A case study using three fictitious SaaS portfolio companies
Private equity partners spend countless hours each month parsing through Excel files, trying to understand which portfolio companies need attention and which are performing well. At best, they have disparate data platforms they can access for each individual portfolio company, but that still requires manual effort to consolidate insights. What if instead of waiting for monthly reports, they could see real-time operational performance across their entire portfolio in a single dashboard? We built an example of what this dashboard could look like using Omni and Snowflake.
Learn more below and follow along the walkthrough we recorded on YouTube.
Cross-portfolio summary overview unified in one location
The Challenge: Information Lag in PE Portfolio Management
Small-to-mid market PE firms typically manage 8–15 portfolio companies, each sending monthly financial packages in different formats. By the time partners identify issues, they’re often looking at 30–60 day old problems. Critical operational decisions get delayed, and value creation opportunities are missed.
Our Solution: Real-Time Portfolio Performance Dashboard
We built a comprehensive analytics dashboard for a hypothetical PE firm’s SaaS portfolio, featuring three companies:
- Fit-Gen Health: AI-powered wellness platform
- Pack-It: Supply chain optimization software
- Sky Screen Solutions: Digital advertising platform
Using realistic financial data that we generated with the help of Mockaroo and loaded into Snowflake, the dashboard provides instant visibility into the metrics PE firms care about most.
Key Features That Drive PE Decision-Making
Portfolio-Wide Performance at a Glance
KPIs with built in year-over-year comparison tiles easily manipulated to YoY, QoQ, MoM performance comps
Six critical KPIs immediately show portfolio health:
- EBITDA ($s and Margin): The holy grail(s) of private equity financial reporting
- Revenue Growth: Track across all companies and date slices imaginable
- Cost Management: COGS and OpEx trends
- Budget Variance: Real-time actual vs. budget tracking; drill down to the vendor level of detail for budget variance analysis
Color-coded indicators instantly highlight which metrics need attention — green for positive performance, red for concerns.
Company-by-Company Comparisons
Quick comparative analysis for key metrics across companies in the portfolio
Visual comparisons reveal:
- Revenue performance by company
- Margin analysis to identify operational efficiency
- Growth trajectories to spot acceleration or deceleration
- Budget adherence across the portfolio
Operational Deep Dives
Key operational breakdowns easily filterable by date range and portfolio company or fund
Quickly walk between actual performance and budget across various components of the P&L
Drill down into the details that drive value creation:
- Revenue mix analysis: Platform vs. subscription vs. services
- Cost structure optimization: R&D, sales/marketing, customer success
- Overall performance vs. budget: Understand the drivers of a budget hit / miss
Live (and filterable) Financial Statements & Models
Example P&L living DIRECTLY IN YOUR DASHBOARDS(!!!)
Similarly, live DCF model that can have its assumptions tweaked directly from your BI tool
A major differentiator between Omni and most other BI tools on the market is the ability to set up real-time spreadsheets that carry the vast majority of the functionality you can build in Microsoft Excel. We built to excamples including:
- Income statement with period-over-period analysis: Customize your financial statement reporting to your exact specifications as you would in Excel; no more bending over backwards to work within the boundaries of what the BI tool allows you to do.
- Discounted Cash Flow Model: Ability to toggle assumptions right in the BI layer so that you can intermingle dashboard filtering with tweaking financial model assumptions all with real-time data.
Real-World Impact for PE Firms
Deep dive by account to easily scan actual performance against budget targets
Instead of discovering a portfolio company’s digital marketing spend is 40% above budget in next month’s board meeting, partners can see it in real-time and intervene immediately. Rather than manually consolidating Excel files for LP reports, the data is already aggregated and presentation-ready.
The Technology Behind the Dashboard
Built using modern business intelligence platform, Omni, the dashboard integrates with common accounting systems (e.g. Netsuite, Sage Intacct, Quickbooks and more) and provides:
- Automated data refresh: No manual Excel updates; data pipelines manage ingestion of source system data via Orchestra, data is stored in a Snowflake data warehouse, data is cleaned and unified using dbt, and then the data is prepared to be reported in Omni.
- Mobile accessibility: Review portfolio performance anywhere
- Customizable views: Each partner can focus on their priority metrics
- Export capabilities: Generate reports for board meetings and LP updates
What This Means for PE Operations
This approach transforms portfolio management from reactive monthly reviews to proactive daily monitoring. Partners can:
- Identify issues earlier and intervene before they impact performance
- Spot value creation opportunities across portfolio companies
- Intelligently manage vendor spend when marching towards specific targets
- Streamline LP reporting with automated analytics
- Make data-driven decisions about resource allocation
The Bottom Line
Private equity success depends on operational excellence across portfolio companies. Real-time analytics transforms how firms monitor, manage, and optimize their investments — turning information lag into competitive advantage.
Interested in seeing how real-time portfolio analytics could transform your investment management? Contact South Shore Analytics to explore custom dashboard solutions for your PE firm and/or its portfolio companies.