Ellen Richstone stays in forefront, speeds pace
By Helen Graves/ Feature
Tuesday, May 3, 2005
Ellen Richstone loves nothing more than enabling rapid growth with
the right business processes in a fast-paced, high-energy
environment – which is exactly what she’s doing as chief financial
officer at Sonus Networks. Add to her list of highs international
expansion, camaraderie through teamwork and leading-edge technology,
and you understand her enthusiasm, and the reason she was the
perfect candidate, for the role she undertook earlier this year.
“We are in big growth mode here and at the same time the
company has grown so fast that the opportunity for me is 1) a lot of
the business processes you think of for a company this size (we’re
over a billion market cap) aren’t in place yet, 2) I get to work
with teams to enable further growth and 3) we’re growing
internationally, so it’s a great place to combine my interests and
my skills,” she says.
Richstone leads the financial and administrative functions of
the global company, including finance, investor relations, human
resources and information technology. Sonus (Nasdaq: SONS), founded
in 1997 and headquartered in Chelmsford, is the only pure play
Internet phone equipment maker around, focusing solely on providing
end-to-end carrier applications to voice over Internet protocol
(VoIP) service providers worldwide.
VoIP calls, put simply, require upgraded gear to converge voice
and data technologies, including the softswitches, gateway switches,
network management systems and other infrastructure solutions that
Sonus provides. Currently, 10 percent of all telephone calls use
some variation of VoIP, usage that is expected to skyrocket over the
next decade.
“I just love to be in companies that are in the forefront, and
though I’m not a technologist, technology is an environment I thrive
on and enjoy,” Richstone says. “The other thing I love about this
job is that it touches on HR, MIS, a lot of work with the
manufacturing and operations groups. This is a company of people who
make things happen.”
Richstone is no slacker herself. Since her arrival Jan. 10, she
has coordinated teams to work out new or improved processes in five
key business areas: demand-supply forecasting, customer
arrangements, order management, revenue recognition and Oracle
implementation. “My goal is to get the basic processes in, not be
too fancy and enable the business to grow faster as quickly as
possible,” she says.
Additionally, Richstone has hired on more accounting staff, was
in the process of interviewing for a corporate treasurer, had
outlined steps for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and reported FY04
results on time to remove Sonus from delisting risk. Last year the
company was caught in an accounting scandal after restating its 2002
and 2003 earnings and temporarily delisted for missing reporting
deadlines.
As one analyst noted in March, “Newly appointed CFO Ellen
Richstone should improve internal controls and accountability and,
hopefully, resolve the accounting issues.”
The confidence likely stems from Richstone’s lengthy resume of
achievements.
With three graduate degrees in international business and law
(two from Tufts’ Fletcher School and one from New York University’s
Stern School), Richstone began her career in Chemical Bank’s
international division in New York City. She then moved with her
husband to Boston and worked at Polaroid on the corporate controller
side until lured away four years later by Data General. Richstone
began there in international treasury and, at age 34, became the
youngest treasurer in a Fortune 500. During her four years at Data
General, the company grew from $700 million to $1.4 billion.
In 1988 Honeywell Bull recruited Richstone as its CFO. When the
company was sold three and a half years later, she went to
California to become the CFO at Rohr Aerospace. “It was a $1.4
billion, NYSE company. I was there about a year but my husband didn’
t want to move so I came back to be CFO of Augat, about $200 million
at the time, NYSE, that we grew to $600 million in four years and
sold.”
Then Richstone tried a small health care company. “It was
classic health care where you never had any cash. Given my
background I thought, this isn’t where I like to spend my time. I
was offered the opportunity to be the CFO at Brooks Automation, a
large publicly traded semiconductor company, my first Nasdaq. That
grew from a $100 million to a $700 million run rate in the four
years I was there.”
Twenty-six acquisitions later, however, Richstone was ready for
a change. She next tried her hand at leading a company as president
and CEO of Entrepreneurial Resources Group, a professional services
firm providing operational and financial solutions to companies
worldwide. “I went in with the deal that I didn’t know if I would
like selling,” she says. “Even though we were doubling revenue each
year that I was there and added seven locations including Europe, at
the end of the day, selling is just not fun for me.”
“Doing” is what Richstone likes best, and she certainly found
the right place by next moving on to Sonus. Telco spending on VoIP-
related infrastructure systems is expected to grow 40 to 45 percent
by the end of this year and continue to double year over year for
five years out. As it is, Richstone has joined Sonus on the heels of
an 83-percent sales growth year and record bookings in Q4.
Infonetics Research named Sonus the 2004 leader in the media gateway
market and the packet voice gateway market. The Buckingham Research
Group predicts that Sonus will be one of two or three softswitch
vendors ultimately to survive.
So far this year Sonus has partnered to expand into Mexico,
opened its own software development and regional support center in
India, noted Japan as one of its hottest growth areas and targeted
key accounts in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In March America
Online selected Sonus as the key provider for its new Internet phone
service.
As a result, along with instituting best practices, Richstone
is also involved with the company’s current emphasis on building out
its infrastructure, both domestically and internationally. She’s
working closely with the executive team and department leaders, and
she’s in her element. “It’s the team that’s working to build this
structure and these processes,” she says. “I’m part of the team and
that’s very important to me.”
Richstone expects to be at Sonus for the long haul. The rapid
international expansion now underway particularly fits with her
background. She’s able to bring her lessons learned during her high-
powered career to bear as well as her board experiences with the
likes of S&P 500 American Power Conversion, start-up Blueshift
Technology and nonprofit Employment Resources.
“My average stay at companies has been on the longer side for a
CFO,” Richstone says. “There’s a lot to do here, lots going on. It’s
a great time for this company, a very interesting stage of its life
that I just couldn’t resist.” |
