Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC)
"We think of Axway as our traffic cop - their solutions help us keep data flowing smoothly and securely."
2.7 M
files exchanged securely every month
Accelerates
trading partner onboarding by up to 50%
Delivers
real-time monitoring for B2B data flows
Case study details
HCSC delivers always-on access to quality care
With nearly a century of experience in offering peace of mind for medical care, Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) has 28,000 employees serving more than 23 million people across the U.S. A licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association in five states, the company provides health coverage options for employers large and small, individuals and families, and Medicare and Medicaid plans.
Sharing health data securely and efficiently with Axway
As a key player in the healthcare sector, HCSC works with many partners across the country, including providers, third-party administrators, clearinghouses, and more. In total, the company has relationships with 8,200 trading partners — and the ability to share information securely is a key business requirement.
Corey Wegele, Senior Manager Security Platform Management at Health Care Service Corporation, says, “Most if not all of our workflows depend on B2B integration. In total, we exchange around 2.7 million messages every month, with significant peaks during the open enrollment period.”
In the past, responsibility for managing and maintaining B2B integration capabilities at HCSC were distributed across the organization. However, as the company grew, this siloed approach increased cost, complexity and the risk of unplanned downtime.
Mike Crowley, Director Security Platform Ops, Health Care Service Corporation, says, “If our B2B integration platforms went offline, we would be unable to pay claims, and patients may be unable to receive the care they need promptly. It’s not just our reputation that’s at stake; high availability is also important to meet the regulatory requirements of each of the states we operate in.”
To facilitate ongoing growth, HCSC decided to replace siloed B2B integration tools with a single, centralized platform. As well as ensuring high availability, the aim was to accelerate key processes such as trading partner onboarding and lay the foundation for employee self-service capabilities.
Adopting a centralized solution
After evaluating integration platforms from several leading vendors, HCSC selected Axway B2Bi as its single point of control for mission-critical B2B transfers.
“Instead of depending on multiple tools, Axway gives us a single pane of glass, providing much better visibility and efficiency,” says Wegele. “In addition, we can monitor all transactions and events in real time using Axway Sentinel.”
Since it first deployed Axway B2Bi, HCSC has also engaged Axway Professional Services to provide support and guidance. Wegele adds, “Every time I’ve worked with Axway Professional Services during upgrades, the experience has been exemplary. The team is readily available to field questions and calls, and whenever we encounter issues, we trust Axway to help us resolve them quickly.”
Protecting internal file transfers
To bring the same level of control and security to internal file transfers, HCSC uses Axway Transfer CFT. With Transfer CFT, the company can manage application-to-application file transfers from a central control center.
“We saw a big opportunity to strengthen our security posture by offering a more secure approach to file transfer in the business — especially for user groups that didn’t have any other compliant method of transport at the time,” Wegele comments. “Today, we have 30 installations of Axway Transfer CFT to support internal transfers to various different internal business locations.”
Accelerating partner onboarding
Each year, HCSC onboards approximately 1,500 trading partners, and a third of those onboarding requests arrive during the open enrollment period, which lasts just a few weeks. With Axway B2Bi, the company has eliminated the need to manually configure multiple applications during the onboarding process.
“Our trading partners come in all shapes and sizes — from small entities with a few employees to enterprises as large as ourselves,” explains Wegele. “With a central platform for B2B integration, it’s now much more efficient to set up new connections. In the time we’ve used Axway B2Bi, we’ve cut average onboarding times from around one month to just two weeks, a reduction of 50 percent.”
Enabling rapid business growth
With B2B integration and file transfer solutions from Axway, HCSC can support ongoing growth.
“In the last year, we’ve seen monthly transaction volumes on Axway B2Bi double, with a peak of over 4.5 million messages during the last open enrollment period,” says Wegele. “As the business grows and we bring more internal user groups onto the Axway platform, we predict our volumes will continue to rise. Axway B2Bi gives us a scalable and secure platform to accommodate our growth for the long term.”
Crowley adds, “Axway B2Bi is a very powerful solution — it’s done everything we’ve ever asked of it.”
Ensuring high availability
With a highly available integration platform backed by real-time monitoring from Axway Sentinel, B2B teams at HCSC can spend less time on manual management tasks and more time assisting the business. “When our users send a file with Axway B2Bi, they know it’s going to be delivered,” explains Wegele. “And with Sentinel, we can provide users with a dashboard to monitor the transfer themselves.”
Crowley comments, “Through our work with Axway, we’ve built a resilient B2B integration infrastructure that helps ensure always-on services and therefore quality care for patients.”
Facilitating regulatory compliance
HCSC operates in a highly regulated industry, which means it is crucial to stay up to date with the latest requirements around security and data governance.
“We are custodians of personally identifiable information, and we need to keep that data safe at rest and in flight,” says Crowley. “Axway gives us secure methods of transport such as SFTP, PGP and AS2, along with quarterly updates to stay current with the latest encryption technologies.”
Preparing for the future
Looking ahead, HCSC plans to further streamline the trading partner onboarding journey by building automated, API-driven workflows.
“The long-term goal is to use APIs in Axway B2Bi to integrate the solution with the tool that our stakeholders use to create trading partner onboarding requests,” explains Wegele. “Users will be able to provide information about the partner in the tool. For straightforward requests, we want to push that data directly into Axway B2Bi and set up the new partner automatically.”
Crowley concludes, “We think of Axway as our traffic cop — their solutions help us keep data flowing smoothly and securely. Our main goal is to spend as much of our time as we can supporting the business, so we’re also very interested in exploring the benefits of the Axway Cloud.”
