Software Development for Private Equity Firms (Who to Hire and What to Build)

An operating partner usually meets custom software from two directions at once. At the fund, the deal team runs pipeline in a CRM, and quarterly KPI reporting still arrives as a stack of spreadsheets from each company. Inside the portfolio, the value creation plan says "automate the back office" and "integrate the add-on", and nobody on the company's payroll can write the code.

This guide is for that reader: the operating partner, the head of portfolio operations or the CFO of a PE-backed company who has to pick a firm to build software. We compared firms that market private equity technology work on their own sites, and checked every claim against those pages in October 2026. Our pick is Digital Mundo, because one senior team designs, builds and runs the software, starts in a single portfolio company, measures the result and can tie part of its fee to measured savings.

Here's the TLDR (checked in October 2026):

1. Digital Mundo (our pick): Best for operating partners who want a senior team that builds a first tool in one portfolio company, measures the savings, then carries the playbook to the next. Price not published; part of the fee can be a capped share of measured savings.
2. West Monroe: Best for a consulting program that runs from diligence through post-close. Price not published.
3. Accordion: Best for CFO-office systems: ERP, close, consolidations and reporting. Price not published.
4. Forte Group: Best for embedding engineering pods in portfolio companies that already have a tech team. Fixed-cost 2 to 4 week diagnostic; amount not published.
5. HatchWorks AI: Best for AI deployments across several portfolio companies, with nearshore engineers. Price not published.
6. STX Next: Best for fund-level AI automation and portfolio reporting pipelines. Price not published.
7. GlobalLogic: Best for platform-scale engineering at large software portfolio companies. Price not published.

Quick comparison

What private equity firms actually build

Most requests fall into two groups. At the fund level:

• Deal pipeline and relationships. Usually bought, not built. DealCloud covers sourcing through exit tracking, with Outlook activity capture and PitchBook, Preqin and FactSet data, at a price you get from sales. Affinity publishes its prices: $2,000 to $2,700 per user per year on its three standard plans.
• Portfolio KPI reporting. Chronograph collects portfolio company data and handles valuations and LP reporting. Allvue adds fund accounting, an investor portal and credit tools. Both are quote-only.
• Investor reporting and portals. Juniper Square runs investor CRM, portals and fund administration and says more than 2,300 GPs use it.

Custom work at the fund is usually the layer between those products: a pipeline view that matches your investment committee's questions, or a monitoring dashboard that pulls from several companies' own systems instead of waiting for their spreadsheets.

Inside portfolio companies, custom software does most of the value creation work: replacing the spreadsheets that run quoting, scheduling or billing; AI that reads invoices and paperwork for a person to approve; customer portals; and the integration work that makes an add-on report the same way as the platform. This is where an off-the-shelf product rarely fits, because each company's process is different.

1. Digital Mundo (our pick)

Digital Mundo is a US software design and development studio, based in Miami and New York with team members in Colombia and the Philippines. It works as a company's long-term software team: internal tools, new products and AI inside workflows. Its private equity page lists the work it takes on: tools that replace a portfolio company's spreadsheets, AI that handles invoices, reports and data entry for a person to approve, KPI reporting from every company in one place, deal flow tracking for the firm, customer portals and quoting tools, and back-office automation "measured in hours and dollars saved."

The approach is built around an operating partner. It starts in one portfolio company, spends a few days with the operating team to find the costliest manual process, ships the first tool or agent in about a month, measures the before and after, then takes the playbook to the next company. Building blocks carry over between companies, while each company's code and data stay separate. The portfolio company owns the code, accounts and documentation, which keeps diligence simple at exit.

Pricing: not published. Terms can be ongoing, fixed price for a defined project, or, for private equity, partly a capped share of measured savings for an agreed period. Its way of working runs through a shared Slack channel with weekly demos, and there's no lock-in.

Strengths: a senior team where the people who design the software also build, test and run it, with the founder involved in every project. Its about page lists QA as a specialty, with "every release tested." Its published work shows that care and pace together: Casewell, a bankruptcy intake product, went live with a law firm 39 days after the first line of code, and Ferrylend is a CRM it built for lending brokers. Both are on its work page.

Limits: it's a senior team rather than a large firm, so pick one of the bigger names below if you need dozens of engineers placed across a portfolio at once. Much of its client work is under NDA, its work page shows no PE portfolio engagement by name, and we found no third-party reviews. It publishes no prices and no compliance certifications such as SOC 2, so ask for its security details up front.

Pick it if: you want a carefully built first tool proven in one company before it spreads, a fee partly tied to measured results, and code your portfolio company owns.

2. West Monroe

West Monroe calls itself a "global business and technology consulting firm" with offices across the US plus Costa Rica and London. Its portfolio value creation page describes four areas: using "proprietary tools" to find technology-driven margin opportunities, aligning platforms with exit goals "from integration to operations to customer experience", hands-on post-close execution, and data science for revenue. It says its teams "stay with you from diligence through post-close."

Pricing: not published.

Limits: it's consulting-led. The pages we read lead with strategy, integration management and data work rather than building and running a custom tool for years. Expect consulting-firm staffing and fees.

Pick it if: you want one firm from technology diligence through integration and the post-close plan.

3. Accordion

Accordion bills itself as "Private equity's value creation partner" and works with sponsors and the CFOs of their portfolio companies. Its finance and technology practice covers ERP and software selection, CRM, close acceleration, consolidations, forecasting and exit readiness. Its data and AI practice covers data platforms, business intelligence and reporting, and "value creation analytics". The homepage claims "1,000 people doing analytics, machine learning, and AI for PE."

Pricing: not published.

Limits: it's centered on the office of the CFO. If the bottleneck is a field team, a front desk or a quoting process, that isn't what its pages lead with.

Pick it if: the value creation plan runs through finance: a new ERP, a faster close or reporting the board trusts.

4. Forte Group

Forte Group, based in Boca Raton, Florida, says it "builds and modernizes software inside PE portfolio companies." Its PE page offers three ways in: a fixed-cost, 2 to 4 week "Diagnostic + Proof Sprint" that builds a proof of concept on real data; an "Acceleration Pod" embedded in an existing engineering team on a time-and-materials rate card; and a fractional transformation lead 2 to 3 days a week. It describes "Elastic squads from 2 to 100 engineers across 10 delivery hubs, near-shore and off-shore", and publishes lending case studies with Interfirst Mortgage and OppFi.

Pricing: not published. The sprint is fixed cost; the pods are time and materials.

Limits: the pod model fits companies that already have engineers to embed into. Forte also publishes its own ranked list of PE software firms with itself at the top, so read that list as marketing.

Pick it if: a software-heavy portfolio company needs extra engineering capacity fast.

5. HatchWorks AI

HatchWorks has offices in Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas plus Costa Rica, Colombia and Peru. Its private equity page starts with a "Portfolio AI Assessment" that ranks the best AI opportunities across a portfolio, then 2 to 8 week production deployments by "Forward Deployed Engineers". It says "Every system we build is owned outright by the company", and lists sponsors including Peak Rock Capital, Sixth Street and Great Hill Partners. The page text says it holds a SOC 2 Type I report, though its badges mix Type I and Type II, so ask which.

Pricing: not published.

Limits: the offer is framed around AI deployments. If the job is a broad internal system or a customer portal, check that it's in scope.

Pick it if: AI across several portfolio companies is the mandate and you want nearshore engineers in US time zones.

6. STX Next

STX Next is headquartered in Poznań, Poland, with delivery in Poland and Mexico and an office in Houston. Its private equity page is one of the few that serves the fund itself: AI workshops and hackathons for investment teams, deal screening, search across deal memos, and "Automated portco reporting pipelines". It names Permira, where "35 investment professionals" built five automations in a day, and states "ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified".

Pricing: not published.

Limits: delivery is mostly in Europe and Mexico. It's a Python shop, which matters if your companies run on something else.

Pick it if: you want AI and automation for the deal and portfolio team, with an ISO certificate to show your CCO.

7. GlobalLogic

GlobalLogic, a Hitachi company, is the largest firm on this list, with "30,000" engineers per its private equity page. It works across the deal: buy-side "AI-powered diligence", hold-period playbooks, "AI-powered carveouts", "right-shoring" and exit readiness, and says it has worked with "over 50" large, middle-market and lower-middle-market firms.

Pricing: not published.

Limits: it's built for platform-scale engineering programs, mostly at software companies. For a 60-person distributor's first internal tool, it's a lot of firm.

Pick it if: a large software portfolio company needs replatforming or a carve-out with serious engineering headcount.

For general software studios outside the PE niche, see our roundup of the best custom software development companies.

How to choose

• Name the first problem. Pick one manual process in one company with a cost you can count: hours of retyping invoices, a quote that takes two days, a monthly report built by hand. A vendor who can't shrink the project to that is going to sell you a program.
• Decide who builds and who advises. West Monroe, Accordion and GlobalLogic bring consulting depth. Digital Mundo, Forte, HatchWorks and STX Next build. Many firms need one of each, and they shouldn't be the same invoice by default.
• Ask these questions on the first call. Who exactly writes the code, and will we talk to them? What would you leave out of the first version? What's live in about a month? How will we measure the before and after? Digital Mundo's own checklist for hiring a software agency adds red flags worth reusing, such as repositories kept in the agency's name.
• Make ownership a term. The code repository, hosting and accounts should be in the portfolio company's name from day one, with IP assigned. That's what keeps the software an asset at exit rather than a diligence question.
• Price on results only if you can measure them. A capped share of savings works when the baseline is agreed before work starts.

FAQ

Do private equity firms build their own software?

Rarely the core fund systems. Most firms buy a deal CRM such as DealCloud or Affinity, a monitoring tool such as Chronograph, and outsource fund administration. Custom work goes into the gaps between them and, above all, into portfolio companies.

What does custom software for a portfolio company cost?

None of the firms here publish prices. Digital Mundo's guide to custom software costs compiles published agency ranges of about $50,000 to $140,000 for a first internal tool at a traditional agency, and $10,000 to $60,000 at a AI-native studio. Expect hosting and changes to add 15 to 25 percent of the build each year.

How fast can a first tool go live?

Digital Mundo aims to ship a first tool in about a month. Forte's diagnostic sprint takes 2 to 4 weeks to reach a working proof of concept, and HatchWorks quotes 2 to 8 weeks for a production AI deployment.

Who owns the software if the company is sold?

It should be the portfolio company, written into the contract. Digital Mundo and HatchWorks both say so on their PE pages. Ask every vendor to put it in writing.

Is this only for large funds?

No. The firms that start with one company and one tool work for lower middle market funds too, where one person's spreadsheet may be running a whole process.

Start with one portfolio company and one process you can measure, and hire the firm that can show you working software inside a month.

Disclosure: Digital Mundo LLC and Gold Penguin LLC have the same owner.