavy reliance on centralised group services.

Our first requirement was to understand the objectives of the senior stakeholders and executives involved in the acquisition process. The key critical objectives were set as:

  • Zero downtime within working hours;
  • Completing the IT separation within a nine-month timeframe.

In order to meet these objectives, CBO set about the IT separation project by:

  • Setting up the appropriate project governance;
  • Creating a detailed IT Separation Plan;
  • Identifying keys risks and issues from the outset;
  • Completing a detailed analysis on all IT services;
  • Creating a detailed decisions log to capture decisions from both parties;
  • Ensuring the right technical resources were involved in the project to own; and
  • Delivering the technical design requirements.

Our structured approach to a highly complex IT environment allowed us to successfully separate all IT services required by all three offices.

CBO’s Impact

The IT Separation Project was a success with all project objectives being met, including:

  • Separation of the three offices from the vendor’s IT infrastructure and network within a nine-month period.
  • No ‘in business hours’ downtime on any IT services for both the vendor and buyer.

"The Investec Group has been using CBO for a number of years on various projects, including when Investec Bank (Channel Islands) (IBCI) initiated a project to implement a SharePoint Document Management Platform. IBCI decided to team up with CBO as IBCI needed their experience in preparing a detailed Business Requirements Document for the SharePoint project. CBO's previous experience was key to guiding IBCI through this very difficult process.

Their experience in the tender process and project quality assurance helped to keep IBCI’s project on track and provided IBCI with the foundations to deliver the project on time and meet user expectations. With CBO's assistance IBCI is in a much better position to make the right decisions going forward as a business."

Rudi Le Roux, COO

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