With increasing pressure from investors about fees, and fierce competition across the industry, private equity CFOs are looking for new ways to streamline and stand out.

You’d think with all of the capital involved, that Private Equity firms (PE) would embrace technology with open arms, but the opposite is true—PE firms are notoriously slow and resistant to adopt new technologies.

Competition is continually reaching new extremes in the Private Equity industry, prompting firms to recast into new roles and systems in order to embrace the rising challenges of operational excellence, personnel optimization, technology adoption, and data management over time.

Increasing regulations demand greater transparency. Migrating data and information to CRM systems and online storage requires constantly evolving security. How can firms overcome these challenges to get ahead of the competition?

In Private Equity, differentiation oftentimes stems from a firm’s “secret sauce” for how they source deals and find the best investment opportunities.

It is my belief that there have never been greater opportunities for technology to change the way PE/VC markets operate than there are today, and I want to start with this concept of predictive scoring, just one basic example of the application of technology.

The assessment is a framework around the Business Maturity Model which outlines key components to consider as you invest in and evolve your use of technology within your firm.

While many companies think of data as a tool, it might be more accurate for private capital firms to think of it as a valuable asset.

This is the second blog post in a four-part series on how Private Equity firms can better use data and technology to their competitive advantage.

Today, firms use interesting technologies to improve and quantify their processes but when compared to the vastly more impressive capabilities of modern data science techniques, Excel and Outlook just aren’t cutting it.