Capita not sitting on Hands: IT Enterprise Services boss splits

Capita IT Enterprise Services (ITES) overlord Peter Hands has strapped on his walking boots and strolled right out of the business for pastures news, the company has confirmed.

Insiders claimed Hands had been under some pressure from the group’s joint COO Dawn Marriott-Sims, who was critical of the whole of ITES, “especially customer services”, and pointed to falling sales.

The integrator-cum-outsourcing monster confirmed the exit of the exec, coming some months before he would have passed a fourth-year anniversary in the position:

“Peter Hands, executive director for Capita IT Enterprise Services’ division has decided to explore a new venture outside of Capita. We wish him every success in the future.”

The company does not have someone waiting in the wings to step in on a permanent basis, instead Marriott-Simms will be “leading the division as we look to appoint a new director”. Incidentally, Marriott-Simms recently sold 32,208 Capita shares for a little over £337,000.

Hands took over ITES following industry veteran Mark Quartermaine’s short and torrid reign at Capita’s IT arm in August 2012 and he oversaw a number of acquisitions including Updata, SSD and NTS.

In calendar ’15, ITES turned over £707.9m in sales, down from £714.9m in the prior full financial year, but it made a trading profit of £54.9m, better than the £46.4m reported in the prior year.

In other moves at Capita – which the company claimed are unrelated to the exit of Hands – the office for the CTO has been largely disbanded, with the majority leaving, company moles told us.

A few years ago, a number of technical and pre-sales heads were to added to what ostensibly had been a back office function for the CIO and CISO. The team provided work on bids and “joined up pre-sales activities”, as well as setting some direction for technology and vendor choices across the ITES portfolio.

Around 30 staff including solutions, bids, network and infrastructure managers were contacted mid-March and offered compromise agreements if they’d shuffle off quietly by 18th of the month. They did.

“The reason [given was] the pipeline has reduced, restructuring is needed,” said a contact, “the delivery teams of ACE/ EUS/ Updata will handle pre-sales with a select few heads [in the CTO office] remaining to focus on Capita Group’s larger BPO [deals]”.

A Capita spokeswoman said, “we are making a number of organisational changes across the division to ensure we are in the best position to respond to clients’ changing needs as the division continues to grow”. ®