Meet Robert (Bob) Noyes: vice president of credit, BMG Music.

Bob Noyes was introduced to the credit profession by working in consumer loans for a bank. Part of his responsibilities included collecting/resolving delinquent loans. "Trust me", he says, "commercial credit is much more fun and interesting!" Bob has been a member of NACM throughout his career.

Bob graduated from Colby College with a degree in Administrative Science; Colby College is a small, well respected, liberal arts college in Maine. He started a Master's Degree program on two different occasions but, with several relocations and two children, never was able to complete that process. Bob says that it's interesting that with all the business courses he took in college, none of them really focused on working capital management or stressed just how important this aspect of business really is! (He wonders if this has changed at all, and says if it has not, it certainly is understandable why so few people ultimately take the risk to become entrepreneurs!)

"Interestingly", he says (and I think most of us would agree with him), "the credit profession is one of those professions that very few people, if any, wake up one morning, look in the mirror and say,'When I grow up, I want to be a Credit Manager!' Most of us just happened to be in the right place at the right time." Thus, with no formal training in credit management, Bob and many others like him in the field of credit have turned to NACM and its sister company, CRF, for two things: education (including domestic, international, financial and legal) and networking opportunities, in order to learn the best-in-class from their peers.

In addition, Bob says that he has tried to take advantage of the annual credit conferences to expand his networking and to stay abreast of changes in the credit area. "I have attended NACM's Graduate School and taken other courses to better fine-tune the tools of my trade", he says. "However, I really believe the most important thing that NACM has given me is the contacts and friends I have made over the years. Had I not been part of NACM, I doubt many of those contacts would have ever happened."

Bob has worked in the credit field about 26 years, if you include a short stint in consumer credit. The bulk of his credit career has been spent working for Fortune 500 apparel companies. The past six years however, have been in the music business. Outside of the credit field he has run a wholesale company, worked in retail and dabbled in real estate.

When asked what the differences and/or similarities are between the types of issues he's encountered in those businesses, he says that there are more issues in common than not. However, he noted, there are a couple of glaring differences. First, in the apparel business, he says they serviced literally thousands of accounts--while in the music business, his current domain, they only have 1200-1500 accounts to which they sell direct. This smaller accounts base, assuming an equal volume, results in a much higher concentration of receivables and thus, a much higher potential loss with a single account. As a result, in the music business, there is a greater focus on risk management.

Second, he stated that in the music business there are only five major suppliers of pre-recorded music. In the aggregate these five represent over 80 percent of pre-recorded music sales. In the apparel business, they were one of scores of other apparel manufacturers servicing retail. The significance of this is the increased leverage music suppliers have in negotiating with retailers.