At Silverline, we’ve worked on countless private equity projects through robust public markets and a financial crisis. We’d like to share insights about the trends we are seeing in our Private Equity portfolio for 2022 and beyond. We’re helping helping our clients use technology to optimize operations, source new deals, and deliver better experiences for their investors and assets.

The top trends PE investors should know about

Our goal is to help clients realize value and competitive advantage through strategic technology programs. Together, we can drive more effective fundraising and deal processes, support emerging business lines through technical innovation, and roll up our sleeves to help bolster the economic recovery ahead.   

Here are some of the top private equity markets trends you should know about:

The future of Private Equity is technology-driven

As we reflect on our work partnering with Private Equity firms, one major observation is that the fastest-growing global players — those with the most deal activity — have built strong technology management capabilities. They manage these capabilities in-house while leveraging expert service providers to provide industry insights and expertise in emerging technical domains. This is especially true in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The highest performing and most diversified firms now possess a deep capability to imagine and execute new ideas for technology. This creates significant leverage for dealmakers and investors alike in number of deals and for managing balance sheets. The practice these firms have gotten over the last decade designing, building, and innovating new products sets them up for success and sets them apart from their competitors under current market conditions. 

In fact, we predicted this during our Summer Roundtable Series in June of 2019 with KKR, Evercore, General Atlantic, and Stonebriar. The session focused on investing time and resources into learning and adapting new technologies versus buying off-the-shelf point solutions. 

From automation and AI to machine learning and advanced analytics, the landscape of Private Equity is quickly becoming one of reinvention and innovation for the private markets at large.

What this means for your private equity firm

As the future and culture of finance shifts around the world from the United States to Hong Kong, so must the ways in which global private equity firms do business. Private Equity firms in our portfolio are looking at their innovation roadmaps through these major lenses:

• Productivity. Beyond managing the growing pipeline of potential investments, firms are increasingly interested in smart, AI-powered tools that deliver an edge in day-to-day operations.
• Integration planning. Each new portfolio acquisition is an opportunity to rethink business models, retool business processes for efficiency and data capitalization, and leverage technology to realize greater post-deal synergy. Earlier technical planning is critical to long-term success.
• Analytics vision and data strategy. As firms monitor the global market of opportunities and manage their portfolio of assets, a unified data strategy is critical to decision-making. A good data strategy is one that is always evolving — and we work with the most sophisticated firms to align their data roadmap to their analytics vision and uncover new, valuable sets of data. 

How can these viewpoints shape the way your organization functions? Get the full report to see the bigger picture.