As described above, we classify the firm’s payment history and creditworthiness as hard information, and the order book situation and general business outlook as soft information. This distinction between hard and soft is largely based on the way the information is generated: the former two factors are mostly based on quantitative information about a firm’s payment history provided by the firm’s suppliers, while the latter two factors are qualitative assessments made by the credit bureaus’ business analysts on the basis of interviews with the firm management, onsite visits, and additional written information provided by the firm.