Richard is available for hire
Hire RichardRichard Conner
Verified Expert in Finance
Growth Expert
Location
Carlsbad, United States
Toptal Member Since
March 29, 2017
Richard has led pricing initiatives that have resulted in over $30 million in EBITDA uplift. He has worked for companies such as GE Healthcare and Philips Healthcare in various cross-functional leadership roles including budgeting, forecasting, discounted cash flow analysis, and new product introductions. As a freelancer, he enjoys projects in pricing, reporting, and FP&A with a wide range of clients and industries.
Career Highlights
Director, Pricing and Data Governance
DJO Global
Senior Manager, Worldwide Customer Service Finance
ATL Ultrasound
Senior Financial Analyst
ATL Ultrasound
Education Highlights
Executive Education
The Wharton School
Master's Degree
University of Washington
Bachelor's Degree
University of Washington
Case Studies
Industry Expertise
Other Expertise
Work Experience
Senior Director, Pricing
2014 - 2016
AMN Healthcare
- Worked across many functions and built advanced pricing tools for managers to use for setting bill rates and pay rates. This resulted in many proactive pricing adjustments which led to revenue and EBITDA uplift.
- Established regular and ad-hoc reporting on pricing effectiveness. Examples include pocket price waterfalls and scatter plots to determine outliers.
- Managed deal approvals and built advanced pricing tools to drive revenue. Worked with sales leaders to define discounting guidelines and became the authority on deal go/no-go decisions.
- Built advanced Excel models with macros, slicers, logic scenarios, and pivot tables. One example was a dynamic bill rate and pay rate model to show market rate trends by geography and specialty.
- Drove initiatives to seek pricing outliers and achieve pricing uplift. One example was a proactive comprehensive review of all customer bill rates and a cross-functional, coordinated campaign to increase bill rates.
Director, Pricing and Data Governance
2011 - 2014
DJO Global
- Worked with product managers on new product introductions. Consulted with the product owners on value maps and built financial models to help determine optimal pricing for new product introductions.
- Executed pricing initiatives that created $24 million in annual EBITDA uplift. This ranged from projects such as an annual price increase effort to negotiation training for the sales organization.
- Created and distributed regular and ad-hoc reporting on pricing effectiveness including scatter plots, waterfalls, and regression analyses. This resulted in the CEO proclaiming that it was the best suite of financial analytics he had ever seen.
- Led investigations for pricing compliance amongst web stores and international distribution diversion. This included implementation of automated tools as well as fortitude to shut down some distribution channels.
- Built and led a pricing team of 10 from scratch, including a team of financial analysts.
Focus areas: Financial Reporting, Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Price Analysis
Vice President, Sales Operations
2002 - 2007
Philips Healthcare
- Served as the chief of staff for the North American chief commercial officer of a $4 billion business. Responsible for the messaging to the field sales organization. Led a team of 12 directly reporting to me and a total organization of 120.
- Created, rolled out, and implemented an incentive compensation plan that rewarded price realization and penalized excessive discounting. Part of this was presenting the plan to over 1,100 individuals who were covered under the plan.
- Led weekly forecast accountability calls with the vice presidents of sales to drive accountability in the funnel, forecasts, orders, and revenue realization.
- Managed the sales training, sales compensation, forecasting and pipeline, pricing, inside sales, a CRM tool, sales events, RFP group, order administration, and sales programs.
- Identified as top potential candidate in North America; as part of this, attended executive education in Amsterdam and at the Wharton School in Philadelphia.
- Underwent, as a Six Sigma Black Belt, 1 year of intensive study and project work in business improvement.
Focus areas: Budgeting, Financial Reporting, Price Analysis
Senior Manager, Worldwide Customer Service Finance
1998 - 2002
ATL Ultrasound
- Changed the way the worldwide customer service business looked at revenue modeling, budgeting, forecasting, and prospecting. I changed the methodology to a hit list of customer sites that were coming off of warranty, coming up for renewal, or eligible for a conversion from billable status to contract status. This resulted in a significant increase in contract revenue and overall profitability. (Previously, it was based on a service contract capture ratio model which is just a percentage of the installed base that was under contract.).
- Hired and led a team of accountants and financial analysts. Drove the annual budget process, including a complex modeling of recurring revenue budgets. Created and distributed monthly financial and management reports.
- Led monthly calls with senior sales leaders to drive forecasting and funnel accountability based on the new contract revenue model that I had established.
- Created monthly financial presentations on the worldwide customer service business and delivered the presentation to the senior leadership team.
- Worked cross-functionally with finance and sales.
- Established quotas for the salespeople and sales leaders.
Focus areas: Financial Modeling, Financial Reporting, Budgeting
Senior Financial Analyst
1996 - 1998
ATL Ultrasound
- Led a project to educate the company's managers on business case justification and discounted cash flow analysis (DCF).
- Brought in a luminary finance professor, Rocky Higgins, to give lectures to the top company managers on DCF.
- Wrote the policy standard for business cases and consulted with senior level executives on go/no-go decisions.
- Developed monthly financial reports and created the messaging for the quarterly earnings calls with Wall Street analysts.
- Created a monthly profitability variance analysis; this included advanced Excel modeling.
- Made the financial presentations for the CFO to give to the senior leadership team.
- Worked on many ad hoc financial analyses—including Monte Carlo simulations, sensitivity analyses, and scenario planning.
- Created policies for discounting, promotions, and other pricing areas.
Focus areas: Project Finance, Strategy, Capital Structure Analysis, Capital Investment Appraisals, Equipment Finance, Financial Reporting, Financial Modeling
Education
2005 - 2006
Executive Education in Finance
The Wharton School - Philadelphia, PA, USA
1995 - 1997
Master's Degree in Finance
University of Washington - Seattle, WA, USA
1987 - 1991
Bachelor's Degree in Engineering
University of Washington - Seattle, WA, USA