Today’s business environment is increasingly global. Few firms are completely immune to the effects of globalization—even if you’re not operating globally in a direct sense, there’s a good chance that some of your customers are, not to mention your competition. Add global outsourcing into the mix, and the fact that money is flowing more freely across borders and currencies, and it’s clear that business is linked across the globe like never before, especially in a leading-edge industry such as financial services.

Unfortunately, just because business is global doesn’t mean it is seamless. In fact, as businesses have globalized, acquiring and merging and expanding in multiple directions, it’s possible that as many new challenges have been introduced as advantages. While strides are being made, many firms are still some distance from attaining their ultimate global vision.

With a dizzying array of global stakeholders to please and issues to tackle, it’s easy to lose sight of the enduring center of the business universe: the customer. Client relationship management may not be at the top of every firm’s globalization projects, but it should be. Not only can effective CRM deployment alleviate some of the pains of globalization—it can also heighten its benefits.

Global Companies Need Global Perspective
Technology is simultaneously a stumbling block and an enabler in achieving global goals. As different regions and firms come together, they bring with them a confusing assortment of incompatible legacy systems and processes. This multiplies the number of data silos across the company dramatically, making it harder than ever to get a clear picture of any aspect of the business.

The problem is that the more global the company, the more critical the need for this comprehensive view. While global markets and economies are interconnected, they are also unique—a downturn in one region may be offset by a boom in another one, for example. To take advantage of this diversity for the greater health of the firm, executives need to be able to make informed decisions based on accurate, complete data at both the macro- and micro-levels, spotting and pursuing global and regional opportunities and allocating budgets and resources accordingly.

Seizing the Opportunities
When it comes to customers, a meaningful and thorough view is essential to understanding the global picture and identifying its opportunities. One arm of the firm may have customer intelligence, but if other parts of the firm are entirely unaware of it, the value to the firm as a whole is severely limited. Similarly, the same company or individual may be a low-value customer to one part of a financial services firm but a tier-1 customer to another part of the firm. If the firm’s employees are unaware of the other relationships, they may unwittingly place the business relationship in jeopardy by failing to deliver a sufficient level of service in one area. At the same time, they may miss out on an opportunity to deepen the value of the customer relationship in the underperforming area.

Smart financial services firms can use globalization to get closer to their customers and increase their loyalty and profitability. Breaking down data silos by deploying CRM systems that span the globe and different lines of business, they can aggregate customer and prospect data to significantly increase market intelligence worldwide. With an in-depth global view of customer relationships, a firm can see and leverage existing regional or business-line relationships to establish new relationships in additional regions or business lines. Meanwhile, executives at the top level can get a true picture of the value of a customer to the firm—not one fragmented across regions and lines of business.

From Global Confusion to Global Collaboration
As a company expands globally, economies of scale should ideally be created. Unfortunately, the reality is that just as often, it creates redundancies, overlap, and counterproductive efforts, all because the right hand can’t see what the left hand is doing. Companies can wind up sending mixed messages to customers and prospects and taking actions that are at odds with each other, such as overlapping sales calls into the same accounts for different products or regions. This is not only embarrassing and inefficient—it puts business and brand integrity at risk.

The companies that will benefit most from the global business environment are those that learn to break down barriers. Fighting tendencies towards territoriality, they will implement a corporate culture and supporting systems that promote collaboration, not competition. Teams that are able to easily identify and leverage knowledge, skills, and relationships in other geographies and lines of business will have greater success up-selling, cross-selling, and deepening their value to and connection with their customers. This is only truly possible, however, with a CRM infrastructure that provides a holistic global view, a thorough record of all customer interactions—worldwide and across business lines—and workflow tools that promote consistent, collaborative account activity.

Think Globally, Act Locally
If this sounds almost too good to be true, it’s because it may appear to paint too homogeneous a picture of worldwide business dealings. But in fact, the ability to support heterogeneity is fundamental to the success of a global vision.

Beyond the obvious technical challenges of infrastructure and integration, the problem with trying to unify and standardize across regions and lines of business is that there are significant—and important—differences in the ways disparate regions and lines of business operate. From language to currency to regulatory requirements to cultural nuance, total uniformity is impossible and would in fact put the company at a disadvantage. In addition, some customer information that is necessary to one part of the organization is unethical to share outside of that group.

For this reason, flexibility is perhaps the most critical factor in implementing global IT systems. When looking to share data and support workflows and processes, financial services firms need to look for systems that can model regional and business-line differences while still promoting transparency, collaboration, and aggregation. The ability to support different currencies and languages is imperative, but so is the ability to implement Chinese walls, support different regulatory requirements and sales processes, and protect client privacy. Without this flexibility, firms risk implementing systems that achieve buy-in in some regions or lines of business but total rejection in others, counteracting the potential benefits of a holistic view.

The global view always needs to be accompanied by the local view. It needs to facilitate global insight for executives at the top level but also day-to-day local actions by individual staff members. Local relevance and sensitivity will be the ultimate determinants of broad user adoption.

World-Wide and World-Wise
The size and complexity of global business can be mind-boggling, but the fundamentals remain the same. On the global level, as on the local one, knowledge is power and the customer reigns supreme. Understanding how to scale these concepts to the global level and take advantage of the inherent opportunities is critical to maximizing the benefits of this new business reality. But don’t let the magnitude of global business fool you: at its heart, global business is still all about individual customers and your relationships with them. Keep your focus on this, and the world’s your oyster.