Separating two divisions of a FTSE 250 manufacturer
A global IT separation of two divisions being sold, coordinated across five parties, multiple continents and multiple time zones.
- Client
- Essentra
- Role
- Divestment Project Manager, part of a 3-person PMO
- When
- 2023
The situation
Essentra was selling two major divisions. Their IT had to be separated cleanly: each buyer needed exactly the systems and data required to operate, and nothing that belonged to anyone else.
What I did
I was one of a three-person PMO running the separation, working alongside 23 engineers across multiple time zones and managing executive stakeholders, delivery teams and external partners for all five parties.
The hardest workstream was the data. Finance and HR needed to decide which files went to which buyer, but the source file shares were deeply nested and impossible to review by eye. I wrote a PowerShell script that enumerated the full folder structure and exported it to Excel, so the data owners could mark up what belonged to each party. We then used ShareGate to migrate the carved-out data to each destination.
The outcome
The data-separation workstream was estimated at six months. It was delivered in eight weeks, and each buyer received what it needed to operate, with compliance maintained throughout.