Let me share with you an IBM research project I discovered today at IOD 2007. It's called Linkage Discovery and will perhaps be the missing list between your existing CRM system and all the valuable unstructured data you collect every day about your customers. This is the real Business Intelligence...

Every day you receive thousands of emails from customers who don't really like all the structured data you need to identify their needs like customer number, transaction reference, product code... Without modifying any part of your IT system, Linkage Discovery will just intercept all email, IM and other text messages. The software will connect in real time to databases of your company and document the message received from the customer. If your customer send a message just saying «My name is John Smith and I ordered last week a DVD player and didn't receive it yet» the software will search in the database all orders from a John Smith placed last week; will add customer ID, transaction ID and all necessary information before giving the hand back to your email management system which will forward the request to an operator. It will even be able to «understand» the content and create information about the sentiment of your customer.
Much better the same system is actually on test with live audio conversation from call centers. Running during the first seconds of the call the software identify the customers with the first words he will say on the phone «Hi, I'm John Smith. I ordered a DVD last week and have not yet received it» In real time the operator will receive on his screen all the structured information available about the customers.
And of course all these unstructured data like emails or phone calls will be saved in the database for future purpose. These associations between emails or voice conversation and structured data from the IT system will be available for traditional BI tools.
Who are your Platinum customers who contacted yesterday your customer service to complain? Tomorrow you will be able to have this report on your desk every morning.