This article first appeared in the Journal of Private Equity. Click here to access the full article.

Over the past decade, there has been explosive growth in the amount of financial and operational data portfolio companies generate every day. The growing mass of data makes it difficult for private equity firms to derive the actionable insight necessary to positively impact a fund’s performance. In response to this challenge, private equity groups have turned to technology for help. Data visualization has emerged as a popular and impactful tool for analyzing large amounts of data. Visualization tools can help isolate financial performance issues, accelerate communication, and uncover performance improvement opportunities across a fund’s portfolio. When leveraged correctly, even the process of gathering data for use in visualizations generates performance-enhancing opportunities. However, converting these opportunities into meaningful performance improvement requires an understanding of what data visualization can do for your business and how it can be effectively leveraged across a portfolio.