The Susan G. Komen Foundation
The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation engaged Beaconfire to create an integration strategy for its online constituent data. Through its work for the Komen Race for the Cure and its many other efforts to fight breast cancer, Komen offered a variety of ways for people to get involved online through many different Web-based applications. Beaconfire analyzed the underlying systems to discover the best approach for organizing and exchanging this constituent data in order to improve the online constituent experience and the organization's capacity to manage and analyze cross-system constituent data. The engagement resulted in a clear plan for future projects to improve the system and thereby improve Komen's ability to serve its volunteers, activists, scientists, and other supporters.
The Challenge: Visitors to the Komen Foundation's Web properties had many ways to get involved online. In addition to Komen's flagship Web site, www.komen.org, the organization provided individual sites in support of advocacy, donations, product sales, the National Race for the Cure, and even a "virtual" Race for the Cure. These assorted opportunities for involvement are based on a variety of underlying systems, each with its requisite user profile, preference profile, and transaction history. Constituent users had the "headache" of managing different usernames and passwords for different activities such as shopping, advocacy, or an email subscription. Meanwhile, Komen staff found data analysis and data impossible due the "data silos" created by each system. Komen needed a strategy for integrating the systems to improve the user experience and support internal management and analysis activities.
The Solution: Beaconfire prepared an Integration Strategy that described realistic approaches to integrating the critical data from Komen's family of Web applications. The strategy described two viable options for Komen to consider. Each option included detailed diagrams of the proposed technical architecture illustrating how the varying applications would interact. Beaconfire described each option's benefits and risks as well as the impact to the organization's existing people and processes.
Both approaches would enable Komen to:
- Enhance constituent experience sharing key constituent data among systems;
- Integrate and mine data for business insights into constituent relationships and coordinated, targeted communications;
- Improve internal processes and decision-making;
- Identify considerations for the integration of future systems.
With the strategy in hand, Komen had a business case supporting the needs for and benefits of integration, a clear path forward, as well an appropriate figures to include in their technology planning budget.