Bringing Global Offices Together: An Intranet for a Private Equity Firm
A premier global private equity firm needed employee infrastructure that could connect hundreds of professionals across offices, transmit culture across geographies, and integrate with the firm’s investment portfolio work — all hosted on the firm’s own network for security. We built it.
The work
The Challenge: A Firm Whose Asset Is Its Network, and No Platform Behind It
A private equity firm’s operational strength comes from its internal network — who works there, what relationships they keep, how knowledge moves between offices — and this one had a few hundred senior professionals spread across countries and no infrastructure behind any of it. Institutional knowledge was siloed by geography, onboarding ran on senior mentoring time that does not scale, and the portfolio that is the firm’s asset base was not visible internally. Security and brand ruled out every product that could have been bought: the platform had to run on the firm’s own network and look like the firm.
The Strategy: A Custom Intranet in Two Modes, on the Firm’s Own Network
Custom employee infrastructure on Drupal, inside the firm’s perimeter, built around the operational reality of global private equity work.
- Designed around two modes, not one. Employees move between task mode and explore mode all day, and a platform built for only one makes the other feel like a detour.
- Task mode for the daily work. Find a colleague in another office, check a portfolio company’s status, look up an event or a policy — fast retrieval with intuitive navigation, quick loads, and dynamic search and filtering.
- Explore mode for the culture. Philanthropic initiatives, recognition of key successes, and news and events readable by my location or across the whole firm.
- The portfolio made internal. What the firm has invested in, who worked on it, where it stands and how it connects to the strategy.
The Outcomes: Built to Connect Offices, Proven When the Offices Went Remote
Infrastructure that proved itself under conditions no one specified for it.
- Engagement | Cross-office directory, portfolio visibility and structured onboarding, on the firm’s own network and in the firm’s own identity | When the offices shifted to remote operation, the platform built to connect people across offices became the way they connected within them
The detail
Why the usual tools did not fit
- The firm’s strength is its internal network, not its customer base. Unlike a retail-facing financial institution, where the brand is built through customer relationships, a private equity firm’s brand and operational strength come substantially from who works there, what relationships those people maintain, how knowledge moves between offices and how culture transmits across the firm. The infrastructure supporting that is not administrative overhead.
- A few hundred senior professionals is a different problem from fifty thousand employees. Mass communication, generic onboarding flows and pre-built collaboration suites are designed for scale this firm does not have. Managing directors, principals, associates, operating partners and investment professionals need to know each other, find each other and work together across deals — which is a directory problem and a culture problem, not a broadcast problem.
- Institutional knowledge was siloed by geography. Employees needed to know who was in other offices, what they worked on, how to reach them and what their role in the firm was. Investment work increasingly required cross-office collaboration on deals, and senior professionals cannot collaborate with people they cannot easily find or learn about.
- Onboarding depended on senior time that does not scale. New hires need the firm’s people, history, portfolio and culture quickly in order to operate at the level they were hired for. Without a platform that surfaced any of it coherently, that fell to ad hoc introductions and mentoring — which works, and leaves each new hire under-connected to the network that makes their work effective.
- The portfolio was not visible internally. The firm’s investments are its institutional asset base. Employees needed to see what the firm had invested in, who had worked on which investment, what the current status was and how it connected to the broader strategy. Scattered portfolio information means the collective work of the firm is harder to draw on than it should be.
- Security and brand ruled out buying something. Financial information, deal confidentiality, regulatory compliance and client data protection meant hosting on the firm’s own network rather than third-party SaaS. The firm also needed the platform to align to its identity rather than adapting itself to a generic intranet template. No pre-built product satisfies either requirement, let alone both.
How it was built
- Custom, on Drupal, on the firm’s own network. The foundation was chosen for the customization and security flexibility off-the-shelf tools could not match, and deployed inside the firm’s perimeter rather than alongside it.
- Designed around two modes employees move between all day. Task mode and explore mode. Mission-critical employee platforms have to serve both, deliberately — a single-mode platform quietly punishes half of what employees come to do.
- Task mode gets the employee in and out. Find a colleague in another office. Look up a portfolio company’s status. Check an event detail. Review a policy. Those need intuitive navigation, quick page loads and dynamic search and filtering — fast retrieval of specific information the employee already knows they want, without cognitive overhead.
- Explore mode is where the culture lives. Company knowledge, firm-wide communications and connection: culture content with a special focus on philanthropic initiatives and recognition of key successes. News and events browse two ways — what is happening at my location, and what is happening across the firm — and every interaction on the platform was designed with its mode in mind.
- A directory that is actually the firm. Photos, bios, roles and organizational structure for every employee, with search and filtering that also spans news, events, FAQs and the portfolio. For a firm whose strength is its people, the directory is the closest thing the platform has to a product page.
- The portfolio as a dashboard. The firm’s investments in one internal view, each with its pertinent information and the team involved — the collective work of the firm, drawable at last.
What it turned out to be for
- It was commissioned to connect offices and speed up senior onboarding. Cross-office connection and getting new senior hires into the institutional network faster were the two named reasons for the work.
- Then the offices stopped being places. When the firm’s offices shifted to remote operation, infrastructure built to connect people across offices became the primary mechanism for connecting them within offices that were no longer physically together.
- Which is the argument for building the structure rather than the feature. The strategic value grew under conditions the engagement had not anticipated but had structurally prepared for.
Private equity intranet questions
Why do private equity firms build custom intranets?
Security and identity rule out buying one. Deal confidentiality, financial information, regulatory compliance and client data protection mean hosting on the firm’s own network rather than third-party SaaS, and a premier firm needs the platform to look and behave like the firm rather than a template. No pre-built product satisfies either requirement — this one was custom-built on Drupal inside the firm’s perimeter.
What should a private equity intranet include?
The firm’s actual assets: an employee directory with photos, bios, roles and organizational structure; news and events organized by location and across all locations; and the investment portfolio as an internal dashboard, each investment with its pertinent information and the team involved. For a firm of a few hundred senior professionals, the directory and the portfolio are the institution.
What are task mode and explore mode in intranet design?
The two intentions an employee brings to the platform. Task mode is fast retrieval — find a colleague, check a portfolio company’s status, look up a policy — with quick loads and dynamic search. Explore mode is browsing: culture content, philanthropic initiatives, recognition and firm-wide news. A platform built for only one mode makes the other feel like a detour, so every interaction was designed with its mode in mind.
What results does a custom employee intranet deliver?
For this global private equity firm’s intranet by Pare & Co: cross-office connection, faster onboarding into the institutional network and portfolio visibility — and the structural proof came when the firm’s offices shifted to remote operation, and a platform built to connect people across offices became the way they connected within them.
Client leadership
Jack Hartman
Jack Hartman has run delivery on complex platform engagements, overseeing the people and processes behind them. He has led intranets for organizations whose offices had stopped sharing anything.