When Pollen Avenue Capital’s finance workforce got down to substitute Jira for recurring payroll and reporting work, they didn’t begin with a protracted implementation undertaking. Inside 4 hours, Group Monetary Controller Paul Valentine had constructed a working UAE payroll workflow on Process Street, utilizing the AI importer alongside Claude to generate a lot of the construction. UK and US payroll workflows have adopted on the identical construction, and the rollout is already spreading throughout operations, finance, and HR.
That is the type of operational change that issues in non-public fairness. Recurring work has to run on time, approvals must be seen, and the audit path has to exist with out additional reconstruction work on the finish of the month.
The corporate
Pollen Avenue Group is a London-headquartered various funding supervisor with £7.1 billion in belongings below administration as of its FY2025 outcomes. The agency is rising, increasing its inside expertise capabilities, and working in an atmosphere the place recurring finance and working processes have to be dependable by default. That’s the reason private equity operations can’t run on advert hoc reminders and generic process boards for lengthy.
For a agency working throughout a number of jurisdictions, the work that protects management and belief is never a one-off undertaking. It’s the identical recurring shut cycles, payroll runs, approvals, and documentation necessities, executed exactly on a cadence.
The issue
Pollen Avenue’s finance workforce had an operating-system drawback. The workforce was utilizing Jira for recurring processes like payroll and reporting. Jira is beneficial for software program initiatives, however it’s a poor match for finance operations that want structured possession, conditional steps, and clear proof trails. The hole was not visibility alone. The hole was execution.
1. Jira tracked work, however didn’t run the method. Recurring payroll and administration account work wanted mounted homeowners, due dates, conditional logic for bonus months, and repeatable approval paths. Jira may present tickets, however it was not giving the finance workforce a purpose-built working layer for recurring management work.
2. Cross-team handoffs have been nonetheless memory-dependent. Finance, operations, and HR have been all touching adjoining workflows, however an excessive amount of of the coordination nonetheless relied on folks remembering what got here subsequent. That creates drag in any enterprise. In a regulated funding supervisor, it additionally creates avoidable management threat.
3. Proof was too straightforward to reconstruct after the actual fact. The workforce wanted every recurring run to go away behind a clear report of who did what, when it occurred, and what was authorised. With out that, month-end and payroll work stays depending on inboxes, facet conversations, and guide reconciliation.
How a lot of the primary workflow did AI construct?
“I used Claude to jot down an instruction booklet from previous course of notes, then used the AI system to construct out roughly 80% of the method.”
That construct sample issues as a result of it reveals the workforce was not simply documenting the previous course of. They have been translating it right into a system with specific possession, automation factors, and evaluation construction that finance may truly run month after month.
The answer
The rollout at Pollen Avenue is notable as a result of it isn’t centered on one remoted pilot. Three workstreams are shifting in parallel inside one account, which implies the story is larger than one profitable workflow construct.
The four-hour payroll workflow. Paul Valentine used the Course of Avenue AI importer alongside Claude to generate the primary model of a UAE payroll workflow, then refined the remaining items in a stay working session. By the top of that construct cycle, the workflow included pre-assigned teams, payment-date logic, permissions for delicate steps, and situations for bonus-month eventualities.
Function-based management with out additional admin overhead. One of many sensible adjustments the workforce made was shifting away from person-by-person project towards function and group-based possession. That permit the method replicate how finance truly works month to month, whereas retaining approvals and delicate duties seen solely to the fitting folks. Options like conditional logic and process permissions turned the workflow right into a controllable working system slightly than a guidelines.
Automation across the workflow, not outdoors it. Adrian King, Pollen Avenue’s CTO, is configuring Energy Automate to duplicate month-to-month Excel templates from process completion occasions. SSO is stay. A customized sender area is being arrange so notifications come from a Pollen Avenue handle. The workflow itself additionally maps cleanly onto Course of Avenue’s personal payroll process template sample: approvals, reporting, and recordkeeping are a part of the method, not afterthoughts.
A 3-stream rollout inside one account. Finance is constructing payroll and administration account workflows. Operations is coordinating cross-functional course of possession. HR is constructing a recruitment workflow with structured handoffs, evaluation steps, and knowledge privateness controls. This isn’t a gradual land-and-expand sample the place one workforce pilots first and everybody else waits. Three groups are already shifting in parallel.
The outcomes
The rollout remains to be early, however the preliminary outcomes are already significant. Pollen Avenue already has a finance-led proof level, a multi-team rollout sample, and a cleaner management mannequin for recurring work.
How briskly did the primary working payroll workflow come collectively?
“About 4 hours, intermittently spent whereas dealing with different duties.”
Three groups are already constructing in parallel. Finance, operations, and HR are all energetic inside one account as an alternative of ready for a sequential rollout. That issues as a result of it reveals Course of Avenue is being adopted as a shared working layer, not a one-team experiment.
Audit-ready execution is turning into the default. As an alternative of counting on reminiscence, inboxes, and manually reconstructed proof, the workforce can run recurring work by way of structured workflows with built-in approval workflows, permissions, and accountability.
- A finance-led workforce constructed and refined an actual payroll workflow with out a vendor implementation cycle.
- Function-based possession, situations, and permissions at the moment are a part of the method design, not guide workarounds.
- Workflow runs go away behind a timestamped report of execution as an alternative of forcing the workforce to reconstruct what occurred later.
What’s subsequent
The rapid subsequent part is enlargement. Three workstreams are already seen.
1. UAE, UK, and US payroll are stay. The primary payroll workflows for all three jurisdictions at the moment are working on Course of Avenue, all constructed on the identical underlying construction. The workforce is iterating as extra pay cycles full.
2. HR recruitment operations. The HR workforce is finishing a recruitment workflow that covers company submissions, candidate screening, interview scheduling, scorecards, and knowledge privateness controls.
3. Administration accounts and adjoining finance work. The identical working mannequin is being prolonged into administration account processes and different recurring finance duties that want possession, approvals, and proof trails.
For a rising various funding supervisor, that isn’t a back-office element. It’s a part of the scaling engine. The extra recurring work could be standardized, enforced, and confirmed, the much less the group has to depend upon heroic follow-up and institutional reminiscence.
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