SCIP Oregon

Interview with Jim O’Brien – Regence

Posted by campsean - 20/09/08 at 01:09:21 am

Jim’s Biography

Jim O’Brien is a competitive intelligence practitioner with experience in the financial services industry and the insurance arena. He currently manages the CI function for the Regence Group, an insurance provider in Idaho, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. Prior, O’Brien worked as a CI analyst for JPMorgan Chase & Co. in their Treasury Services division. He received a B.S. in Commerce, with a concentration in International Business, from the University of Virginia. O’Brien hails from the New York City area, where he lived prior to moving to Portland, Oregon, 3 years ago.

Interviewers: Sean Campbell and Scott Swigart of Cascade Insights

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Interview Topics

 

• What it takes to be a good Competitive Intelligence practitioner
• The two fundamental types of CI people, and why you need both
• How people happen into the CI field, and why there’s no conventional training for it
• How CI practice fits into various industries

 

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Sean Campbell: James, please give us a little bit of your background in relation to competitive intelligence.

James Regence: Sure. I got my start in CI back in 2004 at JP Morgan. I just kind of landed in the field by accident; from what I am told, that happens to a lot of people, although there are common skills that attune you to it. You need to be pretty good with both words and numbers, be able to articulate yourself in written and verbal form, and also able to demonstrate the financial value of your analysis.

I enjoyed working with CI, so I stuck with it when I left JP Morgan, and I landed in healthcare. It seems that CI practice is a transferable skill set, such that hiring managers from different industries are willing to take someone who doesn’t know much about the industry but does have that CI skill set.

Continue reading Interview with Jim O’Brien – Regence…

Interview Series with the local CI community…

Posted by campsean - 20/09/08 at 01:09:43 am

September 25th meeting location…

Posted by campsean - 26/08/08 at 07:08:04 pm

Just wanted to update you all with the meeting location for the September 25th meeting @ 8:00am to 9:30am.

Jake’s Grill on 10th – 611 SW 10th Ave Portland, OR 97205

First Meeting…

Posted by campsean - 25/07/08 at 07:07:47 pm

Just wanted to let you know that we’ll be having our first meeting on September 25th at 8:00am to 9:30am.

Exact meeting location is still being finalized but it will be at a location in downtown Portland.

Survey Results…

Posted by campsean - 25/07/08 at 07:07:42 pm

Thanks to all who filled out the recent survey that focused on the goals and preferences that Oregon CI Professionals had for our chapter.

Here is a high level summary of some of the findings:

• Preference was for quarterly meetings.
• Greater preference for meeting times to be from 11:30am to 1:00pm instead of 6:00pm to 8:00pm.
• Preference for holding the meetings in downtown Portland over other locations (Beaverton, Gresham, etc.)
• Strong Interest in the following topics: Analysis Models, Competitor Profiling, Early Warning Systems, Economic and Business Trends, Environmental Factors, and Emerging Markets.

SiloBreaker and GlassDoor

Posted by campsean - 16/07/08 at 11:07:21 pm

Silobreaker and Glassdoor are two sites that I’ve begun to utilize more frequently lately in an effort to get another angle on competitors.

Glassdoor is good at pulling together some raw subjective opinions about corporate leadership from current employees.

Silobreaker is good at pulling together bits of information (videos, websites, articles, etc) that some other search engines don’t pick up as readily about companies. I’ve found some significant nuggets here lately.

Tracking Competitors

Posted by campsean - 16/07/08 at 11:07:06 pm

Just came across an interesting article that was linked off of the SCIP News page.

One of the points made is that you need to make sure you look who your competitors are looking to hire as well as more traditional means of intelligence gathering.

For small and medium sized companies the job descriptions themselves can many times provide a level of interesting intelligence about future plans.

Welcome to the Home Page of SCIP’s Oregon Chapter…

Posted by campsean - 15/07/08 at 12:07:24 am

Welcome to the home page for SCIP’s Oregon Chapter. Here you’ll find information about upcoming events. In addition you’ll find news and information about SCIP and about the Competitive Intelligence Profession in general.

Our first Oregon Chapter meeting will be held in September. More news on that event coming soon.

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