“Be prepared!” is, as the humourist Tom Lehrer sang, the Boy Scouts’ marching song – and invaluable advice for companies preparing to spin off part of their organisation.

But it will take more than a pen knife, a camp fire and a gadget for taking stones out of horses’ hooves to prise apart the information technology systems of those companies that are in the process of breaking up. “Divestments are a real challenge,” says Ian Jordan general manager of Avanade UK, the IT consultancy.