In addition to the automated management accounts platform that we offer for individual portfolio companies, we also provide a Power BI platform that shows you the key data from across the portfolio. Once the majority of the individual portfolio companies are using the data analytics platform, we then set up this portfolio data analytics solution for you for free. This allows you to automate financial reporting for the whole portfolio in one place, including key metrics such as IRRs, money multiples and equity bridges. It also allows you to see the portfolio by sector as well as by individual companies.

We have been working closely with private equity to provide this high quality, scalable solution, and have seen the benefits it has in alleviating time constraints on portfolio and value creation teams. There has historically been a challenge in reviewing financial data across the portfolio, given each portfolio company often has a unique financial structure, reporting standards and operational intricacies. Compounded with the fact that portfolio companies acquire new businesses each with their own systems and structures, the process of manually consolidating data in Excel becomes laborious and time consuming. Integrating data and finding consistent reporting and forecasting formats therefore becomes a hurdle for private equity.