Who is Access Holdings?
Access Holdings is a private equity firm based in Baltimore, USA, investing in essential service businesses across North America, focusing on value creation inside each asset. The firm manages $2.9bn in assets and holds platforms including Spotless Brands, Playfly Sports, Zeus Fire and Security, WagWay Group, Alliance Marine and Kuvare.
Case study 1
Investment team AI training
What was the challenge for the deal team?
AI adoption across the Access Holdings deal team was uneven. Some team members had built ChatGPT, Copilot and other tools into daily workflows. Others had tried them once and stopped. The firm had no shared method for applying AI to its highest-value work: portfolio performance analysis, LP communication synthesis and due diligence.
What we did with the deal team
General Purpose delivered customised in-person Mastering ChatGPT workshops for 27 members of the Access Holdings deal team, plus an AI in Action keynote for the whole firm. Two hours of discovery before the workshops shaped the customisation, so every example and exercise ran on real Access Holdings work: deal sourcing, portfolio monitoring and LP communications. AI Opportunities surveys before and after the programme measured the change.
What results did the deal team see?
The Access Holdings deal team recorded a 33 per cent increase in time saved after training. The firm recovered £263,000 in annual productivity, which returned 20 times the cost of the programme in year one. Eighty-nine per cent of participants said they would recommend the training to a colleague.
It was structured really well with breaks and building on concepts without feeling too overwhelming.
Which AI use cases did the deal team build?
- Portfolio performance analyser: tracks quarterly valuation trends across the book
- LP communications synthesiser: pulls investor narratives together across multiple documents
- Contract review assistant: summarises key terms, flags risks and checks SEC compliance
- MD&A commentary generator: drafts commentary from financial data, saving 2 to 3 hours monthly
- News feed analyser: reviews industry news and assigns items to relevant prospects
- Document processing tools: handles high-volume document intake and extraction
Case study 2
AI value creation for Access Holdings' portfolio companies
What is the challenge with AI for the portfolio companies?
Access Holdings backs essential service businesses across North America, focusing on value creation inside each asset. The firm wanted the people running those businesses to lead on AI, applied to live work in companies that look nothing like each other. A car wash platform running subscription customers at scale has a different AI opportunity to a sports media business selling local sponsorship inventory, and the day had to serve both in the same room.
Which portfolio companies attended?
Much of the cohort came from the ACE Programme, Access Creating Executives, the firm's talent track that places operators into portfolio companies to drive performance and lead value creation. Building AI capability into that group puts it straight into the businesses.
Operators came from across the portfolio, alongside Access Holdings staff:
- Spotless Brands: express and flex car wash
- Playfly Sports: local media rights and sponsorship sales
- Zeus Fire and Security: fire systems, intrusion, access control and video
- WagWay Group: pet daycare, boarding and grooming
- Alliance Marine: coastal marine assets and operations
- Access Holdings: deal and portfolio operations
What we did at the offsite
General Purpose delivered a full-day Mastering Claude session for the portfolio company executives.
The day ran in four parts:
- The fundamentals
- Building repeatable workflows
- Building agents
- Show and tell: every attendee presented what they had built
The show and tell is where the value creation argument lands. Each operator left holding something that works on their own numbers, their own customers and their own reporting cycle, which is what turns a training day into a change inside the business.
AI use cases built in the workshop
- Recurring report generation: produces the same reports each cycle
- Financial reporting and business review prep: automates monthly management reporting
- Strategy documents and financial models: drafts and builds core deal and planning material
- Competitive analysis: researches and compares market positions
- Workflow automation: removes repeated manual steps across a process
- Customer upsell triggers: flags cross-sell and upsell opportunities
It was very valuable and educational, and I really appreciated the time.
Frequently asked questions
How was the 33 per cent time saving measured?
General Purpose ran AI Opportunities surveys with participants before and after the programme, comparing time spent on the same tasks in both.
Can one AI training day work across very different businesses?
Yes. The Mastering Claude format teaches a method, and attendees apply it to their own work during the session. Operators from car wash, sports media, security, pet services and marine businesses each left with tools built on their own tasks.
What is AI value creation in private equity?
Value creation is the operational improvement work done inside portfolio companies after a deal closes. AI value creation applies AI tools to that work: management reporting, competitive analysis, customer growth and process automation.
Can a private equity firm train several portfolio companies at once?
Yes. Access Holdings ran a single offsite at its Baltimore headquarters for operators drawn from across its portfolio, which gave every business the same baseline in one day.
Does General Purpose train private equity firms specifically?
Yes. Private equity is one of General Purpose's core verticals, with training customised to deal sourcing, due diligence, portfolio monitoring and LP reporting.