A tool for all the right reasons.

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The brisk fall days of 2006, before the U.S. housing market started to deflate, seem like ancient history. So do the sunny days of early summer 2007, before the collapse of two Bear Stearns-managed hedge funds, which marked the beginning of the "credit crisis."

At the moment, there seems to be no shortage of nightmares, real or imagined, haunting the U.S. economy. The looming possibility of a recession, the global credit crunch, payroll losses, rising food and energy costs and the reverberations of the sinking housing market have pounded the nation's confidence with body blows. The Federal Reserve Board has been aggressively slashing interest rates, trying to hack away at some of the volatility and reignite investor confidence. In the mainstream media's complete 24/7 coverage, there's a foreboding sense that the economy is waiting for that inevitable knockout punch.

For businesses, all of this has resulted in a shared tension as credit lending standards have tightened and the use of available lines of credit has slowed down. Both sides of the field have become wary of what's over the next horizon, content to play it conservatively. But despite the doomsayers and overall unease, partnerships continue and business moves forward, as it always does. Even without the economic backdrop, if orders were slowing or new accounts weren't coming in as fast they should, it wouldn't stop a CFO from reminding their firm that there were revenue objectives that needed to be met, and pushing staff members to ensure that they were.

With an onus on the health of the economy, and as businesses have been forced to streamline processes while increasing output, tools like business credit scoring have stepped into the forefront. NACM Affiliates and a host of other companies offer a range of credit scoring products and services, which are customizable and flexible, bending to a specific credit department's needs.

"As the economy slows, it becomes more important to accurately determine the risk of the customer base" said Michael Banasiak, president and CEO of PredictiveMetrics, Inc., who will present "Driving Collection Results With Portfolio Scoring" at NACM's Credit Congress in May. "Technology that provides updates to scores on a monthly basis will be used to better understand and stay ahead of the curve of changing risk. CFOs and credit managers will want to better monitor their portfolio risk, because credit and collection risk affects the company's cash flow."

This thought is echoed by others in the industry.