The first step in ensuring the success of any CRM initiative is to closely examine the business data used within the system. These are the details that help to pinpoint qualified prospects, cross-sell more effectively and extend relationships across multiple buying groups more easily. Such current business information about your customers typically resides not in your CRM system but in external databases -- such as SEC filings, press releases, news coverage, trade press articles, industry reviews and analyst reports. In order to create a complete profile of customers and prospects, companies must be able to link their CRM systems with high-quality external business information.

The complexities involved in integrating disparate external sources into often monolithic CRM systems, however, have made practical implementations an often unreachable goal. Although external information can be added manually to a CRM system, this approach is simply too costly and delivers only a short-term solution to an ongoing problem. Many enterprises have developed custom-built interfaces to combine various data feeds into their CRM applications but have struggled to maintain these links over time, especially when many external content sources are being accessed.

Web services and XML, and well-supported XML standards such as XBRL, provide a solution to this problem, allowing companies to integrate high-quality data directly into their CRM systems. There are many advantages to this approach, including the following:

• Speed of development and update: With near-universal support from major CRM vendors, XML and Web services allow for rapid integration of external information into a CRM system. This makes it easy to present external data that is most relevant to an individual functional group or business operation, in context with internal data. Most important, integration can occur behind the scenes, with automatic updating of account profiles, financial models, credit-scoring applications or any other form or document, reducing the risk of errors caused by manual data entry.

• Consistent data presentation: Incorporating external data within existing CRM applications ensures that data is displayed in a consistent and familiar format, thereby minimizing unproductive research, improving productivity and allowing end users to rely routinely on a single application with consistent field placement for critical pieces of data. Users can then receive a richer display of relevant business information within the CRM application, including news stories, current financial data, industry trends, updated executive biographies and detailed corporate family information. The importance of consistent display extends beyond applications to custom reports, presentations and even individual forms. Automatic data integration makes it extremely easy to update regular reports, sales presentations, company profiles, risk analysis worksheets, financial comparisons and any other material.

• Information-driven triggering: Integrated data offers far more than just formatting advantages. Once external information is incorporated within enterprise applications, it can be used to trigger alerts that drive specific business actions. An alert can be as simple as notification of a recent corporate announcement or as complex as an elaborate financial simulation that immediately integrates new financial results. Overall, alerts ensure that users receive the information they need to do their jobs effectively. Additionally, since XML is device-independent, information and alerts can appear on any platform, including a desktop PC, a wireless phone or a PDA.

• The business information taxonomy: While XML and Web services can play a critical role in integrating external data into a CRM, the task of correctly matching external data with internal records usually requires a level of expertise and supporting tools not often found inside the corporation. This is leading many companies to seek comprehensive business-information solutions that provide all of the tools and services to integrate internal and external data within CRM systems.

In choosing such a business information solution, you should carefully evaluate a number of factors, including the range and quality of information provided, the experience and expertise of the information vendor and, perhaps most important, the vendor''s business information taxonomy. Taxonomies provide the framework for classifying, organizing and integrating a wide range of critical business information and ensuring that it gets associated with the correct business entity within a CRM. For example, a commercial bank would want to ensure that its relationship managers are able to access detailed financial data (available in the form of SEC filings) about each client directly through the bank''s CRM system in order to evaluate credit-worthiness. If the SEC filings are not correctly associated with each client, the evaluations will obviously not be correct.

The challenge is that taxonomy solutions are generally limited to a single approach: highly structured data (like ZIP codes and Standard Industrial Classification codes) or unstructured text documents (such as news articles, press announcements and analyst reports). The unstructured taxonomies run deep on business and topic terms but don''t perform well for tagging companies -- the key entity to a customer-focused application. The structured taxonomies are typically too narrow in focus and don''t cover the universe of information required for customer-facing processes. When outsourcing data integration projects, look for solutions offering a classification system that efficiently organizes both structured and unstructured content.

Simply stated, you need to employ the highest level of market intelligence available if you want to get the maximum value from your CRM investment. By using Web services and XML, in conjunction with a trusted provider of business information, a company can seamlessly integrate internal and external data to provide complete snapshots of their customers, prospects and competitors, which in turn will create new opportunities and precisely target high-value prospects.

About the author: Mark Israel is chief software architect at OneSource Information Services Inc. in Concord, Massachusetts.