In private equity (PE), your relationships are the foundation of your firm’s success. A stronger network means more closed deals, which is why the private equity software you choose should help you focus on those relationships.
PE deal management software should streamline your team’s relationship and deal management processes, while automating repetitive, time-consuming tasks so your firm can focus on higher-impact tasks. Yet, with so many different solutions on the market to consider, how should you choose the best management software for private equity deals?
In this guide, you’ll learn how to evaluate private equity deal management software and select the one that’s right for your PE firm’s needs.
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Key takeaways
- Deal management software supports the full PE lifecycle—from sourcing to portfolio oversight.
- Purpose-built platforms beat generic CRMs for complex, relationship-driven workflows.
- Automation and relationship intelligence speed up deal execution.
- The right deal management tool enhances collaboration, reporting, and compliance.
What is deal management software for private equity firms?
Deal management software, or customer relationship management (CRM) software, is software that PE firms use to manage their deal pipeline end-to-end—from deal origination and deal execution to portfolio value creation. The right CRM can help firms close deals faster and more efficiently.
While many PE firms invest in enterprise software companies and technology companies, they may not be as quick to invest in software solutions for their own business. It's important to note that deal management software for private equity firms is a crucial investment that all PE firms should consider, as it can significantly enhance their operations.
How can private equity deal management software help your firm?
Leading PE firms act with agility and speed. The right software optimizes the deal management process and can help you move complex, non-linear deals faster to stay ahead of the competition—without losing time to clunky interfaces and confusing functionality.
At every deal stage, your private equity software should be doing some heavy lifting.
Deal origination
Deal sourcing or deal origination means finding potential investment opportunities, and it’s the critical first step in healthy deal flow management. It can also be a very time-consuming step in the deal lifecycle.
Whether your deals come through as inbound opportunities or you’re sourcing deals outbound, it’s crucial to track communications, people, company activity, and any follow-ups to make informed decisions. The best private equity deal management software will help you do this faster and more efficiently.
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Due diligence
Once a deal is in the works, it’s time to evaluate the company with thorough due diligence and identify any bottlenecks. You’re looking at data around legal, IT, operational, and financial aspects of the company, and you’ll need a place to store, analyze, and report on this information.
Ideally, your deal management software will also have integrations and connect to third-party data services, too, to streamline the due diligence process and ensure information is as up-to-date as possible.
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Pipeline management
Once your team has sourced a deal, it goes through your firm’s internal assessment process and then on to the right managing partner to build the relationships and close the right deals. There are many stages in the deal pipeline between lead and won deal—and your team should be able to monitor deal progress and see exactly what stage a deal is in at any given time, so nothing falls through the cracks.
Portfolio management
Today, most PE firms are hands-on with operational value creation after acquisition. Your deal management software should help here by surfacing key relationships, facilitating communication, and tracking performance data—to make the decision-making process easier.
Fundraising
To build your portfolio, your PE firm needs capital—but fundraising is just as complex as PE deal flow. With many people and processes involved in fundraising activity, your private equity deal management software should help you stay organized, identify potential investors, expedite introductions, and spot new opportunities.
Reporting
If it’s taking you hours in an Excel spreadsheet to generate a quarterly report for your LPs, you might not be using the right private equity deal management software. Modern solutions automate many reporting tasks and produce more accurate, easy-to-understand reports.
What features should you consider when choosing a private equity deal management software solution?
Though using a popular sales software solution for your PE firm may sound like the right move, with options on the market today that are tailor-made for private equity, you don’t have to force-fit a generic product anymore.
Keeping your critical features in mind makes the process of choosing private equity deal management software much simpler. In this section, we’ll take a look at the key features to look for in PE deal management tools.
Collaboration features that match the pace of your deals
In private equity, collaboration isn’t just about communication—it’s about speed, precision, and alignment across teams. Whether you're coordinating with internal deal teams, portfolio operators, or external advisors, having real-time access to the same deal data and context is critical to moving deals forward.
Generic CRMs built for transactional sales processes can’t support the nuanced, high-stakes collaboration PE demands. A purpose-built deal management platform centralizes your firm’s workflows and relationship intelligence, so everyone is working from a single source of truth—streamlining coordination from origination through execution.
Compliance and enterprise-grade security built for private equity
PE firms are highly regulated and require tight security and compliance. Consider the security and permissions features in each software product to prevent breaches while providing the right transparency.
For most firms, enterprise-grade security with SOC 2 and GDPR compliance is a standard—and most sales software and CRMs don’t meet that standard. When your software security features must cover contact information, investor reporting, communications with stakeholders, tracked deals, and fundraising activity, you’ll want to look for a solution that meets stringent global standards.
Automation that frees your team to focus on high-value work
Manual data entry and repetitive processes take up valuable relationship-building time for your PE deal team. Look for deal management software that includes automated data capture (not just mass data upload, but true automation) and automated workflows, so your team members can focus on high-value activities.
Relationship intelligence that drives smarter sourcing
Keeping track of contacts, companies, and activity is critical to closing deals—and an Excel spreadsheet won’t cut it for most fast-moving PE firms. Leading firms are moving to CRMs with relationship intelligence to get more insights from their data.
Look for a deal management software solution that gives you insight into your contacts’ relationships, job changes, industry news, and investments that you can use to make more data-driven decisions.
Workflow management that adapts to your team’s processes
PE deal team workflows are non-linear, and the timeline for a deal is much more complex than a traditional sales pipeline. There’s a lot more data to manage and from multiple sources. To manage these complications, workflow features—particularly automation—are important considerations for a PE firm.
This one challenge alone is why managing private equity deals via spreadsheets isn’t realistic, as it creates silos among team members. Many modern deal management software solutions solve this problem with flexible, automated workflow tools and a centralized, single source of truth.
A user experience your team will actually adopt
If your PE deal management software isn’t easy to use, you won’t get buy-in—and if you manage to launch it firm-wide, people won’t use it. Check customer reviews to find out what users have to say about the interface, what it takes to get the software up and running, and how much training is involved in learning how to use it.
Integrations that keep your PE tech stack connected
Your PE firm is likely already using a collection of software programs for daily activities. Ensure the tool you choose is able to integrate with your existing tech stack. Will your new deal management software play well with those existing tools? If not, you may add more complications to an already complex job—and worse, you may introduce security issues.
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What is the best private equity deal management software?
Private equity deals are uniquely complex—not every deal management software solution will work well for you. The following solutions are some of the most popular among PE firms. Read on to find out why they work well for private equity dealmaking.
Affinity
Affinity is an AI-powered CRM that’s purpose-built for private equity dealmakers. This relationship intelligence CRM platform extends your network beyond a simple contact database to give your firm visibility into new opportunities hidden in your network. The collaboration and pipeline management features make sophisticated deal management radically simple.
When you choose Affinity for private equity deal management, you can spend more time building relationships and closing deals—and less time manually entering data. Automated data capture instantly pulls contact and company profiles from emails and calendar data, automatically enriching them in real time.
With Affinity, your PE firm can move faster by leveraging your entire team’s network with speed and accuracy—from your desktop, Android, or iPhone with Affinity’s mobile app. Affinity also integrates with the tools you already use.
Key features:
- Proprietary algorithms and artificial intelligence provide private equity firms with a 360° view, including relationship intelligence and actionable insights.
- Eliminate manual data entry with automated data capture of your firm’s communication data—interactions from Gmail or your email provider, calendar events, and contact information—saving every dealmaker over 200 hours a year.
- Enhance dealmaking with data from industry-leading sources, such as Crunchbase, Clearbit, Dealroom, and Pitchbook, to get the right data for your fundraising and deal sourcing efforts.
- Access to Affinity’s automations and relationship intelligence for firms already using Salesforce via the Affinity for Salesforce add-in.
- An active customer support team that can help through live chat and assist in building and tracking KPIs.
- Compliance with the highest-level cybersecurity protocols, including SOC2 Type II, GDPR, and CCPA.
4Degrees
Founded by venture capitalists, 4Degrees offers a CRM with artificial intelligence features that can make it a powerful tool for managing relationships. Though not made specifically for private equity, this CRM is well-known and well-loved across most capital markets sectors. 4Degrees automatically identifies the contacts you should connect with to get an introduction to a company or investor. It also includes some automated data entry functionality, lead management, marketing automation, and auto-generated reports.
The biggest complaints users have are about the clunky interface and limited integrations.
Learn more here or explore 4Degrees alternatives.
Attio
Once a venture-focused platform called Fundstack, cloud-based Attio has been rebuilt and rebranded as a lightweight deal management solution. You’ll find standard CRM features with this software, plus flexible pipeline management, collaboration tools, and customizable workflows. Attio does not offer automated data capture, but it does have Android and iOS apps so you can easily enter data on the go.
Attio integrates with only a few other software tools and only through third-party connector Zapier.
Learn more here or explore Attio alternatives.
DealCloud
The DealCloud platform is one of the most common SaaS solutions in private equity, venture capital, and other financial and professional services industries. It offers business development, relationship management, pipeline management, marketing, fundraising, and reporting tools designed for capital markets (including private equity and venture capital) and financial services. The product suite is highly customizable if you have time to spare—onboarding and deployment can take up to 6 months. The CRM also depends on manual data entry to keep it up to date.
Learn more here or explore the top alternatives to DealCloud.
Navatar Edge
Navatar is a longstanding, traditional CRM built on Salesforce. It was originally focused on financial services, so it has a feature set that works well for simpler private equity deals. Navatar may be best known for its deal sourcing capabilities and streamlined pipeline management workflows, but it has additional functionality that can help with fundraising, tracking investor relations, and monitoring portfolio companies. Like most traditional CRMs, Navatar requires manual data entry to keep contact, company, and activity data current.
Learn more here or explore other Navatar alternatives.
Why top PE firms choose Affinity as their deal management software
If your PE firm isn’t actively investing in technology that makes your job easier, you’ll lose deals to faster-moving competitors. Today’s private equity leaders aren’t just upgrading from spreadsheets to CRMs—they’re choosing cutting-edge software solutions with AI and advanced automation because technology is a core differentiator.
Affinity offers a relationship intelligence CRM with automated data capture and contact enrichment, streamlined pipeline management, and real-time reporting and analytics for your most important metrics. With Affinity, you can focus on the relationships that drive your success and collaborate confidently across your firm.
Show up smarter and close more deals faster with Affinity. Talk to a sales team member today to find out more.
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Private equity deal management software FAQs
What is a CRM for private equity?
Customer relationship management (CRM) software for private equity is a tool that helps track deals in the pipeline, manage investor relations and portfolio monitoring, and stay in the loop with portfolio companies.
What are the benefits of deal management software for private equity firms?
Deal management software can help PE firms automate processes, improve collaboration across teams, provide better insights into investor relationships, and improve security.
What kinds of software should private equity firms invest in?
Private equity firms should invest in a CRM built to serve their needs. While there are various CRMs on the market, only a handful directly address the needs of private equity and investment firms. The ideal CRM will go beyond capturing personal and organizational information—it will provide insights to improve investment strategies.
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