Fifteen companies, fifteen definitions
Nobody can aggregate the portfolio because recurring revenue, gross margin and headcount mean something different in each holding, and the differences are never written down.
Private capital
Portfolio reporting that holds up in front of an investment committee
Consistent operating and financial data across portfolio companies, collected once, so the pack answers questions rather than raising them.
A fund with fifteen holdings has fifteen chart-of-account structures, fifteen definitions of recurring revenue and fifteen spreadsheets arriving at different times in different shapes. Most of the quarter is spent making them comparable and none of it is spent on the question the committee actually asked. We standardise the definitions once, automate the collection, and build reporting that runs across the portfolio, so value creation plans can be tracked against something other than management commentary.
Discuss your operationWhat we usually find
The problems that come up in almost every one of these businesses.
The quarter is spent collecting, not analysing
Chasing, reformatting and reconciling submissions absorbs the reporting window, so the analysis happens in the last two days if it happens at all.
Value creation plans are tracked in prose
The plan has clear initiatives and no measurement, so progress is reported as narrative and the first hard evidence arrives at exit diligence.
Where we start
What the first engagement usually covers.
Scope depends on the state of your systems. These are the pieces that recur in this sector.
One definition set
An agreed metric dictionary across the portfolio, written down, with each company's mapping to it, so aggregation stops being an act of interpretation.
Automated collection
Submissions pulled or templated rather than chased, validated on arrival, with the exceptions surfaced to whoever can fix them.
Portfolio and company reporting
The board pack for each holding and the roll-up for the fund built from the same data, so the two never contradict each other in a meeting.
Value creation tracking
Initiatives tied to the metrics they are meant to move, measured monthly, so progress is a number before it is a narrative.
What changes
What is different afterwards.
You own all of it: the code, the written definitions and documentation aimed at whoever maintains this after us.
- A written metric dictionary the portfolio shares
- Collection that runs without chasing
- Company packs and fund roll-up from the same source
- Value creation plans measured, not narrated
The builds behind it
Sector knowledge decides the order. The builds are the same four.
Single source of truth
Your finance, customer and operational records joined into one dataset, with each figure defined once and traceable back to the system it came from.
Analytics layer
Reporting built on top of the joined data, aimed at the few revenue and cost drivers that actually change the result.
Workflows
One defined task, automated inside a process that already exists, measured against whatever it replaced.
Financial modelling
Driver-based models built on the same definitions as your reporting, so the forecast and the actuals stop disagreeing.
Worth asking
Questions this tends to answer.
- How is the portfolio actually performing against plan?
- Which holdings are drifting, and on which metric?
- Are the value creation initiatives moving anything?
- What will diligence find that we have not already found?