NCI Analytics Strategy

Overview

Challenge

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is the nation’s leader in cancer research and cancer health information. With many divisions, offices and centers that develop content for site visitors – which include cancer patients, healthcare professionals, researchers and the research community, policy makers, stakeholders and the media – it is important for the organization to leverage data to inform optimization decisions that impact site experiences and the ability to find and access cancer information across NCI’s digital ecosystem.

NCI engaged Concord to help audit their current analytics processes, tools and capabilities with the goal of creating a measurement framework that would enable NCI to operationalize data into the planning and decision-making process.

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Solution

Concord conducted over 30 stakeholder interview sessions and led workshops with NCI leadership team members to guide the development of:

A DATA-informed analytics process which documents project lifecycle inputs, roles and responsibilities throughout each step, and the analytics outcomes and deliverables associated with each phase of the process. With this roadmap defined, stakeholders know how and when to engage with the analytics organization so that data can be influential in planning decisions.
A four-part Measurement Framework that provides consistent focus on what NCI wants to monitor and measure in context to digital strategies and institutional goals. This Framework has also served as a strategic reference for what analytics tools and capabilities are needed to collect the right data needed to understand performance against plan.
A Cancer.gov Measurement Plan that clearly articulates objectives, key performance indicators and contextual metrics for content designed to support the information needs of multiple audiences visiting the website.

In addition to measurement strategy and planning, Concord also provided technical implementation support of Adobe Analytics via Dynamic Tag Management (now Adobe Launch) to ensure quality data is collected and accessible for reporting and analysis activities.

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Results

The National Cancer Institute’s communications team has a repeatable “DATA-informed” process and Measurement Framework that is scalable and used across project initiatives. The process has increased efficiencies for staff resources and the Measurement Framework has resulted in shared vision across NCI OCPL leadership with alignment on Cancer.gov goals and priority success metrics that are evaluated to understand performance and levers for optimization efforts.

"We are fortunate to have found a partner with the breadth of analytics expertise that has helped us in many ways. They are helping us bring our outcome measurement framework to life by aligning our data, evaluating our systems, evolving our reporting, and identifying opportunities for optimization."

– Susana Eshleman, CEO of Children International

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