Situation

A mid-market private equity sponsor acquired a global HR technology and payroll services business from a large international parent.

The separation was complex. Over 100 transition service agreements governed payroll operations, benefits administration, IT infrastructure, facilities and corporate functions. Exit timelines ranged from 30 days to 18 months, each with its own dependencies, cost implications and replacement requirements. The risk was not any single failure but cumulative drift: small delays compounding into missed deadlines and escalating costs.

The sponsor needed visibility into separation progress without getting pulled into day-to-day execution. They needed confidence that someone owned the outcome, not just coordinated activities.

Approach

We ran the Separation Management Office through to TSA exit. A dedicated separation lead owned the programme end to end, accountable to both sponsor and management.

We rebuilt the delivery infrastructure: governance, cadence, tooling and risk management. A digital platform replaced static reporting, tracking progress against plan and surfacing risks in real time. Risk became a daily operating tool, not a periodic review. Weekly updates gave the sponsor a clear picture of what was on track, what was at risk and what needed attention.

A full plan review across every workstream identified the three highest-impact risks: customer-facing technology, IT and operations dependencies, and alignment with the seller on separation sequencing. We embedded alongside functional leaders to build standalone capability ahead of each TSA exit date.

When the customer-facing technology workstream fell behind, we drove intensive focus across multiple teams to recover the timeline before it could impact operations.

Results

55% of TSAs exited ahead of schedule. The separation completed with no customer-facing disruption. Management maintained focus on running the business while the sponsor stayed out of day-to-day execution.