For private equity firms and their operating teams

Fewer spreadsheets between the deal team and the answer.

A lean PE team spends its best hours chasing numbers from portfolio companies, reading data rooms and rebuilding the same tracker every quarter. These are the workflows we build to take that work off associates, with a person approving anything that reaches an investment committee.

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Portfolio reporting arrives late and in ten formats

Every portfolio company sends its own spreadsheet, on its own schedule. An associate re-keys the figures into the fund template before anyone can compare companies.

Data rooms are read by hand, under a deadline

A data room can hold thousands of files. The first pass is often a person opening contracts to find change-of-control clauses, customer concentration and open litigation.

Sourcing depends on who remembers to look

Target lists are built from a few databases and personal networks. Signals such as a leadership change or a new funding round go unnoticed unless someone happens to see them.

Value creation is a slide, not a backlog

Operating partners know portfolio companies waste time on manual work. Nobody has a ranked list of which processes are worth fixing first.

5 workflows we build for private equity teams

Each workflow below names its trigger, its inputs, what the system is allowed to decide, who signs off and where the result lands. Your stack decides the tools. The pattern stays the same.

Workflow 1

Monthly portfolio reporting pack

Trigger
The reporting deadline passes for a portfolio company, or a company uploads its file to a shared folder or mailbox.
Reads
Management accounts, KPI sheets and board packs in whatever format the company uses, plus your fund reporting template and last period's figures.
Decides
Maps each line to your standard KPI definitions, flags figures that moved outside a range you set, and lists missing or inconsistent inputs.
Approved by
The associate covering that company reviews flagged items and confirms the mapping before anything is consolidated.
Writes back
A consolidated fund view in your reporting database or sheet, a variance note per company, and a chase message for missing data.

Workflow 2

Diligence document extraction

Trigger
A new data room is shared, or new files are added to an existing one.
Reads
Contracts, financial statements, cap tables, customer lists and policies in PDF, Word and spreadsheet form.
Decides
Extracts the fields your checklist defines, such as change-of-control, term and renewal, exclusivity, customer concentration and pending claims, and attaches the source page to every extracted value.
Approved by
The deal team member on the diligence workstream checks flagged clauses against the source page. Nothing is marked clean without a person reading it.
Writes back
A diligence tracker with one row per document and cited fields, plus an open questions list for the seller.

Workflow 3

Target sourcing and enrichment

Trigger
A weekly run against your thesis criteria, or a signal such as a funding event, leadership change or hiring pattern at a company on your watchlist.
Reads
Your thesis definition, existing CRM records, and company data from the providers you already pay for.
Decides
Filters and scores new companies against the thesis, removes ones you have already passed on, and drafts a short rationale for each score.
Approved by
A principal or associate promotes or rejects each target. Outreach is drafted for review, never sent automatically.
Writes back
New records in your deal CRM with score, rationale and source, and a weekly shortlist to the deal team.

Workflow 4

Portfolio company automation audit

Trigger
A new acquisition closes, or an operating partner picks a company for a value creation review.
Reads
Interviews and process walkthroughs with the company's finance, sales and operations leads, plus access to a sample of the systems involved.
Decides
Lists manual processes, estimates hours and error exposure from the company's own timesheets or volumes, and ranks candidates by effort against payback. Any figure is labeled as an estimate with its inputs shown.
Approved by
The operating partner and the company's CFO or COO choose which items to fund.
Writes back
A ranked automation backlog with scoped first workflows, owners and success measures.

Workflow 5

Board pack and LP update drafting

Trigger
Consolidated reporting is approved for the period.
Reads
The approved consolidated figures, prior board packs, and your commentary from earlier periods.
Decides
Drafts the narrative sections and variance explanations in your house style, using only figures that exist in the approved data.
Approved by
The partner responsible for the company or fund edits and approves. LP-facing text always passes a human.
Writes back
A draft in your document format, with every number linked back to its source row.

What we have shipped that looks like this

These are results from work that uses the same pattern. Most clients are described rather than named.

A construction company (French BTP)

We automated electronic invoicing and subcontractor VAT compliance end to end for a construction business, the kind of back-office process a portfolio audit tends to surface.

Portless (verified reviewer)

We built agents that research a prospect before a call, update the CRM and score leads. The same pattern drives the sourcing workflow above.

What the first 30 days look like

One workflow, one owner, a person checking the important decisions. We expand only after the first workflow has a track record.

  1. Week 1

    Pick one workflow and name its owner

    Usually portfolio reporting or diligence extraction. We agree what a good output looks like and who signs off, and we collect ten to twenty real samples.

  2. Week 2

    Map systems and access

    We list where the inputs live, who controls access, and start on sandbox or sample data first. Confidentiality terms for data rooms are settled before any real file is touched.

  3. Weeks 3 and 4

    Build it end to end with a person checking

    The workflow runs on real examples with an associate reviewing every important decision. We log where it fails and fix those cases.

  4. Day 30

    Handoff and a decision

    The team that owns the process runs it. We set monitoring and agree whether to expand to a second workflow. We only expand once the first one has a track record you trust.

What should stay human

Deal work carries legal and fiduciary weight. These parts should stay with people.

Investment decisions and valuation judgment

The system can prepare comparables and flag anomalies. It does not decide what a company is worth or whether to bid.

Legal conclusions from contracts

Extraction points a lawyer to the right clause faster. It does not replace legal review of what the clause means for the deal.

Seller and management conversations

Relationship and negotiation stay human. We draft questions and follow-ups, and you decide what to say and when.

Anything an LP or regulator will read

Drafts are labeled as drafts, and a named person approves the final text.

Common questions

Which fund workflow eats the most associate hours?

Tell us where reporting, diligence or sourcing slows the team. We come back with one workflow worth building first and what it would need from you.

30 minutes. We map the workflow, name what a person must approve and tell you if it is not worth building.

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