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.