An embodiment of the present invention describes a method and system for using related data from external systems employing incompatible character sets to affect a business process. For one embodiment, a first external system uses a first character set. A first data set is received from the first external system, the first data set using the first character set. The first data set a subset of a second data set. A second external system uses a second character set. A third data set, which is also a subset of the second data set, is received from the second external system, the third data set using the second character set. The first data set and the third data set are converted to use a third character set, the third character set a superset of the first character set and the second character set. The first data set and the third data set are then used to effect one or more business processes. For one embodiment, the third character set is Unicode.