Tag: Best Practices

Studying for an exam can be stressful, no matter how detailed your notes are. As designation seekers sit for exams next month as part of NACM and FCIB’s Professional Certification Programs, it’s important to build and refine study habits that not only help prepare for the exam, but also ease anxieties.

In a field like credit management, it’s easy to let stress grow out of control as you face an ever-growing to-do list. When it feels like your workload is increasing with each passing day, it is important to develop habits that help you manage stress before it grows out of control.

After years spent learning the ins and outs of credit management, many professionals will find themselves entering management roles. Whether you’ve been promoted or you’re starting at a new company, it can be intimidating to lead a credit team for the first time.

There is an art to communication in credit management. With a wide, diverse customer base, credit professionals cater to unique, distinctive needs with each account they serve. From the big businesses to the mom and pop shops, it is critical to determine the best way to reach your customer to ensure that you’re on top of their changing needs and aware of any issues that could change their risk profile.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of security rules regulating how businesses store, process and transmit cardholder information and other sensitive information to protect users’ privacy. Major card brands banded together to form PCI DSS in 2004 following a rise in fraud coinciding with the popularization of e-commerce spaces.

Within their companies, there are few departments the credit team works with as closely as they do sales. The departments are intrinsically linked, with one department making the sales and the other carefully mitigating the risk posed by each transaction. While the work of a credit manager and a salesperson might not seem similar upon first glance, each perspective can bring value to the other.

When asked about what they do, credit specialists will typically list their core responsibilities: approving credit, managing collections and assessing risk. But behind these duties, there is a much longer list of skills they develop every day, many of which aren’t reflected in a job description.

When a new customer applies for credit, there is a lot to consider. Only after carefully parsing through financials, credit reports and just about every other piece of information available can a credit manager make a concrete decision on how much credit to extend, or if to extend credit at all.

Nothing represents the ebbs and flows of customer relationships like disputes and deductions. Customers flagging issues and short paying their invoices are to be expected. While it may feel like a hassle for credit managers, it is really an opportunity to examine what is and isn’t working in the order-to-cash cycle.