Challenge
A leading private equity firm has long relied on top-tier consulting firms for critical investment research. While the insights delivered were of high quality, rising costs and lengthy turnaround times made it challenging to scale support across all deal stages. As a result, early-stage evaluations and emerging opportunities were underserved.
The firm needed a cost-effective, agile alternative capable of providing consulting-grade research across a broader range of use cases without compromising on quality or strategic value.
Our Solution
From Pilot to Proof of Value
To address these needs, we launched a three-month pilot engagement focused on delivering high-impact research and actionable insights. The projects we supported during this phase were highly critical and time-sensitive, requiring deep sector knowledge, analytical rigor, and close collaboration with the firm’s Investment Officers.
By actively engaging with their team throughout the process, we continuously refined and tailored our outputs to align with their expectations. This close collaboration allowed us to demonstrate our ability to match the quality of leading consulting firms while being more agile and responsive.
As the pilot progressed, our adaptability, strategic relevance and ability to meet tight deadlines helped us earn the confidence and trust of key stakeholders. The client found a strategic balance—engaging consulting firms for high-level initiatives while relying on our cost-effective yet high-quality support for specialized research needs.
Scaling Delivery with a Dedicated, Cross-Functional Team
To sustain and scale this success, we assembled a cross-functional team of experienced analysts with expertise in target screening, financial research, investment analysis, market intelligence, and strategic problem solving.
The team brought a mix of consulting, buy-side research, and sector-specific experience, with capabilities spanning:
- Company and industry profiling
- Target and buyer screening
- Economic and macro analysis
- Web scraping and custom data extraction
- Presentation support and design enhancements
- Custom research requests with varying level of complexity
This enabled end-to-end support from initial screening to insights generation. The core delivery team grew from 4 to 23 full-time members over time, including analysts based in India and nearshore resources in Chile and Columbia for extended and real-time delivery of critical time-sensitive projects.
Throughout the engagement, the team applied a combination of creativity, problem-solving, and technical adaptability to overcome challenges and deliver strong outcomes.
This is a great example of how creative thinking, resourcefulness, and tools like ChatGPT can deliver exceptional results. By leveraging innovative technologies to accelerate data gathering and finding an effective platform to visualize nearly 800 locations interactively, the outcome far exceeded expectations.
— Director, Leading Private Equity Firm
Deep Domain Expertise Enhanced by Generative AI
Following our initial engagement, the client acquired a leading player in infrastructure investments—a domain requiring deep, specialized research. Despite previous attempts, the acquired company had not found a research partner that met their standards. After testing our capabilities post-acquisition, they were impressed by our delivery of high-impact insights across key projects.
This milestone reinforced our position as a trusted, long-term research partner for both entities.
What set our approach apart was the fusion of deep industry knowledge with advanced generative AI tools. Our analysts—many with backgrounds in consulting and private equity—were able to move faster and deeper into niche sectors by leveraging AI to:
- Summarize extensive datasets and filings
- Extract key themes and investment signals
- Accelerate insight generation and hypothesis development
We enhanced deliverables using tools such as Python for data parsing and Power BI for interactive, decision-ready visualizations—allowing stakeholders to explore findings dynamically.
The team demonstrated exceptional creativity by using Generative AI tools to streamline a complex data extraction task, significantly improving efficiency. When faced with limitations in available mapping tools, the team showed great resourcefulness by turning to Power BI to build a dynamic, interactive visualization that went well beyond expectations. A great example of proactive problem-solving and technical adaptability.
— Director, Leading Private Equity Firm
These tech-enabled enhancements improved turnaround times and elevated the strategic quality of our insights, reinforcing our value to the client and enabling them to move faster on high-impact opportunities.
Business Impact
This engagement generated measurable value for the client by improving research coverage, reducing dependence on high-cost consulting vendors, and enabling faster, more informed decision-making across investment teams. Our partnership not only addressed immediate research gaps but also positioned the client for long-term operational efficiency and scale.
Key impacts included:
- Accelerated turnaround: Requests that previously took days or weeks were completed in hours or a few days, helping investment teams act faster on opportunities. Over 1,000 research requests have been successfully delivered across varying levels of complexity, with an overall 15% faster turnaround time.
- Broader adoption: The research desk that initially engaged us became an internal advocate, promoting our services to other regional teams and portfolio companies. We now support their Infrastructure, Secondaries, and Private Credit teams.
- Trusted insights for investment action: Our research directly supported early-stage conversations with target companies, helping initiate investment discussions and deal evaluations.
- Technology-led efficiency gains: Through automation, visualization tools, and AI-enabled techniques, we streamlined workflows and improved delivery. Tools like Python, Power BI, and generative AI enabled us to deliver high-quality outputs at greater speed and scale, leading to a 10-12% increase in execution efficiency.
Building on the success and impact of our collaboration, the engagement has steadily expanded to include new regions, business units, and affiliated entities. Evalueserve continues to act as a trusted research partner, providing agile, insight-driven support throughout the entire investment lifecycle.
Talk to One of Our Experts
Get in touch today to find out about how Evalueserve can help you improve your processes, making you better, faster and more efficient.
Overview & Impact
A leading private equity firm accelerated early-stage research with Evalueserve by combining deep sector expertise and generative AI to deliver faster, scalable, and insight-rich support across the deal lifecycle.
