Driving Alpha: How Portfolio Companies Are Converting the Agentic Thesis into Value Creation

Key Takeaways

• Start with the data to solve an end-to-end problem. The most successful teams began with a single end-to-end problem and used the GTM data already in Salesforce, a key differentiator, since AI can quickly clean and activate that data without a large transformation effort. 
• Start with one workflow to unlock quick ROI. The EQT fireside chat emphasized that early movers keep scope tight, prove value in a single high-volume workflow, and scale only after demonstrating quick wins.
• AI-first process redesign beats automating the old way. The Smartsheet session demonstrated that rethinking workflows for an agentic model—not replicating legacy processes—delivers higher deflection, faster response times, and more consistent performance.

Recently, Salesforce’s Global Private Equity & Venture Capital Practice hosted their annual Value Creation Day in London. The event brought together Private Equity Operating Partners and portfolio company C-Suite leaders, including Anna Cisneros from EQT, James Watson from Smartsheet, and Salesforce leaders Simon Macklin, Richard Boon, and Meredith Flynn-Ripley, for a series of fireside chats and presentations focused on what’s working in early AI programs today. The conversations focused on three lenses: key Dreamforce highlights and product updates, how Private Equity firms are moving from experimentation to execution, and what a modern operating model looks like in practice inside a portfolio company.

The critical takeaway from the discussions was unequivocal: the agentic era has rapidly transitioned from a theoretical concept to a key pillar of value creation. Private Equity firms or portfolio companies that moved early are already realizing a measurable impact—a distinct source of alpha—across their portfolio

Dreamforce highlights: What’s real and working now

The day opened with a deep dive into the best of Dreamforce, led by Salesforce’s Simon Macklin, Senior Vice President of Customer Success, EMEA and Richard Boon, Vice President of Solution Engineering. They grounded the discussion in real outcomes from companies already deploying Agentforce at scale; the key takeaway for the Private Equity audience was clear: when workflows run on clean, connected data, value shows up quickly and scales easily.

A few examples we walked through:

• Telepass now runs 36,000 agent-led conversations every week with an 80 percent resolution rate, starting from a single workflow before expanding across the business.
• Nexo has logged 15,000 agentic interactions per month and saved about 90,000 employee hours by scaling from small experiments to broader operations.
• Inside Salesforce, improving self-service and routing has already reduced support cases by five percent, unlocking roughly $100M in annual savings.

EQT: From agentic AI inspiration to hand-on execution

Next, I hosted the session with Anna Cisneros, Associate Director at EQT, who discussed how the themes emerging across the market are shaping the next phase of portfolio value creation with Agentic AI. The learnings from the conversation can be summarized into the following for the Private Equity audience: 

• The companies moving fastest tend to keep scope tight, focus on practical execution, secure executive support, and ensure business and technical teams stay aligned.
• Collaborative sessions and peer exposure often create the momentum needed to move faster, especially when some organizations in the room are already further along.
• The dialogue is shifting from quick wins to rethinking processes with an AI-first mindset, rather than trying to automate existing workflows as they are.

Smartsheet: Inside an agentic operating model

James Watson, Vice President of Customer Excellence, at Smartsheet, shared his perspective on building a modern operating model. The examples resonated strongly with the room, particularly because they reflected measurable, near-term impact. A few of the outcomes highlighted:

• Deflection increased significantly after introducing agent-led workflows.
• Response times dropped from days to minutes, creating a step-change in customer experience.
• Employees began relying on agents to surface the right context at the right time, improving consistency and quality across interactions.

They reinforced these key lessons: 

• The old crawl-walk mindset has now become crawl-run. Teams don’t need long lead times but, now in just a handful of weeks, they were able to get the required data together and get their agent up and running. 
• A strong partnership working hand in hand with IT enables faster execution and smoother adoption.
• Strong C-suite support and the willingness to take measured risk are critical to success, particularly in driving alignment and change management.
• Delaying AI adoption carries real competitive risk. Some teams in their market are already seeing signs of falling behind when they move too slowly.

This level of operational discipline and urgency is exactly what management teams should be driving.

Closing thought

The message from Value Creation Day is clear: portfolio companies that treat agentic transformation as a strategic lever are already seeing faster gains in efficiency, margin, and commercial performance. As companies take their first steps toward becoming Agentic Enterprises, embedding AI-driven workflows early in the value creation plan is becoming a differentiator. 

For Operating Partners, the implication is broader. The definition of value creation is evolving, and those who recognize this shift and move with urgency to rethink how work gets done, how decisions are made, and how teams are augmented across the portfolio will shape the next curve of operational excellence and outperform in increasingly competitive exit environments.