As enterprises accelerate carve-outs to unlock value, IT divestitures have become strategic imperatives—demanding more than just frameworks.
Divestitures can lead to significant financial and operational consequences. A failed divestiture, as seen with Meta’s $262 million loss on the sale of Giphy due to regulatory pressure, contrasts sharply with successful ones. For instance, in 2023, Fidelity Information Services improved its financial standing and stock price by selling a 55% stake in Worldpay to GTCR for $11.7 billion, showcasing the strategic benefits of a well-executed divestiture
According to Avasant’s Digital Engineering Services 2024 RadarView™, over 60% of service providers have pursued inorganic growth through acquisitions since 2023—reshaping the IT landscape and intensifying the complexity of separation programs.
Yet, frameworks alone don’t drive success. In today’s high-stakes divestiture environment, CIOs and transformation leaders must rely on consultants who can lead with empathy, navigate ambiguity, and translate complexity into clarity. The consultant’s mindset—rooted in strategic communication, stakeholder alignment, and change leadership—is the differentiator.
This article reframes seven key success factors through the lens of the consultant’s role, spotlighting the human competencies that elevate separation outcomes from functional to transformational.
The following stages describe the journey for an advisor consultant to become a strategic catalyst consultant.
Figure 1: From Advisor to Strategic Catalyst
Early Engagement: Leading with Strategic Foresight
Early IT involvement is not just about systems—it’s about shaping the business narrative. Transition Service Agreements (TSAs) are not just legal documents but operational blueprints. By defining service scopes, exit timelines, and governance mechanisms, IT consultants can ensure that critical systems—ERP, HR, finance—are fully functional on Day 1Through Avasant’s Strategic Sourcing Methodology, a future state strategy and roadmap help the Consultants communicate the strategic impact of IT decisions to stakeholders, translating system dependencies into business risks and opportunities.
This framework helps consultants map IT capabilities to business outcomes, enabling them to guide TSA planning and Day 1 readiness with confidence.
Dedicated Teams: Structuring High-Trust Teams for Separation Success
Successful divestitures require dedicated teams composed of IT architects, cybersecurity specialists, data analysts, project managers as well as key sourcing personnel. Separation Management Offices (SMOs) ensure governance, agility, and accountability.
Successful divestitures require consultants to lead cross-functional teams with clarity and empathy. They must define roles, resolve conflicts, and foster psychological safety—especially when teams span legacy and New Company (NewCo) environments.
Successful divestitures involve dedicated teams with strong governance and interpersonal alignment.
Avasant’s Operation Model and Organization Design methodology gives a guide to the consultant on how to assess and design the operation model required to structure Separation Management Offices (SMOs) that balance agility with accountability.
Predictive Analytics: Navigating Complexity with Precision
Clean data separation begins with a comprehensive inventory of IT assets and dependency mapping. Pilot migrations, compliance checks, and visualization tools can reduce technical debt and ensure accuracy.
Consultants must understand how predictive analytics can help forecast usage and avoid waste: Predictive models can analyze historical usage data to forecast future demand. This is especially valuable during a divestiture, when the NewCo’s software needs may diverge significantly from the parent companies.
This allows the consultant to make data-backed decisions, avoiding both over-licensing and costly shortfalls.
Vendor Strategy: Strategic Vendor Negotiation and Risk Mitigation
Vendor alignment requires more than contract reviews—it demands influence. Consultants must take an influential role and be proactive at-risk management, avoid hidden liabilities and renegotiate commercial terms like price, payment terms, renewal cap, SLAs and ELAs while maintaining strategic relationships and avoiding vendor lock-in.
Knowledge Transfer: Leading with Empathy
Consultants must listen, empathize, and guide teams through uncertainty. They play a key role in preserving institutional knowledge and morale.
Knowledge transfer is not a handoff—it’s a structured enablement process. Consultants must design and facilitate mechanisms that go beyond documentation, including shadowing, joint workshops, and digital playbooks. These efforts ensure that NewCo inherits not just systems, but the context and expertise needed to operate them effectively.
Go-Live and Beyond: Enabling self-sufficiency for the NewCo through AI-Driven Optimization
Day 1 success depends on the consultant’s ability to anticipate issues, coordinate stakeholders, and enable NewCo to operate. Post-divestiture, they must lead optimization efforts and continuous improvement, focusing on identifying AI use cases that can automate routine tasks, surface insights and guide decision making.
Table 1: AI-Driven Optimization
Measuring Success: Translating Metrics into Meaning
KPIs are only valuable if they’re understood. Consultants must interpret TSA timelines, migration accuracy, and commercial negotiations in ways that resonate with executives and drive decision-making.
RadarView™ benchmarks provide industry averages that consultants can use to set expectations and measure impact.
Table 2: Consultant-Centric KPI Dashboard
Closing Perspective: From Advisor to Strategic Catalyst
Divestitures are not just technical exercises—they are human-led transformations. Consultants turn frameworks into outcomes by leading with empathy, communicating with clarity, and navigating complexity. The role of IT consultants in divestiture carve-outs has evolved from tactical support to strategic leadership
By leveraging Avasant’s frameworks, engaging early, structuring dedicated teams, and optimizing vendors and embodying the soft skills outlined here, IT consultants can drive successful divestitures that deliver agility, compliance, and unlock long-term value for NewCo. As enterprises continue to reshape their portfolios, IT’s role as a strategic enabler will be central to achieving agility, compliance, and operational independence.
By Francisco Trevino, Manager