SCIP Oregon

Oregon Chapter Bridge Chat: Ask the Financial Analyst: Uncovering CI in Financial Statements

Posted by campsean - 25/11/08 at 08:11:05 pm

All,

As mentioned in our last (and very successful) face to face meeting on November 20^th, we will be initiating a series of “Bridge Chats” that will allow us to engage in open teleconference based discussions with individuals who have valuable and actionable information to pass along to the Oregon CI community. 

There is no cost to attend these bridge chats and the chats are open to both current SCIP members and non members.

These bridge chats will be in addition to the face to face events we already have planned.  Our next face to face event is scheduled for January 27^th at Jake’s Grill.

Bridge Chat Topic: Ask the Financial Analyst: Uncovering CI in Financial Statements, featuring Mark Corcoran, CFA.

Date and Time

Tuesday, December 16 at 04:00 PM PST

Audio Information

Direct Dial Number: 215-383-1005
Access Code: 356-288-056
Audio PIN: Not necessary

Mark’s Bio:

Mark S. Corcoran, CFA, is a vice president and senior research analyst for D.A. Davidson. Mr. Corcoran has extensive equity research and portfolio management experience, spanning fifteen years and several billion dollars in equity investment capital. He has interviewed in excess of 300 management teams and has published research on over 150 publicly-traded companies in the technology, health care, industrial, consumer, and financial industries.

Mr. Corcoran graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a degree in International Affairs, has earned the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and serves on the Board of Directors for the Portland Society of financial analysts. He is also a guest lecturer at Portland State University’s School of Business Administration and is an adjunct graduate finance instructor.

Mr. Corcoran has been quoted extensively in the financial press, including CNBC, Investors Business Daily, Money Magazine, The Washington Post, Barron’s, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Baltimore Sun, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Street.com, Red Herring, Bloomberg, Reuters, Dow Jones and Individual Investor.

Call Abstract:

The job of a financial analyst is to dig into the story behind the story…both in the numbers and words in financial statements, filings, and conference calls transcripts.  In this "Ask the Expert" tele-conference Mark Corcoran, CFA, will share tips every CI professional can use to uncover insights in the published information of public companies.  Bring your questions or email them ahead of time to sean@sciporegon.com.

In this teleconference you will learn:

- What different financial filings are for and what you can look for in each

- The most common places companies ‘hide’ bad news

- What to listen for in a quarterly analyst call

Closing Thoughts

I also want to say a special thanks to Roger Courville, a local SCIP member, who was instrumental in identifying Mark as being a great choice to lead this discussion.

Finally I hope you all have a wonderful and restful Thanksgiving with your friends and families.

Interview with Dennis Muscato

Posted by campsean - 21/11/08 at 08:11:57 pm

Interviewee: Dennis Muscato

Interviewers:Sean Campbell and Scott Swigart of Cascade Insights

Topics Covered:

The relationship between competitive business intelligence and corporate responsibility

The business value of social responsibility

Value of social consciousness in recruiting new talent

Long-term strategic issues associated with corporate responsibility

Statistical analysis of the benefits of philanthropy

Building corporate responsibility into a company’s DNA

Scott Swigart: Could you please take a minute first to introduce yourself?

Dennis Muscato: Sure. My educational background is a Bachelor of Science in Natural Resources Management and a Master’s in Computer Science. The first phase of my 30-year career was at Oregon State University providing information services for forestry research. I was working with statistics, data management, and biometrics involving old growth, genetics and so forth, trying to understand the ecosystem and biosphere. That was in the mid ’70s.

From 1980 to about 2000, I worked with information technology, building the HP I.T. infrastructure. My work in those days involved Unix and NT. We went from large mainframes, to mini computers, to PCs, what we have today. I’ve worked a lot with SAS and other data management and analysis tools.

My third stage was from 2000 to 2007. HP was interested in building its corporate responsibility. I took some of the background in environment, math, computer science, analytics, and business process, and I started to apply that to helping HP develop its role as a world leader in corporate responsibility.

I took the retirement package in 2007, although I’m not fully retired. I’m still continuing to learn, and I am working on using analytics, computer science, and corporate responsibility to improve marketing and sales.

Continue reading Interview with Dennis Muscato…

Registration Reminder for November 20th Event

Posted by campsean - 13/11/08 at 10:11:57 pm

Just wanted to remind you all to register for the 20^th before attending.  We’ll have mechanisms in place to handle registrations in place at the event but it would be greatly appreciated if you register at the link below before arriving at the event on the 20^th at Jake’s Grill.

http://www.scip.org/Training/EventsDetail.cfm?itemnumber=5422

We already know a number of you are planning to attend and you’re planning on bringing additional folks with you, hence this post.

SCIPOregon and the iPhone

Posted by campsean - 11/11/08 at 03:11:40 pm

Having been an iPhone user since the first version of the iPhone came out (I’ve been a proud owner of the 3G model since the day it released) I’ve been planning to set up this site so it has a nice iPhone interface as well.

And now it does.

For those of you with an iPhone if you browse this site you’ll get a nice mobile interface for the posts, etc.

Sean Campbell – Chair – Oregon Chapter

Mark Chussil on: “Blame and ban, easy and satisfying”

Posted by campsean - 07/11/08 at 05:11:04 pm

Mark Chussil is one of the members of the local SCIP chapter. His company is Advanced Competitive Strategies.   We’ll be highlighting a series of posts from Mark on his thoughts on war gaming and strategic decision making. Here is the first post of that series…

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The three words that begin the next paragraph are three words that I never thought I’d use to begin any paragraph, let alone one offering strategy advice for businesses feeling their way through the financial crisis of our times. Mind you, the three words merely begin the paragraph. They are not advice in themselves, which we’ll get to later.

Governor Sarah Palin was asked in the vice presidential debate who was to blame for the subprime lending crisis. She answered, “Darn right it was the predator [sic] lenders.”

There’s a lesson there for business strategists, and for politicians. A lesson we can use to help us move forward. However, the lesson has nothing to do with predators, lenders, lending, crises, or governors. It has to do with solving problems effectively.

Say we blame the predatory lenders. If you’re a predatory lender, consider yourself blamed. Problem solved? Not exactly, although we did get to enjoy some righteous indignation.

Say we blame the predatory lenders and throw them in jail and/or confiscate their ill-gotten gains. Problem solved? Not yet, although we might add a few pennies (relative to the size of the crisis) to our righteous indignation.

Say we blame the predatory lenders and ban predatory lending. Problem solved? It depends. It depends on whether predatory lenders and lending were the problem, or at least enough of the problem that a ban would solve the problem. It depends also on whether “solved” means undoing pain already suffered or preventing future pain.

As easy and satisfying as it is to explore blame and ban, that isn’t the point. The point is about identifying the problem and its potential solutions. If we see predatory lending as the problem, we will contemplate action, and perhaps take action, about predatory lending.

Tangent: Note that the ease and satisfaction of doing something quick and clear — blame, ban, etc. — is part of the problem. (I haven’t read this book yet but I like the title: Don’t Jump to Solutions, by William B. Rouse.) End of tangent.

But blaming predatory lending, on-target as it may be, begs another question. Where does predatory lending come from? What if it’s due to human nature? What if it’s implicitly encouraged by lax rules? What if it’s the result of greed on the part of lenders, bosses, or investors? What if it comes from more than one of those sources? What’s the problem we want to solve? Different options.

And those explanations beg other questions. Where did lax rules come from? A sincere belief that deregulation works best, a surrender to lobbyists and campaign donors, a decision (perhaps purposeful, perhaps not) to ignore danger signs, an inability of human beings to anticipate every way that deregulation can be exploited? Different options again.

Tangent: in “Name That Economy” Jacob Weisberg identifies no fewer than 14 variations on capitalism and other economic models, each designed (intentionally or not) to solve particular problems. End of tangent.

In business and in government we make decisions about the decisions we’ll make. In other words, we decide first on what the problem is, and then we decide what to do about the problem. We humans like to solve problems, and we like action: we reward action without thought more than we reward thought without action. And so we are prone to speed through the first decision, especially because the problem may seem so darn-right obvious, and jump to the second.

My point is not that there is a single right choice for that first decision and that our job is to find it. After all, options for the what’s-the-problem decision for a bank on the brink of insolvency are probably narrower than those for a technology company, a toy company, or a shipping company wondering about market demand.

My point is that we must make our first decision — the one where we choose the problem we want to solve — well, especially because the issues we face today are so complex and consequential for the world banking system, corporations’ ability to compete, and families’ financial futures. It’s essential that we think rigorously, guarding against deceptively easy and satisfying assumptions. Watch out for “either-or” thinking, unsupported or ideological “it’s obvious” statements, and blaming a single cause for complex problems.

It’s not all bad, far from it. As I said in my essay “A Dark and Stormy Night,” you have an opportunity to make great strategy decisions. Turmoil can give you a chance to distinguish your business (and yourself) from your competitors. The good news about a crisis is that leaders find people receptive to change. What if you think not only about how to “get through” the current crisis? What if you think about how to build customer loyalty, strike up new partnerships, revisit your business model, or redefine your business? Darn right there are major benefits to probing, to creative debate, to looking through different glasses, and to asking what if.

I wish to acknowledge Jay Russo and Paul Schoemaker, whose excellent books Decision Traps and Winning Decisions taught me about key points about “framing” decisions that I made here. If you like what I wrote, please give them credit; if you don’t like what I wrote, please blame me.

SCIP Oregon Chapter Committee Notes – November 4th, 2008 Meeting

Posted by campsean - 07/11/08 at 12:11:55 am

Here are the notes from our last committee meeting.

Next Event on November 20th

• Everything is on track for this event.  Looking forward to seeing you there.

January Event

• Our topic for this event is going to be a “Introduction to CI.” However the emphasis beyond this high level topic is going to be on making the event a place where practitioners in other fields (marketing, research, etc.) can come and leverage the combined knowledge of the local SCIP chapter.  More news to come as Roger, I, and Scott pull together more details for the event. Everyone should get a chance to participate in what are planning to be a lively moderated discussion.
• Date/Time for this event is going to be January 27th @ 8am.

April Event

• In our next committee meeting we’ll be talking further about topics for this event but we’ve brainstormed a number of them in the last meeting and it will simply be a matter of prioritizing these.
• Todd Lue and I will be co-owners of this event.
• Date/Time for this event will be April 7th @ 8am.

June Event

• At this point I merely want to get this date on the chapter’s radar as we’ll be picking a guiding committee for this event over the next few meetings. But the event will be held on June 9th @ 8am.

Upcoming Committee Meetings

Reminder: These are open to all local chapter members not just those on the committee and you’re all welcome to attend. Last meeting we had a number of people who came in addition to the regular committee members.

• December 9th – Jake’s Grill on 10th
• January 13th – Jake’s Grill on 10th
• February 10th – Jake’s Grill on 10th
• March 17th – Jake’s Grill on 10th
• April 14th – Jake’s Grill on 10th
• May 19th – Jake’s Grill on 10th
• June 16th – Jake’s Grill on 10th.

-Sean Campbell – Chair – Oregon Chapter – SCIP

Shadow Boxing with Virtual Machine Images

Posted by campsean - 03/11/08 at 11:11:02 pm

Virtualization has had a significant impact on the hardware and software industry over the last couple of years. The ability to package virtualized operating systems and their applications as virtual machines has generated a true “sea change” in the way that the software and hardware industry operates, markets, performs consulting activities, etc.

However, while virtualization is becoming more prevalent in the data center and is also expanding its reach to desktops and mobile devices, there are other areas where its potential is overlooked.

Competitive intelligence (CI) is one of them.

With virtual machines it is easy (and relatively trivial) to spin up five or ten competing products and quickly ascertain differences in features and function among them. In addition, utilizing virtual machines for this type of analysis alleviates any concerns that arise about how these multiple product installations might conflict with the default OS install that you use daily.

Virtualization also makes it easy to suspend any activities you are performing with these products for a period of time (hours, days, or even weeks) and quickly return to investigating these products at a later time.

Virtualization also removes the need to set up or maintain dedicated hardware to perform competitive tear downs. This is a process that typically involves flat lining the box, loading the software, etc. As a matter of fact, you can get a fair amount of competitive CI done with a garden-variety laptop that also happens to be running a virtualization stack.

Virtualization technology makes it easy to “shadow box” with competing products at will and persist the state of your FUD decryption experiments for a later review period.

Accessing your competitors’ software via trial downloads is also a very easy process. Of course you need to ensure that you are representing yourself ethically and that you review the end user license agreement (EULA) and terms of use of the software.

Companies that have an entrenched set of competitors should be making available a library of competing products as virtual machines. Giving the field access to a library of virtual machines makes it easy for them to gain hands-on intelligence about competitors’ products without the need for each person in the field to individually set up an environment for experimentation purposes.

Virtual machines can be delivered directly to users and run via technologies such as VirtualPC, VirtualBox, VMware Player, or Workstation. They can also be centrally hosted on server-based virtualization solutions and accessed via the appropriate remote desktop protocols and interfaces.

“Shadow boxing” with competitors with a virtual machine “opponent” is one of the fastest ways you, as a CI professional, or others in your field can gain hands-on knowledge about competitors’ products.

Putting together a competitive “lab” such as this requires the development of a partnership between the CI professional and the technical professionals in a firm, but the benefits that result from such a partnership can be significant.

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