The American Cancer Society fights cancer around the world through research, patient support, prevention and treatment information, and other services. Since 1991, the organization has contributed to a 27 percent drop in cancer death rates and helped save more than 2.6 million lives.

As the largest non-profit in the United States dedicated to ending cancer and helping people with the disease, the American Cancer Society is often the first place visited by people who either need support or want to help via donations or volunteerism.

The organization responded to 1.34 million calls and chats and its website received 106 million page visits, according to its 2017 annual report.

With so many people coming to the Society’s website and a refresh of the website design underway, it was the right time to improve the customer experience and manage interactions with website visitors with a single sign-on, according to Paulette Carter, senior director of Customer Experiences and Integration at the American Cancer Society.

The Society also wanted to make sure it could best serve these visitors based on their interests, activities, and ways of interacting with the site.

“We needed an enterprise solution for customer authentication and management that could scale to accommodate our millions of users, and we knew traditional solutions were not the answer,” said Carter. “We made a conscious business decision to move to SAP Customer Data Cloud because of its ease of use.”

Part of the SAP C/4HANA suite, SAP Customer Data Cloud provides single sign-on functionality for constituents, allowing them to register seamlessly using their preferred social network accounts. The SAP Customer Identity solution, part of SAP Customer Data Cloud, then consolidates relevant information to allow quality customer service across the Society’s programs and domains. The charity uses the solutions on its main website and Relay for Life community websites, which support the organization’s primary fundraising activity.

Looking ahead, Carter says that the American Cancer Society wants to deliver personalized content and information to people, while protecting their personal data. With the system based on SAP C/4HANA, the organization will be able to provide relevant information to people – whether they are patients, volunteers, or donors.

But for now, the Society is focused improving website visitors’ experience.

“With 1.5 million volunteers, we depend on SAP Customer Data Cloud as the critical front-end registration piece to our sites,” says Carter. “Our visitors are fighting cancer: They shouldn’t struggle with site sign-on.”