EBITDA Improvement You Can Repeat Across the Portfolio

Every portfolio company has two or three workflows where AI produces measurable margin inside the hold period. What most sponsors lack is a repeatable way to find them, cost them, and get them built without a Big 4 invoice.

A sister brand of Talent Echo Advisory Group — executive search for Chief AI Officers and AI Governance leaders.

For Private Equity

The pattern we see across portfolios

Every portco is improvising

Each management team is running its own AI experiments — some stalled, some duplicative, none comparable. There's no portfolio-level view of the opportunity.

The hold-period clock

AI initiatives that take two years to show returns don't fit a hold period. The use cases that matter are the ones with 6–12 month payback — and they exist in nearly every company.

The advisory gap

Big 4 AI engagements are priced for enterprises; tool vendors sell software, not outcomes. Mid-market portcos sit in the gap between them.

Where the payback is

The use cases that earn their keep

Portfolio payback screening

A standardized audit across portcos produces comparable answers: which workflows, what cost, what return, what sequence — company by company, in one framework. Fixed price per company means the screening cost is known up front.

Back-office automation at the portco level

AP/invoice processing, service triage, document production — the same three use cases that dominate mid-market payback, built with each company's own staff so capability survives the exit. Typical builds $15,000–$75,000 per workflow.

A playbook that compounds

What works at one portfolio company becomes the template for the next. Sponsors get a repeatable motion; management teams get a proven sequence instead of a science project.

Questions

What Private Equity ask us

How does pricing work across multiple companies?

Published fixed pricing: Readiness Audits from $9,500 per company, flat-fee strategy, and an outcome-aligned component on builds. Portfolio arrangements are priced per engagement — the point is that screening cost is predictable.

Does this survive the exit?

That's the design goal. Every build is co-led with company staff and documented for handoff — the capability is an asset that transfers, not a consulting dependency that churns.

What about AI governance and diligence?

Our sister firm, Talent Echo Advisory Group, places Chief AI Officers and AI governance leaders. Between us: the program gets built and the leadership to own it gets hired — both scrutiny-ready for the next buyer's diligence.

Screen one company in two minutes

Run the AI Payback Scorecard on any portfolio company — free, comparable, and repeatable.

Take the Scorecard