What Are the Main Benefits of Real-time Valuation for Private Firms?

Private companies often lack real-time, quantitative feedback on their performance because they do not have publicly quoted share prices. This can strain stakeholder communication, as entrepreneurs must devote significant effort during periodic reviews to justify their valuation estimates.

Lack of a consistent valuation history also makes it difficult to substantiate growth projections, creating additional hurdles to raising funds.

To overcome these obstacles without prematurely going public, your company can develop a real-time valuation dashboard. In this article, we’ll explore the advantages of such a tool. Then, we guide you step-by-step in building such a dashboard tailored to your organization’s needs. Read on to know more!

Why should my company build a real-time valuation dashboard?

Building a real-time valuation dashboard can benefit your company in the following six ways:

Enhanced Strategic Decision-Making

A good real-time valuation software integrates all key factors into the share price, much like how technical analysts believe that all critical information is already reflected in share prices. However, real-time valuation software improves on this by removing behavioral biases and providing an objective assessment of value.

Such software will help you understand the valuation impact of any events unfolding in real-time. These insights can help you tactically navigate inflection points and devise sound long-term strategies.

Improved Capital Raising Efficiency

The primary reason why private companies struggle to raise funds is the lack of visibility into a company’s financial performance and valuation. Through a real-time valuation process and periodic disclosures, you can overturn this disadvantage and enjoy greater fundraising success.

Better Performance Management

When the real-time valuation software takes your company’s non-financial internal data as input, you can track how changes in performance affect valuation. This will help you identify critical performance thresholds beyond which your valuation is significantly impacted. These insights will help you manage your team’s performance in an informed manner.

Risk Management and Planning

Real-time valuation software can help you simplify risk management and planning. Not only do valuation trends help you understand the severity of risks, but they also help uncover previously unrecognized or unaccounted risks. 

Furthermore, you could upgrade your real-time valuation software to notify you of the prominent short-term and long-term risks impacting your business.

Stakeholder Communication

Access to your real-time valuation dashboard will help your stakeholders make informed portfolio management decisions. During periodic reviews, they can easily assess the impact of recent internal initiatives and external events by observing valuation trends. This reduces the need for constant explanations or justifications.

Transaction Readiness

Due diligence is often a significant bottleneck in funding rounds and M&A transactions. In some cases, these processes can stretch over weeks and sometimes cause opportunities to slip away before execution. In such situations, real-time valuation software enhances agility and facilitates quicker alignment on valuation.

How can my company build a real-time valuation dashboard?

The process to build a real-time valuation dashboard involves the following four phases:

Phase 1: Foundation (Weeks 1-4)

Valuation begins with data, and so will the road map to building your real-time valuation dashboard. You must identify all factors that impact your valuation. In addition to internal data, you will also need data about macroeconomic indicators, such as inflation, interest rates, and GDP growth rate, and industry-specific indicators.

For external data, some may rely on data aggregator websites such as Yahoo Finance, Investing.com, and CEIC data. However, it is best to scrape data directly from government agencies and institutions that publish this data.

If your books are updated regularly, you should have no problem compiling your company’s financial data. Conversely, poor bookkeeping habits or relying on non-digital records can make the process significantly more difficult.

Once you have compiled all the required data, you should zero in on 2-3 valuation methods that provide the best estimation of your company’s value.

Then, you simply need to ensure that you have the right technological tools in place. If your budget is tight, you could set up a valuation workbook in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets and generate the latest valuations upon stakeholder requests. However, in the long run, you should plan for automation to save time and reduce manual effort.

Phase 2: Model Development (Weeks 5-8)

The next step would be developing a base valuation model that can output valuation figures based on the external data and internal financial data. Then, you will need to expand this model to factor in non-financial valuation drivers.

Compiling non-financial internal data is not possible without the cooperation of managers across the organization. Such data might not exist if your company does not have a strong data culture.

Once you have a base valuation model and have identified data sources for non-financial valuation drivers, the next step is to integrate data feeds from your internal systems into the model. This may involve using advanced Microsoft Excel features, such as Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), to automate and streamline the process.

Phase 3: Automation & Testing (Weeks 9-12)

If your team has data analysts, you could leverage their expertise to build a simple dashboard based on Python. If not, you could hire the services of freelancers or agencies that specialize in data-driven applications.

Then, you will need to test the dashboard on various platforms. Sometimes, code output renders differently depending on the browser and device. Such irregularities should be fixed to provide a consistent experience. Accuracy and speed are definitely vital. However, you should also focus on factors such as user-friendliness.

The final step in this phase would be documenting a training manual, presentation, and/or video for stakeholders who will be using the dashboard. When you are compiling this resource, you must not lose sight of the technological aptitude of your intended audience.

Phase 4: Refinement (Ongoing)

Factors that affect a company’s valuation do not always remain the same. For instance, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the concept of lockdowns and their potential impact on business valuations was virtually nonexistent. Similarly, when the housing market bubble burst in 2008, it sent shockwaves through banking systems across the world. Before the crash, companies never factored the stability of the housing market into their valuations.

Today, in 2025, indicators relating to COVID-19 or the housing market are largely excluded from most valuation models as their relevance has significantly diminished.

In recent times, the AI industry’s expected growth rate depended largely on whether AI moratorium laws were passed into law or not. If moratoriums are adopted, the influence of policy decisions on AI company valuations is expected to diminish significantly.

So, as you discover and quantify new valuation drivers, you must keep incorporating them into your real-time valuation process. Also, as valuation drivers become irrelevant, you must reduce their weightage.

Needless to say, any errors should be rectified, and access to real-time valuations should be temporarily restricted while the system is producing inaccurate results. To avoid confusion or concern, it’s essential to notify stakeholders in advance through email or other preferred communication channels.

Since producing valuations is not your primary function as a business, you must limit big overhauls and deep investigations to a quarterly basis.

Eqvista- Immediate and accurate valuation insights!

A real-time valuation dashboard offers significant strategic and stakeholder management advantages. But building such a dashboard can take over three months. For organizations facing tight timelines or limited internal resources, this can be a major barrier.

If this sounds familiar, Eqvista can be of help. We have developed a real-time valuation software capable of producing accurate results for various industries. Contact us to know more!