CVS Health, a $402 billion company and the largest Salesforce Agentforce customer in a regulated industry, is deploying AI agents for prior authorization and order status checks. Its deliberately narrow, task-based approach - keeping humans in the loop and focusing on efficiency - offers a blueprint for managers deploying agentic AI.
The partnership with Salesforce's Agentforce Health platform targets the data silos that slow down processes like prior authorization, where patients need insurer approval before filling prescriptions. CVS, which owns Aetna and the Caremark PBM, aims to pull together insurance and pharmacy benefits data more quickly for joint customers. The initial agents focus on giving human contact center agents more personalized customer information during calls.
Use the 'uncool AI' first
Pushpendu Pal, senior vice president and chief digital and technology officer of pharmacy services at CVS, advises peers to start with deterministic, efficiency-focused tasks before moving to generative AI. "My boss always says, 'Use the uncool AI,' where you can very clearly understand the benefits to the consumer," Pal said. "I would start there before getting into a truly generative AI solution [that would] make it self-service, make it more probabilistic, make it leverage the various heuristic models to be able to predict or provide insights."
Discrete tasks, assembled like Lego
Pal also emphasized building agents that perform a limited set of tasks, then connecting them. "The technical environment is changing very fast; we do not know who will be the key players, who will be ahead of the game, six months or 18 months from now," Pal said. "We do not want to create too complex a task within one agent. We'd rather they do a discrete set of tasks - and attach them together very similar to a Lego set - that way we can modify and alter it very quickly, as it comes to end of life." This modular approach avoids technical debt and lets the organization swap out components as the market evolves.
Quick wins build momentum for larger investments
Amit Khanna, senior vice president and general manager of Agentforce Health at Salesforce, echoed the need for early proof of value. "Sometimes they end up picking up the most complex [processes], where they think that the most value would be," Khanna said. "But then it takes time, and you start losing faith. The idea that you should be able to give proof of value quickly is something that all customers should think about. It might be a small win, it might mean just saving you one second - but it's proof that you are moving toward that AI journey rather than doing something that takes 18 months." Even a one-second improvement can demonstrate progress and justify continued investment.
Why this matters for management
The CVS playbook - start small, automate deterministic tasks, keep humans in the loop, and deliver quick wins - provides a repeatable model for any organization exploring agentic AI. Instead of chasing an amorphous "AI transformation," managers can focus on concrete, measurable efficiency gains that build credibility for future, more complex deployments. The discipline of treating agents as replaceable components also protects against vendor lock-in and technical debt as the market matures.
Your membership also unlocks:
