Express Scripts' Story, At-a-Glance
Express Scripts by Evernorth operates at massive scale, serving 180 million members and processing 1.4 billion prescriptions each year. To support innovation across software engineering, machine learning, and data science teams, the organization needed faster access to fresh, secure, compliant data. Manual refresh and masking processes made that impossible.
The Challenge: Stagnant & Inefficient Data Processes
A strategic growth division at Express Scripts faced significant data-related obstacles that hindered progress. Their existing processes were slow and resource-intensive, and the organization struggled with:
Stagnant Data: Data refreshes occurred only once per year due to homegrown refresh and masking processes.
Manual Masking: In-house data masking was slow and inefficient. A full refresh and mask cycle taking two weeks.
Development Bottlenecks: Engineering and data teams could not access fresh data on demand.
These challenges made it impossible to keep pace with business demands.
The Solution: Fast, Self-Service Data for Everyone
To overcome slow, manual data processes, Express Scripts by Evernorth implemented Perforce Delphix to automate the delivery of fresh, compliant data across teams. What once required homegrown refresh and masking workflows now happens through fully automated processes that deliver HIPAA‑compliant data on a consistent, predictable cadence. This shift gave software engineering teams immediate access to the data they needed to build and deliver new solutions faster.
As adoption matured, Express Scripts expanded the solution to support machine learning and data science teams focused on monetizing data. With Delphix, teams can self‑serve data on demand, choosing when to refresh, how to use it, and how to manage it.
The Results: Greater Speed, Efficiency, and Innovation
With automated, compliant data delivery in place, teams move faster and work more consistently. Developers and data scientists spend less time on non‑value‑added tasks and more time delivering impact, improving productivity, job satisfaction, and overall velocity.
Request a demo to see for yourself how you can also reap the same benefits with Delphix’s help.
Full Video Transcript
I work at Express Scripts, an EverNorth Health Services company under the Cigna Group umbrella. We supply 1.4 billion prescriptions each year and serve 180 million members across 3,000 clients. That includes two-thirds of the Fortune 50 companies, as well as the top 10 health plans in the US.
For the first 25 years of our existence, we grew rapidly through mergers and acquisitions. We focused on companies that complemented our offerings and quickly integrated their services and systems into our technology footprint.
You should not have to guess how much your healthcare will cost. You should not have to jump through hoops to access it. And you should understand the outcome on the other side whenever you need to engage.
Cross-functional teamwork is critical. No technology team can operate completely autonomously. Delivering value requires collective effort across the organization.
Our initial data consumers were software engineering teams. They need the right data at the right time to develop and deliver new solutions to market. That need is what brought us to Delphix.
As our processes matured, we began to shift focus. Today, we are supporting teams that are monetizing data—machine learning teams and data scientists who need access to fresh, compliant, and secure data on demand.
We are building self-service solutions that give teams control. They decide when they get new data, how they use it, and how they manage it. They can rewind, bookmark, share, and take full advantage of the capabilities the platform provides.
Data compliance is now table stakes. It must be built into every solution—not only to protect the organization, but also to protect the individuals whose data we use for development and testing.
One of the systems we recently onboarded had extremely stagnant data. The team relied on homegrown refresh and data masking processes. The entire refresh and masking cycle took two weeks, so data was refreshed only once a year.
This system supports one of our strategic growth lines of business and represents a high-margin segment. Annual data refreshes were no longer acceptable.
We introduced a solution that delivers fully automated refreshes with 100% HIPAA-compliant (and other regulatory-compliant data), refreshed essentially on a nightly basis. The fact that they had been refreshing data only once a year was eye-opening for the team.
Based on their sprint cycles, we agreed to automate refresh and masking on a monthly cadence. And I expect that within six months, they will want even faster refresh cycles.
I am confident we will be able to meet that demand. Every day, we uncover new use cases. Another team, another system, another business process reaches out and says, “We understand data virtualization. We understand integrated masking. Here is what we are trying to do—can you help?”
And so far, the answer has always been yes.
Once implemented, teams move quickly. The solution is cloud-portable, so when teams develop machine learning models and want to reduce dependency on on-premises infrastructure, we can move data to any major cloud provider. That gives them burst capacity to run models at scale.
The results are clear. Teams move faster. Work is more consistent. People spend less time on non-value-added tasks and more time delivering impact. Job satisfaction improves, productivity increases, and the velocity of teams using these new processes is dramatically higher than teams that adopt them more slowly.
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Ready to make data fast, trusted, and AI-ready? Explore what Delphix can do for your business.