Custom business tools built with AI

A business tool delivered in 6 weeks

Many portfolio companies run their business on a shared spreadsheet, email and software bought ten years ago. Scheduling jobs, producing quotes, tracking deals: every step involves re-keying and relies on the memory of one or two people. Building a suitable tool used to cost €150,000 and four to six months, a budget out of reach for a fifty-person company. AI-assisted development agents bring the project down to a few weeks and a fraction of the cost, finally putting a generational leap in technology within reach.

The automated workflow

A structured process for fast, reliable results.

Observing the real process

Time spent with the teams maps how work actually flows, including the workarounds built into spreadsheets and message threads.

A working mock-up in days

A first usable version is built and shown to the teams on their own cases, to validate the journey before any heavy development.

AI-assisted build

Development is carried out with coding agents steered by our engineers, who keep control of architecture, security and migration of existing data.

Go-live and handover

Gradual roll-out, user training and documentation, so the company can evolve its tool independently.

Tangible results

6 weeks

From scoping to first production release

-70%

Build cost compared with conventional development

-80%

Running cost compared with an equivalent licence

Up and running in 4 to 8 weeks

From specification to deployment, with visible results from the first few weeks.

Rapid scoping (1 week)

Working prototype at the halfway point

Deployment and training included

Frequently asked questions: Custom business tools built with AI

The comparison has changed. AI-assisted builds come in at around €20,000 to €50,000 where conventional development exceeded €150,000, and monthly running costs are counted in tens of euros against per-seat licences. The break-even point therefore shifts towards software billed at more than €2,000 a month.

Documentation, automated tests and skills transfer are part of the delivery. The portfolio company's team takes over day-to-day changes, and our involvement is then limited to structural projects.

The agents produce most of the routine code, while our engineers handle architecture, security, data migration and verification. That split explains the gap between an appealing prototype and a tool that holds up in production.

Each tool fits into a map that is kept up to date and reuses the same technical foundation. When a fund holds several portfolio companies with comparable processes, the same tool can be redeployed from one company to another for a fraction of the initial cost.

More workflows: Value Creation

Redesign delivered in 6 weeks

Website and digital journey redesign

An acquired company's online presence often dates from the previous generation: a site designed eight years ago, a journey that loses visitors before they get in touch, content left untouched since it went live. A well-run redesign usually takes thirteen to nineteen weeks and a median budget of €12,000 for an SME, a timescale hard to fit into a holding period where every quarter counts. AI-assisted tools shorten design and build, provided the editorial content is still written by people.

6 to 8 weeks

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Built once, deployed across the portfolio

Shared AI platform across the portfolio

When each portfolio company builds its own automations, a fund holding twelve companies pays for twelve parallel engineering efforts, twelve security reviews and twelve ways to get it wrong. The same quoting, customer service or invoice processing logic is reinvented from one company to the next. That repetition inflates the portfolio's recurring technology costs and delays proof of value, just when LPs expect repeatable progress.

8 to 12 weeks

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First measured gain before day 100

AI diagnostic and 100-day plan for a portfolio company

After the acquisition, the window of attention closes quickly. The first board meeting takes place between day 45 and day 75, and management habits set soon after. The AI intentions written into the investment memo often remain principles, for lack of an on-the-ground diagnostic and levers quantified in euros. In its “2026 Private Equity AI Radar” (May 2026), FTI Consulting finds that only 7% of funds have taken AI to enterprise scale in their portfolio companies.

100 days

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See all workflows: Value Creation