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Private Equity and Venture Capital Industry Business Reference Architecture

Business capability maps, value streams, and strategy maps for the Private Equity and Venture Capital Industry.

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  • Private Equity & Venture Capital leadership requires a unified and validated view of business capabilities that helps CIOs and leadership accelerate the strategy design process and that aligns initiatives, investments, and strategy.
  • The business and IT often focus on a project, ignoring the holistic impact and value of an overarching value stream and business capability view.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Using an industry-specific business reference architecture is central and has many benefits to organizational priorities. It’s critical to understanding, modeling, and communicating the operating environment and the direction of the organization, but more significantly, to enabling measurable top-line organizational outcomes and the unlocking of direct value.

Impact and Result

  • Demonstrate the value of IT’s role in supporting your organization’s capabilities while highlighting the importance of proper alignment between organizational and IT strategies.
  • Apply reference architecture techniques such as strategy maps, value streams, and capability maps to design usable and accurate blueprints of your private equity & venture capital operations.
  • Assess your initiatives and priorities to determine if you are investing in the right capabilities. Conduct capability assessments to identify opportunities and to prioritize projects

Private Equity and Venture Capital Industry Business Reference Architecture Research & Tools

1. Accelerate the strategy design process

Leverage a validated view of the Private Equity & Venture Capital organization’s business capabilities to realize measurable top-line business outcomes and unlock direct value.

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Private Equity and Venture Capital Industry Business Reference Architecture

Business capability maps, value streams, and strategy maps for the Private Equity and Venture Capital Industry

Analyst Perspective

In the age of disruption, IT must end misalignment and enable value realization.

An industry business reference architecture helps accelerate your strategy design process and enhances IT’s ability to align people, process, and technology with key business priorities.

Private Equity and Venture Capital firms are going through a period of rapid change. Most of the core processes and technology are changing, which is creating the need for new talent within these organizations. Part of the challenge with significant change is communicating the complexity to the business and the broader community of stakeholders. The reference architecture is a powerful communications and alignment tool you can use to engage and inform stakeholders.

Photo of David Tomljenovic, MBA LL.M CIM, Head of Financial Service Industry Research, Info-Tech Research Group.

David Tomljenovic, MBA LL.M CIM
Head of Financial Service Industry Research
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge
  • You are a CIO, head of EA, or chief architect who needs to improve your organization’s understanding of business capabilities and how IT can support them.
  • You are an organization that wants to sharpen its alignment and focus on organizational outcomes and value by using architecture to better inform your IT governance, stakeholder management, and IT strategy capabilities.
  • Before executing any strategic initiatives, you need to understand how the organization creates value and its underlying capabilities and processes.
Common Obstacles
  • You don’t know where or how to begin or how to engage the right people, model the business, and drive the value of business architecture.
  • Business and IT often speak in their own languages without a wholistic and integrated view of mission, strategies, goals, processes, and projects.
  • Business and IT often focus on a project, ignoring the holistic value of an overarching value stream and business capability view.
Info-Tech’s Approach
  • Build your capability map by defining the organization’s value stream and validating the industry reference architecture.
  • Use business capabilities to define strategic focus by defining the organization’s key capabilities and developing a prioritized strategy map.
  • Assess key capabilities for planning priorities through a review of business processes, information, and application and technology support of key capabilities.
  • Adopt capability-based strategy planning by ongoing identification and road mapping of capability gaps.

Info-Tech Insight

Utilizing an industry-specific reference architecture is central, and has many benefits, to organizational priorities. It’s critical to understanding, modeling, and communicating the operating environment and the direction of the organization. More significantly, it is needed to enable measurable top-line organizational outcomes and the unlocking of direct value.

Reference Architecture Framework

Overarching Insight

Using an industry-specific reference architecture is central and has many benefits to organizational priorities. It's critical to understanding, modeling, and communicating the operating environment and the direction of the enterprise, and more significantly, to enabling measurable top-line business outcomes and the unlocking of direct value.

Determine your organizational priority.

Many organizational priorities are dependent on an understanding of how the organization creates value and the organization's capabilities and processes.

Examine organizational opportunities through the lens of business, information/data, applications & technology.

Your understanding of your organization's business capabilities, processes (rules & logic), information/data, and architecture will identify organizational opportunities to create value through reduced costs or increased revenues and services.

Follow Info-Tech's methodology to enable organizational outcomes and unlock direct value.

Your approach indicates the scope of your modernization initiatives.

Build your organization's capability map by defining the organization's value stream and validating the industry reference architecture.

USe business capabilities to define strategic focus by defining the organization's key capabilities and developing a prioritized strategy map.

Assess key capabilities for planning priorities through a review of business processess, information, applications, and technology support of key capabilities.

Sustain capability-based strategy planning through ongoing identification and roadmapping of capability gaps.

Logo for Info-Tech Research Group. Logo for iTRG.

Pinwheel diagram of value in the industry context. At the center is 'Value (Revenue, Margin, Assets)' surrounded by a cycle of '1. Build', '2. Define', '3. Assess & Prioritize' and '4. Sustain'. Surround that are categories 'Business', 'Information/Data', 'Applications', and 'Technology'. On the wings of the pinwheel are 'Governance & Risk', 'Business Context', 'Business Strategy', 'IT Strategy', 'Innovation', 'IT Budget', 'Digital Transformation', 'Core Application Rationalization & Modernization', 'IT Service Mgmt', 'Requirements', 'Data', and 'Org Design/ Operating Model'. The entire pinwheel exists within the 'Industry Context'.

Industry Overview: Private Equity and Venture Capital

'Value Streams' of PEVC: 'Create Fund or Limited Partnership', 'Capitalize Fund or Limited Partnership', 'Identify & Engage Potential Investees', 'Execute Investments', 'Post Deal Integration & Value Creation'.

The Private Equity and Venture Capital industry is experiencing a period of rapid change. Institutional investor preferences are shifting as a result of the rapid adoption of ESG principles. At the same time, there has been a tremendous increase in the amount of capital entering the industry and the number of investment opportunities has not increased proportionately, resulting in an escalating level of competition for assets.

Technology has increasingly been adopted to address some of the changes that the industry is experiencing. Growing use of CRM systems, automation, and workflow optimizations have been driving change. Private equity and venture capital firms with in-house employees are rapidly changing to reflect the new realities of the industry.

Business value realization

Business value defines the success criteria of an organization as manifested through organizational goals and outcomes, and it is interpreted from four perspectives:
  • Profit generation: The revenue generated from a business capability with a product that is enabled with modern technologies.
  • Cost reduction: The cost reduction when performing business capabilities with a product that is enabled with modern technologies.
  • Service enablement: The productivity and efficiency gains of internal business operations from products and capabilities enhanced with modern technologies.
  • Customer and market reach: The improved reach and insights of the business in existing or new markets.

Business Value Matrix

Business Value Matrix with four quadrants defined by an x-axis between 'Improved capabilities' and 'Financial benefit' and a y-axis between 'Inward' and 'Outward'. The four quadrants are 'Profit Generation (outward, financial benefit)', 'Cost reduction (inward, financial benefit)', 'Service enablement (inward, improved capabilities)', and 'Customer and market reach (outward, improved capabilities)'.

Value, goals, and outcomes cannot be achieved without business capabilities

Break down your business goals into strategic and achievable initiatives focused on specific value streams and business capabilities.

Example table for determining business capabilities. The first column is 'Business Goals & Outcomes' listing four Business Goals, two of which are color-coded similarly. The second column is 'Business Initiatives' with Initiatives 1 through 10, each color-coded to match the business goal they help to achieve. The third and fourth columns are 'Level 1 / Level 2 Business Capabilities' with capabilities grouped by 'Value Stream', each of which are color-coded to business goals and the business initiatives that create or improve them.

Rapidly intensifying competition: Editable business capability map

Instructions: Adjust the color of each business capability for your organization. PowerPoint’s Eyedropper tool is useful here.

PEVC business capability map with the PEVC value chain as column headers, 'Create Fund or Limited Partnership', 'Capitalize Fund or Limited Partnership', 'Identify & Engage Potential Investees', 'Execute Investments', 'Post Deal Integration & Value Creation', and row headers 'Defining', 'Shared', and 'Enabling'. Below is a legend with red as 'High Impact', blue as 'Medium Impact', and light blue as 'Low/No Impact'.

Private Equity and Venture Capital business capability map

Business capability map defined…

In business architecture, the primary view of an organization is known as a business capability map.

A business capability defines what a business does to enable value creation, rather than how. Business capabilities:

  • Represent stable business functions.
  • Are unique and independent of each other.
  • Typically will have a defined business outcome.

A business capability map provides details that help the business architecture practitioner direct attention to a specific area of the business for further assessment.

PEVC business capability map with the PEVC value chain as column headers, 'Create Fund or Limited Partnership', 'Capitalize Fund or Limited Partnership', 'Identify & Engage Potential Investees', 'Execute Investments', 'Post Deal Integration & Value Creation', and row headers 'Defining', 'Shared', and 'Enabling'. Some Level 1 capabilities contain multiple Level 2 capabilities.

Glossary of Key Concepts

A business reference architecture consists of a set of models to provide clarity and actionable insight and value. Typical techniques and terms used in developing these models are:

Term/ConceptDefinition
Industry Value ChainA high-level analysis of how the industry creates value for the consumer as an overall end-to-end process.
Business Capability MapThe primary visual representation of the organization’s key capabilities. This model forms the basis of strategic planning discussions.
Industry Value StreamsThe specific set of activities an industry player undertakes to create and capture value for and from the end consumer.
Strategic ObjectivesA set of standard strategic objectives that most industry players will feature in their corporate plans.
Industry Strategy MapA visualization of the alignment between the organization’s strategic direction and its key capabilities.
Capability AssessmentsBased on people, process, information, and technology, a heat-mapping effort that analyzes the strength of each key capability.
CapabilityAn ability that an organization, person, or system possesses. Capabilities are typically expressed in general and high-level terms and typically require a combination of organization, people, processes, and technology to achieve.
(Source: The Open Group, 2009)

Tools and templates to compile and communicate your reference architecture work

Title card for this blueprint.
  • The The Private Equity and Venture Capital Industry Reference Architecture Template is a place for you to collect all of the activity outputs and outcomes you’ve completed for use in next steps.

Download the Private Equity And Venture Capital Industry Reference Architecture Template

Info-Tech’s methodology for Reference Architecture

1. Build your organization’s capability map2. Use business capabilities to define strategic focus3. Assess key capabilities for planning priorities4. Adopt capability-based strategy planning
Phase Steps

1.1 Define the Organization’s Value Stream

1.2 Develop a Business Capability Map

2.1 Define the Organization's Key Capabilities

2.2 Develop a Strategy Map

3.1 Business Process Review

3.2 Information Assessment

3.3 Technology Opportunity Identification

4.1 Consolidate and Prioritize Capability Gaps

Phase Outcomes
  • Defined and validated value streams specific to your organization
  • A validated Level 1 business capability map
  • Decomposed Level 2 capabilities
  • Identification of Level 1 cost advantage creators
  • Identification of Level 1 competitive advantage creators
  • Defined future-state capabilities
  • Identification of capability process enablement
  • Identification of capability data support
  • Identification of capability application and technology support
  • Prioritization of key capability gaps

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

Guided Implementation

Workshop

Consulting

"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.""Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.""We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.""Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Guided Implementation

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is between six to nine calls over the course of one to four months.

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

Phase 4

Call #1: Introduce Info-Tech’s industry reference architecture methodology.Call #2: Define and create value streams.

Call #3: Model Level 1 business capability maps.

Call #4: Map value streams to business capabilities.

Call #5: Model Level 2 business capability maps.

Call #6: Create a strategy map.

Call #7: Introduce Info-Tech's capability assessment framework.

Call #8: Review capability assessment map(s).

Call #9: Discuss and review prioritization of key capability gaps and plan next steps.

Private Equity and Venture Capital Industry Business Reference Architecture

Phase 1

Build your organization’s capability map

Phase 1

1.1 Define the Organization’s Value Stream

1.2 Develop a Business Capability Map

Phase 2

2.1 Define the Organization’s Key Capabilities

2.2 Develop a Strategy Map

Phase 3

3.1 Business Process Review

3.2 Information Assessment

3.3 Technology Opportunity Identification

Phase 4

4.1 Consolidate and Prioritize Capability Gaps

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

  • Identify and assemble key stakeholders
  • Determine how the organization creates value
  • Define and validate value streams
  • Determine which business capabilities support value streams
  • Accelerate the process with an industry reference architecture
  • Validate the business capability map
  • Establish level 2 capability decomposition priorities
  • Decompose level 2 capabilities

This phase involves the following participants:

  • Enterprise/Business Architect
  • Business analysts
  • Business unit leads
  • CIO
  • Departmental Executive and senior managers

Step 1.1

Define the organization’s value stream

Activities
  • 1.1.1 Identify and assemble key stakeholders
  • 1.1.2 Determine how the organization creates value
  • 1.1.3 Define and validate value streams

This step will walk you through the following activities:

  • Identify and assemble key stakeholders
  • Determine how the organization creates value
  • Define and validate value streams

This step involves the following participants:

  • Enterprise/Business Architect
  • Business analysts
  • Business unit leads
  • CIO
  • Departmental Executive and senior managers

Outcomes of this step

  • Defined and validated value streams specific to your organization
Build your organization’s capability map
Step 1.1Step 1.2

1.1.1 Identify and assemble key Stakeholders

1-2 hours

Input: List of who is accountable for key business areas and decisions, Organizational chart, List of who has decision-making authority

Output: A list of the key stakeholders, Prioritized list of decision making support needs, Reference Architecture Template

Materials: Whiteboard/Flip Charts, Reference Architecture Template

Participants: Enterprise/Business Architect, Business analysts, Business unit leads, CIO, Departmental Executive and senior managers

Build an accurate depiction of the business.

  1. It is important to make sure the right stakeholders participate in this exercise. The exercise of identifying capabilities for an organization is very introspective and requires deep analysis.
  2. Consider:
    1. Who are the decision makers and key influencers?
    2. Who will impact the business capability work? Who has a vested interest in the success or failure of the outcome?
    3. Who has the skills and competencies necessary to help you be successful?
  3. Avoid:
    1. Don’t focus on the organizational structure and hierarchy. Often stakeholder groups don’t fit the traditional structure.
    2. Don’t ignore subject-matter experts on either the business or IT side. You will need to consider both.

Download the Reference Architecture Template

Define the organization’s value streams

  • Value streams connect business goals to the organization’s value realization activities. They enable an organization to create and capture value in the market place by engaging in a set of interconnected activities. Those activities are dependent on the specific industry segment an organization operates within. Value streams can extend beyond the organization into the supporting ecosystem, whereas business processes are contained within and the organization has complete control over them.
  • There are two types of value streams: Core value streams and Support value streams. Core value streams are mostly externally facing: they deliver value to either an external or internal customer and they tie to the customer perspective of the strategy map. Support value streams are internally facing and provide the foundational support for an organization to operate.
  • An effective method for ensuring all value streams have been considered is to understand that there can be different end-value receivers. Info-Tech recommends identifying and organizing the value streams with customers and partners as end-value receivers.

Outline for determining value streams, starting with 'Industry Value Chain', then 'Value Receivers': 'Customers' and 'Partners', then 'Value Streams' with 'Capabilities'.

Value stream descriptions for Private Equity and Venture Capital

Value
Streams
Create Fund or Limited PartnershipCapitalize Fund or Limited PartnershipIdentify & Engage Potential InvesteesExecute InvestmentsPost-Deal Integration & Value Creation
  • The investment management firm must establish a vehicle through which to execute its investments and strategy.
  • TVehicle structures are typically Limited Partnerships (LP) or trusts.
  • TThe type of vehicle will be influenced by the type of investments made as well as the investment strategy and investor type.
  • The newly created vehicle must be capitalized.
  • TThe company structure and the type of investment to be made will influence the type of capital that is raised.
  • TCapital formation may also be governed by specific legal restrictions.
  • TTypically capital is raised from sophisticated institutional investors.
  • Relationship managers will engage potential investees.
  • TEngagement can span multiple years before an investment is made.
  • TEngagement can be direct with investees or can involve intermediaries such as investment banks.
  • TEngagement must be actively tracked.
  • At larger investment firms, deal execution teams exist and are specialized in this function.
  • TDue diligence is a key part of deal execution.
  • TLegal, financial, technological, and customer/revenue due diligence are performed simultaneously.
  • TFollowing due diligence completion, the deal is executed.
  • Varying levels of investee systems integration occur.
  • TInitial integrations focus on financial/ reporting systems.
  • TIncreasingly, investees are looking to their investors for technology and systems access and advice.
  • TFollow up on M&A transactions are executed to round out product offerings, achieve scale, access new customers/markets, and reduce competition.

Determine how the organization creates value

Begin the process by identifying and locating the business mission and vision statements.

Ways to identify and locate 'Business Mission' and 'Business Vision' statements: 'Corporate Websites', 'Business Strategy Documents', and 'Business Executives'.

What is Business Context?

“The business context encompasses an understanding of the factors impacting the business from various perspectives, including how decisions are made and what the business is ultimately trying to achieve. The business context is used by IT to identify key implications for the execution of its strategic initiatives.” (Source: Business Wire, 2018)

Business capability maps, value streams, and strategy maps for the Private Equity and Venture Capital Industry.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 2-phase advisory process. You'll receive 8 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Model
  • Call 1: Introduce Info-Tech’s Industry business reference architecture methodology.
  • Call 2: Define and create value streams.
  • Call 3: Model Level 1 business capability maps.
  • Call 4: Map value streams to business capabilities.
  • Call 5: Create a strategy map.

Guided Implementation 2: Drive
  • Call 1: Introduce Info-Tech's capability assessment framework.
  • Call 2: Review capability assessment map(s).
  • Call 3: Discuss and review prioritization of key capability gaps and plan next steps.

Author

David Tomljenovic

Search Code: 99020
Last Revised: June 27, 2022

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