Selecting financially sound customers is an important part of building your business. Here are some excellent resources for helping you with this task.

Dun & Bradstreet, the benchmark financial analysis company, has made a special research offer to Tech Data customers. As a Tech Data customer, you can get definitive financial information at a substantial discount. While this service is not free, it is inexpensive and a great value.

For information contact Chuck Clifton at Phone: 610-882-7698 Fax: 866-629-6506 or cliftonc@dnb.com or visit www.techdata.com/D&B.

Hoover's Online is a corporate research site that maintains "capsules" on over 13,500 public and private companies worldwide. They also offer more extensive information in their "profiles," which cover more than 3,500 of the world's most influential enterprises. Many other services and kinds of information are available. Some are free, but business use of this site requires a license, and fees are negotiated for each user. Trial memberships are also available.

The Partes Corporation's FreeEDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering Analysis and Retrieval) is a free tool for searching the Securities and Exchange Commission's data base of corporate financial information. You can look up company profiles, financial statements, annual and quarterly reports; you can even add a company to your "watchlist" for notification of new filings.

The Credit Research Foundation provides education and data to support the credit functions of its membership. Visit www.crfonline.org for more information.

National Association of Credit Management® was founded in 1896 to promote good laws for sound credit, protect businesses against fraudulent debtors, improve the interchange of credit information, develop better credit practices and methods, and establishes a code of ethics. Visit www.nacm.org for more information.

An Association of Executives in Finance, Credit & International Business enjoys an international reputation as a business educator and premier provider of business credit intelligence to exporting companies of every size from small and midsize manufacturers to Fortune 500 multi-nationals. Visit www.fcibglobal.com for more information.