All aboard the credit express!(selected topic)

I was recently preparing for an upcoming speech and began to reflect on the direction in which the credit profession is headed. I realized that in the last 25 years of my career I had seen significant changes in our profession ... I also realized that there are outside influences that have the potential to impact our profession in the years to come and to create more change.

I believe change is a good thing, especially if you have a vision, and I do. Webster's defines vision as a thought, concept or object formed by imagination; do we in the credit profession dare to imagine? My vision for credit is aggressive and exciting and I hope to get the credit professionals excited about the enormous opportunity ahead of us.

So what should our vision in credit be for the future? The vision I see for our profession is simply to further credit's exposure in the corporate world, elevating the credit function by increasing the value that companies place on their credit department. One time I had a boss tell me that "... credit is not a science but an art ..." meaning that unlike other professions credit requires more than just knowledge, it requires imagination (vision) to be successful. It also requires study, practice, and while much of credit has to be learned, there is an undefined skill required to be successful that not all possess. We credit professionals should be capitalizing on this ability.

There are three key areas that I feel the credit professional and our NACM organization need to focus on for the future growth of the profession. They are growth of membership, value awareness and strategic alliance. All of these are necessary to take credit to the next level.

You've heard the saying "strength in numbers." Isn't that what our organization is founded on? How many companies operate a credit department in the U.S.? What is the size of the staff total for every company's credit department in the U.S.? Let's compare that number with our membership total. I am told that our national membership total is almost 20,000. Shouldn't our membership goal be for every credit employee or at the very least every company that has a credit department have a representative member of NACM? I have heard over and over again what value NACM is to those involved, yet I wonder why every company does not require several if not all of their staff to be members of our organization. We as members of this organization not only have a responsibility to increase the membership, but will benefit from its growth. The larger the organization, the stronger it becomes and more powerful in furthering our profession.

Along with growth there needs to be involvement or participation. As I stated earlier, we have almost 20,000 members but only about 1,400 full delegates attend NACM's Annual Credit Congress. That's not even 50% and from my experience, attendance at regional conferences is an even smaller percentage. If we as credit professionals do not show value in the conference why would our company? We as members need to participate in our organization, plus insist that there is value in it!

The second key area of focus is value awareness; the simple fact is that people, companies and corporations compensate employees based on what they perceive to be the value of their function. We have all heard the phrase "added value." The credit professional needs to increase the perception of "added value" for our skill. Those in credit need to work towards the goal of letting those outside the credit profession see value in our function. So how do we accomplish this task? The first step is to demonstrate our value inside our own organization and getting our organization to assist outside the organization.