“Sometimes AI can be a bit overwhelming. To truly maximize the impact of AI and GenAI on business, it’s crucial to focus on the most promising use cases.”

Clément Marty, Head of Digital Transformation at Ardian

Ardian is a world-leading private investment house, managing or advising $177bn of assets on behalf of more than 1,680 clients globally. Specializing in Private Equity, Real Assets and Credit, Ardian offers clients of all types, from individual investors to private banks and wealth managers, a wide range of investment opportunities to meet their specific needs.

Majority-owned by its 1,050+ employees in its 19 offices across Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East, Ardian places great emphasis on developing its people and fostering a collaborative culture based on collective intelligence. In addition to its role as a global leader in private investment, Ardian is a pioneer in the use of AI in financial services. 

Since 2021, Ardian and Artefact have worked together, exploring the ways businesses can harness the potential of AI. Clément Marty, Ardian’s Head of Digital Transformation, and Jérôme Petit, Managing Partner at Artefact & Private Equity Global Lead, share their insights on how the partnership reflects their collective mission of being Architects of Lasting Change through digital innovation.

Challenge: Identify the most relevant AI use cases for Ardian’s portfolio companies.

As a global leading Private Equity firm, always state-of-the-art in identifying sources of “alpha” in the market, tech shapes Ardian’s business strategy. Both within Ardian and across its portfolios, the firm is constantly looking for better ways to use tech tools – especially AI and generative AI – to work smarter, faster, and make better business decisions. Ardian’s ability to innovate is key to its differentiation, as well as a powerful driver of sustainable value creation.

For Jérôme Petit, some of the most promising AI use cases Artefact has identified relate to B2B sales and marketing. These are key topics for the vast majority of portfolio companies today, He says: “B2B players are now looking for ways to implement the kind of things B2C players have been doing for many, many years.” 

Another exciting use case is generative AI-powered tender response assistants, which can help analyze and decode RFP documents by securely parsing and extracting document content, accelerating tender response time and freeing up employee time for more high-value tasks. 

According to Jérôme, “Most companies have already embraced their journey towards AI. The real challenge now is: how should these companies organize themselves in order to make the most of it?”

Solution: Build and implement a concrete framework that separates trends from hype.

“For a portfolio company, being able to share experience with other portfolio companies is a benefit of being part of the Ardian platform.”says Clément Marty.”[It] encapsulates a critical value of the firm when it comes to portfolio company management.

“This collaboration highlights our empowerment of businesses to embrace cutting-edge technology while ensuring we continue to deliver measurable results” he adds.

A perfect example of is Ardian’s Digital Catalyst Day, where 40 tech leaders from across the firm’s portfolio companies spent a full day sharing experiences around AI: use case prioritization, cost optimization, tech stack optimization – and also how to put together the best organizational setup to maximize adoption of AI products by their teams.

At the Digital Catalyst Day, Scarlett Omar-Broca, Managing Director at Ardian, commented: “What’s key for us in an event like this is fostering a community among the digital and IT managers of our portfolio company where experiences can be shared. We want to act as a catalyst for innovative ideas to be generated and for people to build on each other’s experiences.”

Conclusion: Build the right solutions to maximize usage and adoption.

From identifying which competencies to insource and outsource, to building organizational setups to enhance usage, thoughtful strategy can unlock the potential of AI.

“That’s where the value will be generated. It’s not really a matter of tech anymore – the technology has been democratized by the providers. It’s relatively easy to implement from a technical standpoint. But the real difficulty lies in identifying which capabilities to insource, which ones you will have to outsource, and how to build the right solutions to maximize usage and adoption. The best solution isn’t worth a penny if it’s not used – so adoption is key,” concludes Jérôme Petit. 

Clément Marty believes that the Ardian x Artefact partnership is a perfect example of Ardian’s ambition to be Architects Of Lasting Change. 

Jérome Petit agrees, remarking: “You’ve definitely been architects of our lasting change by helping us implement a smart build-up strategy, supporting us in opening new territories – in the US, in India – or even connecting us with large global potential clients, that would be out of reach for a mid-size company as our own.

“But the reverse is also true. We’re very proud to have helped you implement lasting change at Ardian – by rolling out a new data platform for internal use, or more recently, with these new generative AI tools that all the deal teams will be able to use to quickly process data from data rooms,” he concludes. 

In the words of Clément Marty, who was one of the test users of the solutions Artefact helped Ardian build, “The feedback is extremely positive and promising.”

“We are very proud to have contributed to Ardian in creating lasting change by rolling out a new data platform for internal use and GenAI tools for fast processing in data rooms.”

Jérôme Petit, Managing Partner at Artefact