Managing the IT Carve-Out in a SBU Divestment

This paper presents an alignment model to analyze the specific IT-based challenges of divesting a strategic business unit (SBU). The model identifies the interdependences among SBU application portfolios, undocumented local system customization, and other intra-organization links that a carveout must identify and resolve. For large organizations that frequently buy and sell SBUs, four guidelines are proposed: 1) a SBU that will be sold - the so called carve-out object - should be autonomous, 2) the SBU IT application portfolios should be independent, 3) IT standards should be implemented in both the corporate IT platform and IT application portfolios, and 4) the intellectual property embedded in human resources needs to be replicated, and both retained in the vendor organization and divested to the buyer with the IT carve-out object. Complying with these guidelines is complex and difficult because they are frequently in conflict with vendor IT and line management goals. Carve-out management teams should consider and address these differences when structuring, designing and resourcing the IT work stream.     «

This paper presents an alignment model to analyze the specific IT-based challenges of divesting a strategic business unit (SBU). The model identifies the interdependences among SBU application portfolios, undocumented local system customization, and other intra-organization links that a carveout must identify and resolve. For large organizations that frequently buy and sell SBUs, four guidelines are proposed: 1) a SBU that will be sold - the so called carve-out object - should be autonomous, 2)...     »