The Aspen Group (TAG) is one of the largest and most trusted retail healthcare business support organizations in the U.S. and has supported over 20,000 healthcare professionals and team members at more than 1,300 health and wellness offices across 48 states in four distinct categories: dental care, urgent care, medical aesthetics, and animal health. Working in partnership with independent practice owners and clinicians, the team is united by a single purpose: to prove that healthcare can be better and smarter for everyone. TAG provides a comprehensive suite of centralized business support services that power the impact of five consumer-facing businesses: Aspen Dental, ClearChoice Dental Implant Centers, WellNow Urgent Care, Chapter Aesthetic Studio, and AZPetVet. Each brand has access to a deep community of experts, tools and resources to grow their practices, and an unwavering commitment to delivering high-quality consumer healthcare experiences at scale.
The Sr. Manager, Strategy and Business Development is a key role on the Strategy and Business Development team. The Sr. Manager will support Strategy and Business Development leadership on initiatives that span across the TAG businesses and any other businesses we may enter or evaluate in the future. This is a project-oriented role which will change and evolve alongside the priorities of TAG executive leadership. Sample projects could include:
Market opportunity sizing, whitespace analysis and assessment of strategic fit of new products or service lines
Market research on areas of strategic interest for the purpose of evaluating potential partnerships, acquisition targets or business expansion opportunities
Business case development (strategic and financial) and ROI analysis on potential new business or outside investment opportunities
Project management of cross-functional teams in support of strategic initiative development, evaluation and execution as well as post-acquisition integration
Due diligence and financial modeling support on M&A, JV and partnership transactions
Periodic strategic analyses supporting existing TAG businesses
Competitor and competitive landscape analysis
Active tracking of industry and competitive market developments including M&A and partnerships
Preparation of materials for the Executive Team or Board of Directors on TAG strategy and business development initiatives
Execution leadership on select strategic divestitures
The Sr. Manager will have responsibility for identifying and assessing both organic and inorganic growth opportunities and partnering with colleagues across the business to support planning for the optimal execution of those initiatives. The Sr. Manager is an effective collaborator and influencer and is knowledgeable about the business.
The Sr. Manager is hands on - not afraid to roll up their sleeves and get projects done - and approaches work with a data-driven, analytical mindset. The Sr. Manager is responsible for ensuring that business development projects they are involved with are approached with an enterprise mindset, have been pressure tested with the appropriate business owners, and have been analyzed critically and thoughtfully, taking different business environments and operating scenarios into account.
The Sr. Manager acts as a consultant which requires close partnership with business and functional leaders and employees throughout the organization. The Sr. Manager must ensure that business development projects appropriately capture the resident knowledge and experiences of subject matter experts throughout the organization, synthesize and translate that expertise in combination with his/her data-driven analysis into actionable recommendations in support of business objectives.
Key Responsibilities:
Understand the business, its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to help develop strategies to support step-function organic growth and expansion through M&A and partnerships
Ability to develop detailed bottom-up financial projection and operating models leveraging input from across the organization in support of M&A, divestitures, JV, partnership transactions, and internal strategic projects
Comfort working with and managing fast-paced information exchange
Ability to value M&A and partnership opportunities using conventional valuation techniques and the flexibility to think creatively about how TAG may need to approach each opportunity differently
Understand and track the competitive landscape, notable events and transactions in the dental, urgent care, medical aesthetics, veterinary services and other retail-health sectors
Develop relationships with colleagues throughout the business to understand business priorities and to efficiently gather input and feedback in support of various projects
Serve as a trusted business partner to the Vice President, Senior Directors / Directors and the other members of the strategy and development team
Ability to identify the signal through the noise - understand, organize and prioritize what is most important while following through on commitments and not allowing tasks to fall through the cracks
Recommend new practices, processes, metrics, or models to improve strategic planning or business development projects
Be comfortable leading and supporting projects and providing solutions that have significant, long-term impact
Independently determine methods for completion of new projects with awareness of when to seek guidance and ask for support
Use data to measure success: learn, iterate, and improve
Analyze trends in business operations and performance, develop proactive actions to further support objectives
Requirements and Qualifications:
Education Level: Bachelor's degree required; MBA preferred
Experience Level: 3-5 years relevant professional experience in strategy consulting, investment banking, financial consulting, venture capital, private equity and/or corporate strategy/development; Experience in healthcare services and/or multi-site retail preferred
Experience working on and driving highly visible, highly impactful cross-functional projects
Must be intellectually curious, inquisitive, thoughtful, resourceful and a good listener
Must demonstrate critical thinking skills with an ability to creatively develop varied solution sets to multi-dimensional problems
Strong organizational skills and ability to multi-task several complex projects with the flexibility to be proactive in a fast pace, ever changing environment
Strong interpersonal skills with an ability to lead through influence as well as collaborate across functional areas
Resourceful and motivated self-starter willing to learn internal tools to best enable a self-service mindset
Analytical skills: Must demonstrate advanced command of Excel at the level of: (i) independently building and manipulating financial models to evaluate cash flows, return on investment and P&L impact of different investment and financing decisions, (ii) manipulating financial, operating or other data sets in order to run scenario and sensitivity analyses, (iii) leverage expertise in ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes using PowerQuery, Alteryx, Python or other tool to cleanse, align, and aggregate disparate datasets, and (iv) importing and manipulating large datasets utilizing tertiary Excel tools such as the Data Model and PowerQuery
Presentation & Communication skills: must be able to (i) prepare presentations in PowerPoint for an executive-level audience, (ii) communicate (both written and oral) in a clear, concise, articulate fashion, and (iii) when presenting work, demonstrate clear, concise articulation of proposed actions, illustrating opportunity, alternatives, considerations, recommendations and associated economics