It’s not exactly a trade secret, but sometimes you get the impression that UK-headquartered, international recruitment firm, Harvey Nash, prefers to keep its Vietnam-based IT services activities locked firmly in the closet! But the recent low-key announcement that it is consolidating its UK IT services activities under the NashTech brand is to our mind the first real sign that management is putting the wheels in motion to ‘out’ the business in all its glory. And not before time – Harvey Nash already has 2,000 staff in its global IT services operations, with another 2,500 ‘on tap’ at its Vietnamese JV partner.
Until now, the only part of Harvey Nash’s IT services operations that was separately branded was Nash Technologies GmbH, the German entity created on the back of its landmark €54m outsourcing contract with Alcatel-Lucent, signed in Nov. 2008 (see here). This only leaves its US IT services activities still running under the parent company brand.
If you tot up the numbers from each of its regions, it looks like Harvey Nash generates revenues of some £90m p.a. from its IT services activities, around 15-20% of the group. But I suspect there’s a fair way to go from an organisational point of view before IT services can become a fully integrated service line in its own right. When that time comes – and I would like to think that is indeed ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ – it would create what I believe would be the first UK-owned, Vietnam-centric offshore services ‘pure play’ – and that would be a very interesting proposition indeed.