BOTTOM LINE UPFRONT
In episode one of Accordion’s new podcast, AI & PE: The Future of Value Creation, Ash Pembroke and Kyle Roemer discuss what it takes to win with AI: scaling output, accelerating your strongest performers, eliminating friction in everyday workflows, and creating end-to-end processes that compound value across the business.
In the first episode of our just-dropped podcast, AI & PE: The Future of Value Creation, we focused on what actually drives ROI from AI in PE-backed businesses – especially in the middle market. The throughline: winning with AI isn’t about turning on a tool. It’s about scaling output, accelerating your strongest performers, and freeing leadership teams to spend less time on process and more time on decisions.
What we heard from Ash Pembroke, Accordion Managing Director focused on AI Strategy & Value Creation, and Kyle Roemer, Accordion’s US Practice Lead for Data & Analytics:
1. AI ROI is about scale – not small cost takeout.
The most compelling value story isn’t shaving a headcount here or there; it’s increasing throughput without proportionally increasing SG&A. AI becomes a growth lever when it helps teams move faster and execute more consistently at higher volume.
2. The fastest path to impact is eliminating swivel-chair work across systems.
A major unlock sits in the messy middle of modern work: automation can mean notes turned into CRM updates, and then proposals, decks, and recurring commentary. AI is proving useful as a “first-draft engine” and workflow layer that reduces context switching and automates routine handoffs… without replacing human judgment.
3. Operations and frontline enablement are where value shows up quickly.
Many of the most tangible use cases live outside corporate functions, especially in high-variance environments like field service. When AI makes less experienced employees faster and more accurate, it improves quality and downstream decision-making – not just productivity in the moment.
4. The transformations that were too expensive, might not be any more.
Now is the time to go back to your Value Creation Plan and revisit strategies that you previously decided were “too expensive.” GenAI tools can speed up data harmonization, accelerate engineering, and reduce the headcount you thought you needed – changing the cost and timeline expectations.
5. Pilot failure is often an adoption problem – because solutions are built for the wrong audience.
A common pattern is designing for the lowest common denominator, only to find top performers don’t engage and the initiative can’t scale. Adoption sticks when AI makes the best people faster and removes drudgery from their workflows – and then uses those workflows as the blueprint for broader rollout.
6. The “safe” use cases are becoming table stakes – so the upside is in phase two.
Basic efficiency plays are getting commoditized inside standard platforms. Turning those on matters, but the larger returns come from end-to-end redesign: improving full workflows (onboarding, service delivery, close-to-report) in ways that compound across the business.
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