Unifying Ascension’s DevOps Across 150+ Hospitals with Zero Failures

The Challenge

Diagnosis: A DevOps System in Critical Condition

As one of the largest healthcare networks in the U.S., Ascension had a big challenge on their hands: pulling together their scattered Salesforce orgs into a unified, enterprise-wide system. The stakes couldn’t have been higher –– supporting 150+ hospitals while staying airtight on security and compliance.

It wasn’t going to be easy.

“When we started, Ascension had multiple Salesforce orgs, and none of them were connected,” mentions Keith Lee, Platform Technical Manager at Ascension. “Each was for smaller business units that went out and built on their own.”

A clean slate sounded promising. But the challenges came fast:

‍Remote collaboration. Teams from Ascension, Accenture and beyond needed to work together—remotely.

High-stakes compliance. Every deployment carried the weight of protecting sensitive patient data.

Pressure to deliver. Rolling out Salesforce effectively across departments, without the right tools, felt impossible.

‍Need for speed. Ascension had a clear directive: get it done. Managing user stories, deployments and testing across distributed teams was overwhelming.

Something had to change. Enter Copado.
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The Solution

Finding a Cure for DevOps Pains

When Ascension started with Copado, everything just clicked. This wasn’t a patchwork fix. It was a foundation.

Keith put it simply: “Accenture recommended Copado to us because they had previous experience with it. It was an easy sell.”

With Copado, Ascension’s DevOps gained new life:
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• Native Salesforce integration brought seamless customization to match existing change control processes.
• Real-time JIRA syncing ensured every story stayed up to date without manual effort.
• Automated pipelines balanced speed with compliance, enforcing quality gates to block risky deployments.
• Robotic Testing automated end-to-end coverage, reducing test maintenance while accelerating release cycles.

“Since Copado is a native Salesforce application, we were able to customize it to our exact needs. JIRA integration is vital—every story syncs automatically, and we track everything in real time,” explains Keith.

From the very first stand-up, Copado brought order to complexity. DevOps became collaborative, transparent and efficient. Teams could see the entire pipeline—from changes made in JIRA to metadata deployments—all while maintaining full visibility across environments.

No more silos. No more guesswork. Just smarter DevOps that worked exactly the way Ascension needed.
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The Outcome

Flawless Deployments and a Clean Bill of Health

The impact of Copado at Ascension was immediate — and measurable.

‍“We’ve gone three years with Copado, and we’ve had zero failed deployments. Zero rollbacks,” comments Keith. “Over 200 releases, and every single one went live without an issue.”

For a healthcare organization managing sensitive patient data, that’s no small feat.

But Copado didn’t just make deployments smoother. It made them smarter.

Quality gates flagged potential risks before they became problems, saving time and preventing errors. Every deployment ran through compliance checks, peer reviews and automated testing without breaking stride.

The numbers told the story:
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• 200+ releases annually
• 0 failed deployments in three years
• 4 scrum teams, fully aligned on a shared DevOps pipeline

From real-time JIRA integrations to sandbox synchronization, Copado empowered Ascension’s teams to release faster while ensuring every change met the strictest security requirements.

Keith summed it up perfectly: “It’s faster. It’s smarter. And it works exactly how we need it to.”
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The Future

Building Resilience with Smarter DevOps 

For Ascension, Copado not only solves today’s challenges — it’s shaping their tomorrow.

Keith is clear about what’s next: “The app that Ascension will be launching, the messaging and notifications built into it — all of that will be done through Salesforce, and Copado will be how we build, launch and deploy it.”

With Copado as the backbone, Ascension is preparing for their next big move: integrating Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud to create seamless patient experiences.

And it’s not just about scaling — it’s about freedom. Copado’s flexibility means the DevOps team can focus on innovation instead of firefighting.

“We’re constantly looking for new ways to innovate, to automate more things for other teams and to take time off everyone’s plate, " says Keith. “With Copado, we have the freedom to make that happen.”

And that’s the key.
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