For years, the private equity back office has been seen as a necessary cost of doing business, operationally critical, but rarely strategic. In a recent article for A-Team Insight, our Founder Gareth Hewitt explores why that mindset is holding firms back, and how modern technology is finally changing the equation.
As Gareth outlines, many PE firms are still constrained by legacy fund accounting systems that were never designed for today’s complexity. Multiple entities, bespoke fee structures, co-investments and growing regulatory scrutiny have pushed these tools beyond their limits. The result? Heavy reliance on spreadsheets, manual reconciliations, opaque data flows and a constant sense of operational risk.
This “fear factor”, fear of change, fear of disruption, fear of getting the numbers wrong, often prevents firms from modernising. But as Gareth argues, sticking with outdated systems is itself the biggest risk. Manual workarounds don’t just slow teams down; they introduce key-person dependencies, weaken auditability and erode confidence in the data at exactly the moment when firms need clarity and speed.
In the article, Gareth explains how modern, cloud-native fund accounting platforms can turn this on its head. By embedding complex logic directly into the system, firms can automate core workflows, maintain a single source of truth, and dramatically shorten close and reporting cycles. Just as importantly, this shift frees highly skilled finance professionals to focus on insight and oversight, not data wrangling.
The opportunity, as Gareth frames it, is an “efficiency jackpot”: lower operational risk, faster decision-making, happier teams and stronger foundations for scale. But realising that value requires leadership, a clear implementation strategy and a willingness to rethink the role of the back office altogether.
👉 Read the full article by Gareth Hewitt on A-Team Insight to explore how private equity firms can move beyond fear, escape legacy lock-in and unlock the true strategic potential of their back-office operations.
