Best Way to Trigger an Import with a URL

Issue Summary

I'm wondering if there is support for triggering a preconfigured import from a URL. I have an external process which generates a collection of HTML files which are then passed to the Import HTML module, and our current process requires someone to load the Import HTML page and trigger an Import. It was hoping to be able to trigger an import from an external system. Is there any way to automate this process?

If there isn't, what would be the best place to start looking if I were thinking of adding the ability to trigger a batch process from an external system.