The Future of Credit Management

Is today's credit executive still a vital member of the management team, or an aging dinosaur?

Is today's credit executive still a vital member of the management team, or an aging dinosaur, facing eventual extinction? Your answer may well depend on whether you work in credit or sales. It is my personal and professional opinion that it depends on both individual credit professionals and the profession as a whole.

While I don't want to sound like Chicken Little, running around yelling "the sky is falling!," "the sky is falling!," I do believe we as credit professionals hold the key to our own destiny and that it is up to us to determine our future.

During the past two years, credit professionals have faced some difficult challenges. These challenges included:

• reduction of work forces due to down-sizing, mergers/acquisitions, etc., which force us to do more with less
  
  
• technological advances that often times seem to overwhelm us
  
  
• increased demands for increased revenues and profits, while decreasing losses
  
  
• increased demands and challenges of doing business in rapidly changing global markets

Credit professionals are dealing with these and other challenges daily. And, they must be victorious if they are to survive in the new millennium. They must take the initiative to expand their skills base: learn new computer software for desktop and internet; communications and negotiations; leadership and team building; to embrace the concept of "thinking outside the box" (I prefer the phrase color outside the lines") to develop solutions to meet the ever increasing demands of both internal and external customers - including customer relationship management and the utilization of rapidly evolving technology to improve the operation of your credit department - while reducing costs; web-based electronic order receipt/entry, billing and payment receipt/application, and data imaging and document management.

During my thirty years working in the credit profession, I have concluded that there is really nothing new in credit. The basic, everyday nuts n bolts of credit management have remained the same (and are often boring) within various industries. To me, the real challenge, interest and excitement of our profession comes from the manner in which we accomplish our tasks, the technological tools we can employ and the people with whom we interact in the process.

Think about this for a moment: today's credit professional interacts with and influences more people both inside and outside his or her company than anyone within his or her organization (with the exception perhaps of the CEO). The decisions we make on a daily basis have a positive (or negative) effect on order entry/processing, production, shipping, billing, accounts receivable, collections, payment/application, salesman's commissions and overall revenues/profits. We are policy and decision makers, psychologists, politicians (whether we want to admit it or not), profit makers (losers), negotiators, image builders, diplomats and above all, we are always selling!

What is the future of credit management? You more than anyone else hold the answer to this question. Your future success or failure lies within you. You control your destiny. You can improve your skills base through continuing education activities, learn new technology, become a more effective communicator and negotiator, and "tune in" to rapid domestic and foreign market changes.

Insert your favorite cliche- "Carpe Diem," Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way," " If your not the lead dog, the scenery never changes," or whatever. The future is your decision. You can lead the parade, stand in the road and get run over by it, or sit on the sidewalk and watch it pass you by.

You are the future of credit management.

Reprinted by permission from Trade Vendor Quarterly