AI value creation for PE portfolio companies
An operating partner is looking for initiatives that move EBITDA inside the hold period, survive a board review, and leave management free to run the company. That is the shape of this practice.
Audit-first fits the deal cadence
The 2-3 week process audit produces what a value-creation plan actually needs: workflows mapped as they really run, 3-5 initiatives ranked by ROI and feasibility, and a 90-day plan with named owners. It slots into a 100-day plan without displacing it, and it costs less than one month of a typical consulting team.
I sit inside a PE portfolio myself, as Operating Principal, AI & Technology Lead at Growth Factors (Bregal Unternehmerkapital), so the cadence, the reporting expectations and the management-attention budget are familiar terrain, not a briefing item.
Operations that scale without headcount
The initiatives that pay back fastest are rarely glamorous: finance operations, intake and triage, document-heavy back-office work, customer-service load. Every audit scores this workflow menu against your reality, and the first deployment is chosen to break even inside a quarter.
Build once, template across the portfolio
What works in one portco becomes a playbook: the same audit method, the same architecture patterns, the same eval gates, priced per entity and cheaper each time. A fractional AI lead arrangement keeps governance and vendor decisions consistent across companies without hiring an AI executive into each one.
Reported in numbers
Every engagement locks a baseline before it changes anything, and reports against it: cycle times, cost per case, deflection rates, headcount avoided. The board answer at exit is a table, not a narrative. And where a deal team needs the other direction, AI and tech due diligence on a target, that runs as a separate, independent expert practice.
Common questions
How fast does this reach EBITDA?
The audit takes 2-3 weeks, the first system ships 4-10 weeks after, and it is chosen to break even inside a quarter. Programme-level impact compounds as the playbook rolls to further workflows and entities.
Can you work across several portfolio companies?
Yes. The usual pattern is one lighthouse portco to prove the playbook, then per-entity rollouts at lower cost, with a fractional-lead layer keeping standards and vendor choices consistent across the portfolio.
Do you also do AI due diligence on targets?
Yes, as a separate independent expert practice: AI and technology due diligence for investors, boards and M&A, kept deliberately apart from build mandates to avoid conflicts.
What does it cost?
Process audit CHF 15-25k fixed per company. System builds CHF 40-150k depending on class. Fractional AI lead on a monthly retainer, quarterly minimum. A one-day strategy session (CHF 3-5k) is the cheapest way to test the fit and is creditable against any follow-on engagement.
Map the process before you buy the tool.
One call to agree whether a process audit, a system build or a fractional AI lead fits where you are.