How Vela Group drives data-driven decisions across their portfolio with Peliqan
Private equity firms are often perceived as distant investors: providing capital, but staying far away from day-to-day operations.
Vela Group takes a different approach.
Vela Group is the co-pilot of entrepreneurial families: building alongside them, investing in Flemish SMEs, and supporting them through critical growth moments. As an active partner, they combine capital, experience, and one essential ingredient: deep insight into the companies they believe in.
As an active investor focused on SMEs, Vela works closely with portfolio companies to improve performance, monitor KPIs, and support strategic decisions. But doing that effectively requires one thing above all: access to reliable, timely data.
Let's hear from Niels
Niels, Investment Manager at Vela Group, explains how they use Peliqan to centralise data across multiple companies and how that fundamentally changed the way they monitor and support their investments.
Can you introduce yourself and explain what Vela Group does?
I’ve been working at Vela Group for about two and a half years now as an Investment Manager.
A large part of my role is monitoring the performance of our portfolio companies. That includes financial reporting, but also operational insights and improvement initiatives. We work very closely with the businesses we invest in, not just at board level, but also on execution and performance tracking.
In addition, we analyse new investment opportunities and help assess whether companies fit our strategy.
Vela is a multi-family office. We support a number of entrepreneurial families with their investments, and we also invest directly in SMEs with our own capital.
How important is data in that role?
It’s absolutely critical.
We’re very actively involved with our portfolio companies. That means we need frequent, structured reporting, not just financial results at the end of the month, but operational KPIs that show what’s happening in the business right now.
Without that visibility, it becomes very difficult to add real value as an investor.
How did you approach reporting and data analysis before using Peliqan?
Before, we were doing much less operational reporting.
We would run analyses ad hoc when needed, often working with Excel exports. That meant a lot of manual work and very little continuity. If you wanted to revisit an analysis two months later, you often had to rebuild everything from scratch.
Now, we have ongoing dashboards and structured reporting. That saves a lot of time and gives us much better visibility.
“Previously, every analysis was something you had to rebuild. Now it’s simply there.”
What triggered you to start looking for a platform like Peliqan?
Initially, we were just looking for a way to connect Exact Online data to Power BI.
We had come across a solution elsewhere, but we didn’t feel fully confident about it. Through one of our partners, we got introduced to Peliqan. Once we started exploring the platform, we realised it could do much more than just connect financial data.
We could also connect operational systems, ERP tools, and other sources. That’s when it became really interesting.
What kind of insights were you able to uncover once all that data was connected?
A strong example is revenue forecasting and capacity planning in one of our portfolio companies.
By connecting data from the ERP/CRM system with the planning tool, we were able to build a much more forward-looking view of expected revenue. We combined offers that were still in the pipeline, projects that had already been sold but not yet scheduled, and projects that were already planned.
For the scheduled projects, we could even distribute the expected revenue across the actual number of working days in the planning. That allowed us to build a much more realistic forecast of future workload and turnover.
As a result, we can now see months in advance when capacity constraints will arise.
“We moved from backward-looking reporting to nine-month forward visibility on capacity.”
This fundamentally changes how we support our portfolio companies. Instead of reacting when teams become overloaded, we can anticipate growth, plan recruitment earlier, and make much more confident strategic decisions.
Another example is marketing performance. We were able to analyse where leads were coming from and how marketing investments influenced pipeline creation and ultimately sales. You can suddenly see the ROI of marketing spend in a very concrete way.
“It’s surprising how much new insight you can generate, even for companies that work on their business every single day.”
How quickly can you set up reporting for a new company or data source?
It depends on how structured the data is.
In some portfolio companies, most data already sits in one ERP system, which makes things relatively straightforward. In others, there are multiple tools that need to be connected, which takes more time, especially since I don’t have an IT background and can’t focus on dashboarding full-time.
Thanks to the AI functionalities in Peliqan, I’ve learned how to query and transform raw data into a single source of truth.
And especially: once it’s set up, it stays in place. That’s the big difference compared to before.
We also send weekly KPI reporting to our portfolio companies. Previously, preparing that would take a significant amount of time. Now most analyses are ready, I just need to review them and share them. I could do this automatically but I like the fact I can still add my 2 cents to them.
How much time does that save in practice?
Today I spend about an hour preparing our weekly reporting, whereas before using Peliqan that could easily take half a day.
But the real value is not the time saving itself.
What matters most is the quality of the insights we can generate and share with our portfolio companies. Because reporting is now structured and continuously available, we can focus much more on interpreting the data, identifying opportunities, and supporting better decisions.
Dashboards are also accessible to the companies themselves, which means they can explore the data independently and come to discussions much better prepared.
Does having access to this level of data change how you work with portfolio companies?
Yes, but it’s a delicate balance.
As an investor, you want to provide support and added value without being perceived as interfering too much. Access to operational data can feel intrusive if expectations aren’t set clearly from the start.
But for the companies that choose to work with us, this level of involvement is actually one of the reasons they partner with Vela. They’re looking for support, insights, and strategic guidance. Not just capital.
Data helps make those conversations more objective and constructive.
You also mentioned an internal initiative called "Clara". What is that about?
Clara is the name we gave to our dashboarding initiative.
The idea is to go one step further and introduce AI capabilities on top of our data environment. We want to be able to ask questions in natural language and receive insights instantly, essentially building a digital assistant for data-driven decision making.
By using the single source of truth we’ve built in Peliqan and were only visualising in Power BI, it’s not that much of a step to go to the next level.
How would you describe your favourite aspect of working with Peliqan?
For me, it’s the ability to have near real-time access to data from almost any source.
I haven’t really encountered a situation where we couldn’t connect a system or retrieve the data we needed. Once you bring everything together, you can finally turn raw data into meaningful information and take action.
“Data alone doesn’t say much. The real value is turning it into information you can act on.”
Has anything else stood out in the collaboration?
Yes, the support and responsiveness.
I don’t come from an IT background, so having quick answers when I get stuck is very important. Being able to get help the same day makes a big difference. Setting up connectors or accessing additional tables is usually very smooth.
That accessibility is definitely a strong point and something I really appreciate.
Before & After Peliqan
Before
- Ad-hoc Excel analyses rebuilt from scratch each time
- Backward-looking financial reporting only
- Half a day spent preparing weekly KPI reports
- No single source of truth across portfolio companies
- Limited operational visibility for investment decisions
After
- Ongoing dashboards and structured reporting
- Nine-month forward visibility on capacity and revenue
- Weekly reporting prepared in ~1 hour
- RCentralised data from ERP, CRM, and planning tools
- Portfolio companies access dashboards independently
Unify, Automate & Activate Your Data
Connect all your SaaS apps, databases, and spreadsheets into one workspace. Build automations, analytics pipelines, and data apps – all in one place.
Want to build a more data-driven portfolio?
Peliqan helps private equity firms, family offices, and operating partners:
→ Centralise financial and operational data across portfolio companies
→ Build real-time dashboards without heavy IT dependency
→ Monitor performance continuously instead of ad hoc
→ Prepare for AI-driven decision making