"Best practices" ideas utilized by Nestle companies.(HEADLINE)(Ex-Im Bank's medium-term insurance or loan guarantee for export)

Dwight Anderson, CCE, Credit Analyst for Perrier Group, a subsidiary of Nestle Waters North America, submitted the following "best practice" to Business Credit magazine.

Nestle owns a number of U.S. based companies, each of which has its own credit office that operates in a decentralized operational style. To take advantage of the collective functional expertise at these decentralized credit offices, Nestle offers a message board style credit forum that allows credit employees to post messages and ask questions directed at their peers.

Applications for this message board have been very broad, ranging from asking advice about how to properly prepare and file a reclamation claim, to requests for contact names in various departments at shared customer locations, to simply requesting help with Microsoft Excel and SAP issues. In addition to asking questions, members have contributed helpful credit-related websites, posted key information taken from newspaper articles and industry publications written about common customers of ours, and have shared spreadsheets designed to enhance the speed and efficiency of performing financial statement analysis.

This message board style of format has allowed the Nestle subsidiaries to utilize many of the advantages normally associated with a centralized format (shared expertise, economies ...