PEPI: Director, Pricing-Commercial Excellence (OPEN TO ALL U.S. LOCATIONS)

Alvarez & Marsal Private Equity Performance Improvement

PEPI: Director, Pricing-Commercial Excellence

(OPEN TO ALL U.S. LOCATIONS)

Alvarez & Marsal, a leading independent global professional services firm, specializing in providing turnaround management, performance improvement and corporate advisory services, is seeking to expand its Private Equity Performance Improvement (PEPI) – Commercial Excellence team in various locations throughout the U.S. With more than 8,500 professionals based in 40 locations across North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America, our firm excels in problem solving and value creation. Drawing on a strong operational heritage and hands-on-approach, our professionals work closely with organizations and stakeholders to help tackle complex business issues and maximize value.

A&M’s Private Equity Performance Improvement Services (PEPI) practice, with offices throughout the US, focuses on serving middle market and large cap private equity firms who have engaged A&M to help improve operating results at their portfolio companies.

Our professionals are aligned with a PEPI service line to promote the development of deep functional skills & experiences and to maximize our ability to tailor solutions to solve our clients’ business issues.

Our PEPI services include:

Commercial Excellence

Rapid Results

CDD/Strategy

Interim Management

M&A Services

Supply Chain

CFO Services

The Commercial Excellence team is a growing business targeting high growth in the next 2-4 years. We offer excellent opportunities for career advancement and building leadership skills. The leadership team is focused on providing career development, training and exposure to international business assignments.

Job Description

Advise companies in the areas of Revenue & Margin Management-margin transparency, product portfolio optimization, SKU rationalization, new product development, pricing, and margin recovery. Our team focuses on driving performance improvements in top-line revenue, margin improvement and marketing mix optimization. The ideal candidate must be capable of managing teams of Alvarez & Marsal professionals to address complex business challenges within the Commercial Excellence. The right person will be highly skilled at communicating with C-level management, conceiving and structuring analytical plans to uncover drivers of performance, designing actionable solutions to particular Revenue & Margin Management issues, and developing implementation plans.

The Pricing Director will be responsible for leading teams that execute our clients’ ongoing Revenue & Margin Management programs and deliver data-driven business insights. In addition to project work, you will also be expected to contribute to the creation of intellectual property and internal team-building. You will be expected to learn new concepts quickly, stay abreast of advances in technology and related fields, and apply your experience to creatively solve our clients’ business problems.

Margin Transparency

• Evaluate current cost allocation processes and mechanisms, e.g., cost categories allocated, basis for allocation, etc.
• Assess current profitability by market, customer, product category, SKU, etc.
• Identify and quantify additional complexity-driven costs-to-serve: (e.g. product customization, extra customer service, samples, expedited freight, special customer terms)
• Identify improvements for future product costing analyses (e.g. allocations for indirect costs, costs-to-serve) and implement
• Assess potential for and implement cost-to-serve premiums and targeted price adjustments, and quantify impact on margin and profitability

Product Portfolio Optimization

• Assess competitive landscape and customer trends
• Evaluate and assess product portfolio (Financial measures, product life-cycle stage and competitive differentiation)
• Develop product-category specific sales and investment strategies and implementation plans

SKU Rationalization

• Using Cost-to-Serve framework, identify low or negative net margin SKUs and evaluate improvement opportunity of elimination identified SKUs
• Evaluate potential for complexity reduction, e.g., SKU rationalization
• Implement SKU rationalization and complexity reduction initiatives

Price Optimization

• Assess strategies and quantify profitability opportunities through various pricing levers such as value price setting, transactional price management (e.g. leakage, discounts, and escalators), and pass-through (inflation, material costs)
• Assess current pricing discipline across products, markets and customers
• Evaluate and improve pricing process, ( eg. price setting, target profitability, approval process for discounts)
• Assess potential for and implement broad based and selective price increases based on market factors, competitive situations, existing contracts, etc.
• Evaluate if margin improvements are a function of volume increases, price increases, or mix

Margin Recovery

• Review costs to serve for market value and potential for pass-through
• Identify and implement specific recovery opportunities for identified drivers of complexity
• Assess current pricing/quoting processes for recovering costs to serve and implement improvements and implement improvements

Professional Skills

Project Management: Own and manage the high-quality execution of individual projects. End-to-end project management will include roadmap design, management of the project team and plan, and development and presentation of final deliverables.

Project Fulfillment: Contribute to project work by combining creative problem solving with analytical rigor to drive actionable insights. Representative project work includes developing margin transparency, pricing analysis, reporting frameworks and dashboards, performing B2B/B2C customer segmentation and statistical modeling.

Data Manipulation & Analysis: Work with project team to understand, manipulate and analyze client and market data using various tools, which may include: MS Excel, SQL Server, BI tools such as Alteryx or Tableau, and statistical programs such as SPSS or R.

People & Team Leadership: Motivate, develop, and challenge all members of project teams to exceed client expectations. Provide value-added thinking and mentorship to ensure junior team members develop over time and are satisfied.

Client Relations: Manage client relationships on a day-to-day basis while collaborating with internal client team members. Partner with client teams to define project requirements, develop hypotheses, gather data, brainstorm alternatives, and generate recommendations.

Qualifications:

• Industry Experience, B2B, and Business Services; experience working with PE and/ or PE relationships is a plus
• Strong financial acumen, understanding of P&L and cost drivers
• 7-10+ years of experience focused on Revenue & Margin with experience developing and implementing pricing processes and methodology.
• Experience with different pricing aspects such as value-based, transactional, discount leakage, and pass-through. And best practices in review and approval processes, waterfall analysis, tools such as Vendavo.
• Analytically driven and exposure to various tools and technologies, including relational database (SQL), BI (Alteryx, Tableau), statistical (SPSS, R), web analytics (SiteCatalyst, Google Analytics)
• Strong quantitative mindset combined with excellent communication and interpersonal skills

• Exceptional project management and presentation skills
• Outstanding people development and management skills; ability to lead junior team members and help guide their careers
• Demonstrated experience providing intellectual and task leadership on complex projects
• Ability to work independently in an unstructured environment, think on your feet, and respond with confidence and creativity
• Consulting experience preferred (not required)
• MBA from a top-tier university preferred (not required)
• Open to all U.S. locations

The salary range is $150,000–$225,000 annually, dependent on several variables including but not limited to education, experience, skills, and geography. In addition, A&M offers a discretionary bonus program which is based on a number of factors, including individual and firm performance. Please ask your recruiter for details.

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