When LexisNexis launches a new product line these days it takes a bit of patience to troll through all of the press releases to get the full picture of their full-featured and complex product offerings. This week's announcement of their new Client Development solutions portfolio is no exception. "Client Development" means the focus is on establishing and growing accounts for legal firms and other professional services companies with a suite of familiar (but now integrated) content and technology products. The Client Development portfolio includes the LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell database of legal professionals and legal services buyers but focuses especially on their InterAction CRM solution that provides relationship intelligence for business development. Now integrated into the InterAction platform is content from their core subscription database via LexisNexis Corporate Intelligence Subscription package and the new LexisNexis AtVantage tool that provides access to prospect lists and filtering tools to help professionals develop marketing campaigns.

This is the most advanced marketing-oriented workflow integration to date from LexisNexis and demonstrates what a challenge it can be to steer a product line traditionally oriented towards subscription database sales to a true productivity tool. There are a lot of moving parts available and it may take a while for clients and their staffs to focus on how all of this works together. But once they can step back and see the sum of the parts it's a pretty impressive array of services that brings together best-of-breed content sources with both workflow tools and access to familiar LexisNexis databases to make productivity gains a reality for aggressive services marketers.

As with the other LexisNexis Total Practice offerings it's about making content services of all kinds pay off for the customer in concrete and measurable ways. While rival Thomson West challenges LexisNexis strongly in the integration of legal content into internal workflows for bottom-line functions, LexisNexis Client Development focuses on developing the top line for their clients in professional services markets with highly specialized content and CRM functions that competitors both horizontal and vertical are lacking in such an integrated form. It bodes well for other content services companies seeking growth opportunities that will come out of looking at content from the perspective of helping clients in specific verticals succeed in their markets as much as in their operations. Now if only they can wrestle these press releases to the ground...