Connecting the dots
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.”
— Steve Jobs
Hardi Jain · AI and SaaS product manager
Whether it was a daily capital call or a quarterly NAV process, the opportunity was the same: identify repeatable logic, automate the workflow, and direct human effort toward exceptions rather than routine processing.
01 · CONTEXT
Private equity fund operations involved recurring capital calls and distributions between funds and their investors.
When an investment was sold or a fund needed to call capital, the team had to evaluate the available cash flows, determine the amount to be called or distributed, calculate the amount attributable to each investor, account for adjustments and expenses, and prepare the corresponding investor communication.
02 · THE PROBLEM
Every day brought different cash flows and different investor amounts, but the underlying process remained largely the same.
The team had to repeatedly evaluate the cash flows, perform the calculations, make adjustments, and prepare the outputs.
The opportunity was not simply to make one calculation faster. It was to automate the repeatable logic across the workflow.
03 · THE INTERVENTION
I worked on translating the recurring calculation logic into an automated workflow.
The underlying data could flow through the defined logic, with the system performing the repeatable calculations and surfacing exceptions for investigation.
This changed the team’s role from manually performing every calculation to reviewing the output and focusing on the cases that required judgment.
04 · THE HUMAN ROLE CHANGED
Automation handled the repeatable parts of the process, while human attention was focused on the exceptions that needed investigation and review.
The objective wasn’t to remove human judgment. It was to move human judgment to the places where it mattered.
05 · THE SECOND WORKFLOW
The same principle applied at quarter-end. The team also had to prepare quarterly financial statements and share NAV information with investors.
The reporting workflow started with the Trial Balance, which flowed into the Profit & Loss Statement, followed by the Balance Sheet and NAV.
06 · AUTOMATING THE REPORTING
We automated this recurring reporting process so that the Trial Balance could be uploaded once, after which the relevant downstream calculations and outputs were populated automatically.
Rather than manually working through the entire reporting process, the team could review the generated outputs and investigate the exceptions surfaced by the system.
07 · THE COMMON PATTERN
Whether it was a daily capital call or a quarterly NAV process, the opportunity was the same: identify repeatable logic, automate the workflow, and direct human effort toward exceptions rather than routine processing.
08 · THE OUTCOME
Across the automated workflows, fund-processing time was reduced from approximately two business days to less than four hours, processing effort was reduced by 75%, and NAV reporting errors decreased from 30% to 10%.
Product Manager · AI and SaaS
Connecting the dots
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.”
— Steve Jobs