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

Director, Pricing—Commercial Excellence

Alvarez & Marsal Private Equity Performance Improvement (OPEN TO ALL U.S. LOCATIONS)

Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) is a global consulting firm with over 10,000 entrepreneurial, action and results-oriented professionals in over 40 countries. We take a hands-on approach to solving our clients' problems and assisting them in reaching their potential. Our culture celebrates independent thinkers and doers who positively impact our clients and shape our industry. The collaborative environment and engaging work—guided by A&M's core values of Integrity, Quality, Objectivity, Fun, Personal Reward, and Inclusive Diversity—are why our people love working at A&M.

The Team

A&M's Private Equity Performance Improvement Services (PEPI) practice, with offices throughout the US, focuses on serving the 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
• Transformation Services
• CDD/Strategy
• Interim Management
• Manufacturing Operations Improvement
• 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.

How You Will Contribute

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 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 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 implementation.
• 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 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)

Your journey at A&M

We recognize that our people are the driving force behind our success, which is why we prioritize an employee experience that fosters each person's unique professional and personal development. Our robust performance development process promotes continuous learning, rewards your contributions, and fosters a culture of meritocracy. With top-notch training and on-the-job learning opportunities, you can acquire new skills and advance your career.

We prioritize your well-being, providing benefits and resources to support you on your personal journey. Our people consistently highlight the growth opportunities, our unique, entrepreneurial culture, and the fun we have together as their favorite aspects of working at A&M. The possibilities are endless for high-performing and passionate professionals.

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.