Fighting Cancer with Information "The mission of the American Cancer Society (ACS) is to cure cancer and relieve the pain and suffering caused by this insidious disease," said Zachary Patterson, chief information officer, ACS.

The ACS is a nationwide voluntary health organization dedicated to eliminating cancer as a major health problem by supporting research, education, advocacy, and volunteer service. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with 17 divisions and more than 3,400 local offices throughout the United States, the ACS represents the largest source of private nonprofit cancer research funds in the United States. To support its mission, the ACS must perform exceptionally well in three key areas.

First, it must be able to provide its constituents-more than 2 million volunteers, patients, and donors- with the best information available regarding the prevention, detection, and treatment of cancer. Second, ACS must be able to demonstrate that it acts responsibly with the funds entrusted to it by the public. "Among other things, that means being able to provide exceptional service when someone calls our call center with a question about mammography screening or our latest antismoking campaign," said Terry Music, national vice president for Information Delivery at the ACS.

Third, ACS must be able to secure donations of time and money from its constituent base. Its success in this area is directly related to providing excellent information and service, as well as having an integrated view of its relationship with constituents. "To succeed, we need to understand the full extent of each constituent's relationship with us so we can determine where there might be opportunities to expand that relationship," Music said. The ACS was experiencing many challenges with its current information. "Our call center agents did not know, for example, if a caller was both a donor and a volunteer, or if a caller was volunteering for the society in multiple ways," he said.

"This splintered view made it challenging for American Cancer Society representatives to deliver personalized service and make informed recommendations regarding other opportunities within the society that might interest a caller." The ACS chose to implement a customer relationship management solution to solve its information issues. Critical to the CRM system's success was consolidating information from various databases across the organization to provide a single view of constituents and all information required to serve them. After an evaluation process that included participation from individuals across the organization, the ACS chose Siebel Systems as its CRM solution provider.

The society wanted to work with a company that could address both its immediate needs with a best-in-class e-business solution and its future requirements The Siebel Call Center is specifically designed for the next generation of contact centers, enabling organizations to provide world-class customer service, generate increased revenue, and create a closed-loop information flow seamlessly over multichannel sales, marketing, and customer service operations. Siebel Call Center empowers agents at every level by providing up-to-the-minute information and in-depth customer and product knowledge. This approach enables quick and accurate problem resolution and generates greater relationship opportunities. The ACS has received numerous benefits from the system including:

Increased constituent satisfaction and loyalty by supporting personalized interactions between constituents and cancer information specialists. Improved productivity of cancer information specialists by consolidating all information required to serve constituents into a single view. Increased donations of time and money by helping call center agents identify callers who are likely to be interested in expanding their relationship with the ACS.

Questions

1. How could the ACS's marketing department use operational CRM to strengthen its relationships with its customers?

2. How could the ACS's customer service department use operational CRM to strengthen its relationships with its customers?

3. Review all of the operational CRM technologies and determine which one would add the greatest value to ACS's business.

4. Describe the benefits ACS could gain from using analytical CRM.

5. Summarize SRM and describe how ACS could use it to increase efficiency in its business.