Veeva Creator Series interview with Mark Johnson: Providing the 360-Degree View Customers Have Always Wanted

The Veeva Creator Series is a regularly published series of interviews with Veeva product leaders and strategists highlighting the backstories to key CRM innovations. This month, we interview Mark Johnson, VP of Product Management, about the Veeva CRM timeline view.

What is the timeline view?

The timeline view is unique way to visualize healthcare provider (HCP) interactions over a given period of time, be it monthly, quarterly or annually. The beauty of the timeline is not only that you can you see all of your interactions in an intuitive manner, but you also more easily see what is NOT happening. Visualizations allow you to fill in those critical gaps that can make all the difference. So, timeline is designed to be a ‘consume-first’ interface rather than your traditional data entry screen that most CRM systems have because it’s what reps really need when they prepare for a call.

Timeline view from Windows device

This concept ties back directly to customer relationship management, which is fundamentally about understanding customers. For CRMs to be effective, reps need access to as much quality information as possible. But just because we can list information doesn’t mean it is consumable for them. Surfacing it in a graphical manner helps address the challenge.

It makes logical sense, if you think about it. After all, the human brain is graphically wired; we see everything in images rather than text. Just think of a child or parent, for instance. It’s not their name that sprang to mind but their image. That is simply how we process information. So, it generally makes sense to display data in a visual manner because it is much more intuitive. This concept is common in social media; Facebook and LinkedIn have already figured this out. At Veeva, we’re the first ones to “consumerize” this type of thinking into the pharma space.

What was the genesis for the timeline?
The timeline view is an example of Veeva’s investment and emphasis on innovation. Customers didn’t overtly come to us and say, “we want a chronological timeline view.” But when we went on rep ride-alongs, we did hear them ask how they could better understand their next interaction. So it was a realization we had out in the field.

There’s a common refrain among customers that they desire a “360-degree view” of the HCP. What they’re really saying is, how can we get the entire organization on the same page? They simply can’t have one rep stop by to drop off samples one week while another rep does the same a week later. With timeline, we recognized that part of the value would be to help the company coordinate better.

Timeline view from iPad

What was the biggest challenge in developing timeline?

Without question, building the right user interface (UI) was the most complex aspect of it. We knew we had to find the balance between delivering the right and the sufficient amount of information. We could have surfaced lots of data from related lists, but it’s simply too much to show. We needed to focus on the valuable information and display it in an intuitive manner. Since the tablet user generally tends to scroll in an ‘up/down’ manner, we let that be our guide.

The problem was that the UI needed to retain its scale – it was a problematic task. We came up with an approach in which we highlighted the thumb nail of the interaction first, and then let the user drill down. Approved Email is a good example. It shows the basic information at a glance, but can be expanded upon for further detail.

What is your big takeaway about the timeline view?
Certainly, we want to think of it as the first place that a rep should be going to. If there’s a scheduled call, they should come to the timeline to review what has been done and what remains outstanding. In the timeline view, the rep can easily see the basic info they need to be successful, such as product metrics, formulary status, etc. The way reps interact with CRM needs to evolve and timeline offers that capability.

The functionality is relatively new and adoption is growing. Customers who are using it understand the value. People are already asking for marketing integration, which tells us that the they’re thinking about how to leverage its full potential. Some have even gone further and inquired about integration of medical information as well. One customer actually commented that “this is the 360-degree view we’ve always wanted.” It’s exciting to have that kind of feedback.

You can see the timeline in action by viewing the Veeva CRM demo video.

About Mark
Mark Johnson is responsible for the Veeva CRM roadmap, product innovation and customer success. He has been with Veeva for over two years and comes from a background of both product management and software engineering. His favorite thing about Veeva is the speed of solution delivery: “Our product roadmap is always ambitious. I love to watch the team execute on it, to make those innovations real for our customers. It’s a constant source of pride for us.”

A senior executive at a biotech firm recently asked if me his staff needed to be logged into Vault all day long while working. The question immediately brought me back to my days in clinical development and the teeth-grinding frustration of logging in and out of a seemingly endless number of systems. “I’d rather see them spend their time doing what they really love. And when they need to document, collect, or search for content and data, they can do it easily and quickly,” I reassured him.

When I was in clinical development, my team and I loved working on the science. We all shared a passion to bring new medicines to patients faster and cheaper, but without compromising safety and quality. Unfortunately, the momentum of our work was often stalled by administrative tasks. Tracking, searching, and logging in and out of systems was an ongoing disruption and not core to our “real work.”

Similar to our biotech customer, our clinical development team back in the day wanted to work in the most efficient way possible and not be burdened by mundane tasks such as manually tracking our work or site content. We wanted to enter information into a system once, use it in a variety of ways, and make it available to others, when and how they needed it. We didn’t want to wait for data and content, but instead have it available when it was created or entered. Ultimately, we wanted to spend as little time, energy, and money as possible pulling information together. We were a group with a lot of demands!

Now imagine how this way of working could impact the study start-up process. Create and finalize an essential document package materials within a single content management platform. Push country-specific tasks and documentation to sites for completion. Manage the workflow through the never-ending maze of country-level intelligence. Push regulatory submissions documents to the right individuals. And finally, document the site interactions in a trip report or site contact log – all through a unified clinical suite without ever logging out of the system. Not only can study teams do their work more efficiently, but senior leaders can also monitor progress in real-time, take actions, and make decisions faster.

Unfortunately, the reality for many life sciences companies is they have a hodge-podge of legacy, disparate technology either acquired or built originally for a different purpose and then loosely integrated, but fundamentally not developed to complement one another. For them, the concept of a unified clinical suite seems like fantasy – a platform that can provide portfolio level metrics, allow organizations to provide adequate sponsor oversight, and enable collaboration with both internal and external stakeholders in a secure and compliant way?

Creating this unified suite is the main objective of the Veeva Vault team – we made tremendous strides over the past year making it a reality. We added Vault CTMS and Vault Study Startup, to complement the industry-leading Vault eTMF as the core of our clinical operations suite. These three applications work seamlessly together, allowing processes to be managed in their entirety and data to be leveraged in multiple places simultaneously.

Life sciences organizations are making the move. Read how inVentiv Health is managing their study start-up processes across Vault Study Startup and Vault eTMF. Watch this short video on how Vault Clinical unifies clinical operations on one platform.

When it comes do master data management, the times are certainly a-changin.’ Listen as Ken Hoang, VP, Strategy, describes how pharma companies can leverage modern techniques to put fresh, accurate customer data straight into reps’ hands, so that can engage faster and more effectively.

Pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies are increasingly adopting cloud platforms to drive effectiveness and efficiency throughout the value chain.  They are unifying applications in the cloud to support the total product lifecycle in a compliant manner without losing sight of what matters most – product quality.

The shift from disconnected point solutions to a platform approach became clear at the Veeva Systems Global Summit for clinical, regulatory, and quality. The platform approach appears to be resonating with life science companies of all sizes. Some of the biggest names in the businesses, as well as start-ups, are taking advantage of Veeva Vault’s suite of 12 applications to support a single source of truth from research and development (R&D) through commercialization. 

Unifying applications onto a single cloud platform enable companies to support compliant collaboration and streamline workflows – internally and with external partners – while gaining greater visibility, effectiveness, and efficiency. It also provides a single source of truth for all parties strengthening data integrity.

You can read more here on the key takeaways from the Veeva Summit.

Author: Sandra K. Rodriguez, Market Analyst, Axendia. Learn more about Axendia here.

Those of us of a certain age will remember this famous scene from Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark. Dr. Jones finally finds the Golden Idol after searching tirelessly for it. He grabs the Golden Idol off its pedestal in the temple and quickly replaces it with a bag of sand to thwart the intricate system of booby traps rigged to eliminate anyone brave (or stupid) enough to remove it from its perch. Dr. Jones breathes a momentary sigh of relief – his plan has worked! He holds the Golden Idol and will live to tell about it. Not so fast…his actions have unleashed a series of events, most notably being “chased” out of the temple by a rolling boulder. Indy sprints to stay ahead of the boulder as it picks up speed and gets closer to overtaking him, eventually tumbling out of the temple onto the jungle floor ready to face his next dilemma.

Do you feel a bit like Indiana Jones in this iconic scene as you develop, review, approve, and manage promotional content in the life sciences industry? Hopefully you are not dodging booby traps and outrunning boulders but I can imagine you are constantly trying to find the “Golden Idol” to help you connect with your customers and maintain pace with a dynamic regulatory environment to keep your organization out of harm’s way.

Digital Content as the Golden Idol

We’ve all heard the famous phrase “Content is King.” Content drives customer interactions or experiences. But not all content is created equal. The rise of digital content and the richness it adds to customer interactions and experiences may lead us to say “Digital Content is King.” Accenture recently published data from their 2016 The State of Content Survey for Life Sciences that speaks directly to the impact of the rise of digital content. Seventy eight percent of marketers in pharma and biotech and 95% of marketers in medical technology say their organization is producing a moderate to enormous amount of digital content and assets. Ninety three percent of pharma and biotech respondents and 100% of the respondents from med tech say the volume of digital content and assets is higher today than it was two years ago and only see it increasing in the coming years. Digital content allows you to deliver marketing campaigns in a richer, more interactive way, hopefully creating a stronger connection with your brand or your organization.

Have you thought of the potential booby traps before you snatch that golden idol?

Uncovering Your Booby Traps
An operational health check can help you assess potential gaps in your organization that are necessary to support an increase in marketing with digital content.

Strategy: Alignment between marketing and commercial operations is critical to ensure the necessary capabilities and/or resources are in place to support the success of your dynamic marketing plans.

Technology: Consider the technology you have in place to support your organization’s content and marketing plan. Does your technology assist with compliance? Can you share and reuse assets globally?

Process Efficiency: Do you have the appropriate processes in place to support the dynamic content and digital media that is more predominant in your organization today?

Asset Management: What processes and solutions do you have to manage your assets? Can you access assets internally? Can assets be shared across regions?

Claims Management: Is your team trained on claims language and the correct way to use claims language?

Content Withdrawal: Do you have the appropriate controls for content that has expired or is out of compliance? Is there a process for assessing where that content lives and can you quickly withdrawal content?

Reporting and Governance: Perhaps the single most important discussion is around governance and where this ownership lies in your organization. Determine who owns the process in your organization and clearly define roles and responsibilities.

Use this checklist as a guide to evaluate the health of your operations and identify areas for improvement as it relates to your digital content management and compliance processes.

Outrunning the Boulder

Marketers in your organization have probably already begun to tap into the powers of digital content as they look to make deeper connections with your customers. Much like removing the golden idol from its pedestal, the growing use of digital content unleashes a series of events on life sciences organizations. Accenture touched on this phenomenon in their survey findings as well. Ninety seven percent of pharma and biotech and 92% of medical technology organizations spend more time managing the operational details of content management than actually using the content for marketing. Eighty two percent of pharma and biotech respondents and 85% of the respondents from med tech say they spend more time managing the operational details than two years ago and only see it increasing in the coming years. An organization that spends more time managing the operational details of content management clearly can’t reap all the rewards of great digital content.

What operational pitfalls may be lurking around the corner?

Answering these questions (and some others) may keep you out in front of the boulders gaining speed in your organizations.

Learn more tips for managing digital content, and hear Tom Denaro, Director of Corporate Regulatory Global Systems describe how Becton, Dickinson and Company reduced their review through approval cycle time from 4.2 months to 17 days. Watch the webinar here.

The landscape of healthcare stakeholders is more complex. Increasingly, effective engagement depends on collaboration across medical, sales, and marketing teams. Here are best practices toward a more coordinated, better healthcare stakeholder experience.

As pharma has evolved, a growing ecosystem of healthcare stakeholders with varied needs and points of view is changing the way life sciences companies go to market. These stakeholders – including key opinion leaders, regulators, payers, and patient advocates – are numerous, multifaceted, and active across any number of channels.

Fifty-one percent of physicians are digitally native¹ – and 67% prefer digital access to information about pharmaceutical products.² However, fewer healthcare stakeholders today trust pharmaceutical companies to provide that information. Two thirds of millennial physicians – currently the largest share of the US workforce³ – don’t trust information provided by pharma to be fair and balanced.

As a result, the industry is making structural shifts to build credibility and reestablish itself as a trusted source of scientific information. One of the most notable changes has been the rise of medical affairs as a function focused on engagement with this complex network of stakeholders. Traditionally, this responsibility rested exclusively with commercial teams. But shifting pipelines, now focused largely on compounds designed to treat rare diseases, has led to a need for more specialized information on the science behind life sciences’ products, which medical affairs is uniquely positioned to provide.

Now, multiple different customer-facing teams are communicating with healthcare. However, these strategies are often uncoordinated, straining stakeholder relationships. Organizational siloes, raised in response to compliance concerns, are impacting many companies’ ability to execute effectively in this complex environment. Often, different arms of the organization are not even aware of one another’s interactions with a given stakeholder. The inability to align on a common customer view and orchestrated strategies within life sciences results in a sub-optimal experience for healthcare stakeholders, who in turn receive inconsistent and fragmented information on pharmaceutical products.

In the wake of these shifts, the life sciences industry has the opportunity to refine scientific engagement by creating a consistent company voice and unified messaging that spans channels and brands. The following best practices offer a path toward overcoming organizational firewalls in order to rebuild trust and enhance the pharma-healthcare dynamic.

Best Practice I: Open Engagement to a Wider Pool of Stakeholders

Traditionally, life sciences focused on a top-tier of global and national academic experts to validate product positioning and speed adoption by HCPs.

The changing world of healthcare decision making, however, means that key opinion leaders now comprise a broader group with different levels of influence. Beyond the top of the pyramid, regional and local physicians are often the first to prescribe new products and deliver feedback that can enhance outcomes research. Local KOLs may also have relationships with an ecosystem of relevant peers, healthcare organizations, or niche patient groups, particularly in rare or orphan disease communities. With more than 560 compounds used to treat rare diseases in development, capitalizing on these connections will be a source of competitive advantage.⁴

The first step to reimagining life sciences’ approach to healthcare is identifying the full spectrum of key stakeholders and creating messages that resonate beyond the traditional KOL. Once done, all customer-facing teams – including commercial, medical, and managed markets – should come together to align on what information is shared in order to best engage this population. One top ten global pharma described this process as “immersion,” noting that gaining a deep dive into each role’s day-to-day processes and goals helped guide decision-making around what data was truly needed to improve execution, and how to allocate resources across the stakeholder network.

Best Practice II: Create a Common Understanding of the Stakeholder

While flooding each group with the other’s proprietary data is not necessary – or even useful – a common understanding of who stakeholders are, and their history with the organization, is foundational to an effective customer experience. Though it is a challenge today, just knowing that an interaction took place – without any sensitive details – can provide a foundation for more informed execution.

For instance, knowing a stakeholder has progressed to the point of engaging in scientific exchange with a MSL can indicate a shift in clinical beliefs. Often, increased interactions with medical affairs can indicate greater affinity with the brand’s value proposition. Visibility to this information enables commercial to refine alignments, excluding high-priority medical stakeholders from broader communications.

Best Practice III: Respond with Aligned Scientific Content

Healthcare stakeholders expect the information pharma shares with them to be consistent, regardless of whether it’s delivered through a rep, MSL, online portal, or call center. Formulating a standardized response to medical inquiries is crucial and has a direct impact on patient outcomes.

Leveraging a single source of truth for medical information helps enable a unified organizational voice and ensure the company’s position on key areas – including critical data points like product dosage, adverse events, and more – is globally consistent. Scientific data, after all, is a global resource that knows no borders, especially in an increasingly global healthcare environment. Leveraging a library of scientific content and answers to product-related questions that’s easily accessible to all teams, across all geographies, vastly improves coordination.

Enabling Stronger Partnership Across Healthcare

The life sciences industry is in the midst of a transformation – unifying teams and strategies around centralized information and harmonized engagement practices. By taking a look at foundational processes and systems, companies can break free from the limitations of previous models in order to deliver the experience healthcare stakeholders have come to expect.

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Learn more:
Whitepaper: Can You Quantify the Success of Your Stakeholder Relationships?

¹ Digital Health Megatrend 9 (Valtech): https://www.valtech.com/siteassets/whitepapers/digital-health-chapters/megatrend_9.pdf

² The Digital Dynamic: Changing the Pharma-Physician Interaction (Capgemini Consulting, 201): https://www.capgemini-consulting.com/blog/accelerating-life-sciences-transformation/2013/11/the-digital-dynamic-changing-the-pharma

³ Millennials pass Gen Xers as the largest generation in the U.S. workforce (Pew Research Center, 2015): http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/11/millennials-surpass-gen-xers-as-the-largest-generation-in-u-s-labor-force/

⁴ More than 560 Medicines in Development for Rare Diseases (PhRMA, 2016): http://www.phrma.org/press-release/phrma-and-the-als-association-report-more-than-560-medicines-in-development-for-rare-diseases

Data is foundational to making better, smarter decisions and getting closer to customers. That’s why 78% of commercial operations teams have a data quality initiative, or will have one in the next two years. Take these essential steps to boost your sales team’s effectiveness with better data.

In the era of personalized medicine and rapid drug innovation, sales and marketing teams are charged with getting more information to more physicians. At the same time, rep access to doctors is changing,¹ and organizations are navigating evolving regulations to stay compliant. As a result, the ability to reach, educate, and inform healthcare professionals (HCPs) is getting more complicated and challenging.

Amid these dynamics, life sciences is focused on improving engagement with HCPs through multiple tools and channels. However, a first step that is critical to success – yet often overlooked – is getting the right data in the right people’s hands to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of pharmaceutical sales teams.

In fact, 87% of respondents in a recent industry survey say they face data quality challenges.² Sales reps often have wrong addresses, don’t know which HCPs to contact, or have outdated data about a physician’s specialty and license status. Consequently, it is estimated that as many as one in 25 sales calls is unsuccessful.³ More importantly, incorrect data leads to compliance risks.

Accurate customer data is essential to increasing sales and marketing efficiency, improving analysis and decision-making, and gaining a complete, real-time view of the customer. When the right customer data flows into a CRM system, sales teams can drive meaningful interactions with HCPs and stay ahead on compliance efforts. For example, accurate specialty data in CRM helps sales reps avoid the potential for off-label detailing.

As a result, three-quarters of life sciences decision makers are prioritizing customer data quality initiatives to operate more effectively in today’s multichannel commercial environment.⁴ A greater emphasis will be placed on data quality to deliver clean, complete, consistent information that the entire company can leverage.

Now is the time to overcome your data limitations. Following are five essentials to improving data quality and achieving greater sales success.

Essential #1: Eliminate the Burden of Data Integration

Many companies “own” integrating their data with their CRM software. Simplified data integration is possible in the cloud, and can remove the burden of data governance and help speed how you serve your sales teams the data they need. This will kick start your engagement efforts and help get the right information to customers through the channels they prefer. Also, avoid duplicating your data efforts by finding ways to consolidate data providers for customer demographic data and compliance data, for example, to get more consistent, accurate information.

Essential #2: Get Proactive on Compliance

Compliance rules are tough to keep up with, especially for busy sales and marketing teams. Put dedicated data resources in place to monitor state and federal changes for you, so that data is ready in advance of any new regulations. This will ensure your data is complete before you need it and safeguard reps against non-compliant activity.

Essential #3: Leverage Expert Data Stewards

Identify an expert data stewardship team that can maintain customer data more effectively, less expensively, and more quickly. Leverage their in-depth processes for continually monitoring your data, analyzing it, making updates, and eliminating data duplication or inconsistencies. Data stewards can deliver the most accurate levels of data quality and timeliness so that reps have the information they need to be effective.

Essential #4: Get Updated Records in Days, Not Weeks

Old data leads to frustrated sales reps, missed opportunities, and an increased compliance risk. Sales teams often work with outdated information, such as physician specialties or information preferences, because data change requests take weeks or months to complete. The standard should be at most three days – less if that is what your business requires. Don’t settle for slow data change requests. When customer information is updated faster, your sales force is more productive and compliant.

Essential #5: Know Your Data Roadmap

Many data quality problems arise due to data vendor limitations.⁵ Understand your vendor’s documented plan for delivering innovation in their data services, such as emerging specialties and new healthcare organizations, so that you can effectively plan and ensure that your data is meeting your current and future requirements. It’s important to make sure that regulatory changes are on the roadmap and that your data provider can deliver in advance of regulatory deadlines.

Get the Most Out of Your Data

Customer data is foundational to developing the correct business strategies and tactics, as well as maintaining regulatory compliance. Good data is key to powering your technology. By taking a hard look at your data now, you can set your sales teams up for success and, most importantly, deliver the right information that HCPs rely on.

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Learn more:
Contact: Request your complementary data health check
News: Industry Survey Reveals Transition Underway to Improve Customer Data Quality
eBook: A Single Source of Customer Data to Optimize Engagement

¹AccessMonitor 2014 (ZS Associates), July 2014
²The Veeva 2016 European Customer Data Survey (Veeva Systems), December 2016
³Veeva internal company estimate.
⁴The Veeva 2016 European Customer Data Survey (Veeva Systems), December 2016
⁵The Veeva 2016 European Customer Data Survey (Veeva Systems), December 2016

The $1.7 trillion life sciences industry has flourished shifting to specialized medicine and innovating more new drugs than ever before. With this success comes increasing complexity. Instead of mass marketing one blockbuster drug to millions of people, companies are now marketing hundreds of new drugs to many different stakeholders.

The ripple effect is a growing need for very specific messaging and content. It’s placing a heavier burden on life sciences companies to educate health care providers and ensure that every patient gets the right information they need for their particular treatment.

Further complicating matters, the commercial digital supply chain, which includes all of the digital capabilities used to deliver compliant messaging and marketing content about new drugs, still relies heavily on multiple, disparate systems to function. While many other industries have long since adapted business processes to fit the digital and mobile landscape, the most massive shift – and significant opportunity – is yet to come for life sciences.

Until a few years ago, companies wouldn’t consider re-engineering their commercial content processes due to the complexities associated with such a highly-regulated industry. But trying to keep pace with a dizzying amount of digital assets, changing customer models, globalization, rising cost pressures, and new regulatory requirements requires a new approach.

Patients and providers expect to interact with life sciences companies the way they want using their preferred channels, whether it be via email, web, phone, or a mobile device. Relying on the old way of doing things might sustain life sciences companies for a few months or even a few years, but eventually a new approach will be needed to scale and keep pace with digital requirements.

Transforming Commercial Through a Digital Supply Chain

Embracing a digital supply chain presents exciting opportunities for the commercial model to become a strategic lever within life sciences businesses. Using a fully-integrated digital approach breaks down silos and enables the most efficient reuse of content. This makes it easier for all of the stakeholders involved to collaborate more effectively, and improves compliance, visibility, and cost savings across the organization. Most of all, it connects customers with rich content in a variety of ways and at the most opportune times throughout the customer journey.

As you begin building your digital supply chain, first evaluate and refresh your processes, organization, and content structure. Once the heavy lifting is accomplished in these three areas, the right digital asset management platform will easily support your new model. Here are key considerations to get started.

Shore-up Processes from Ideation to Production and Distribution

Brand planning and marketing. A fundamental shift in thinking is required to create a new marketing model. Instead of being bound by regulatory constraints, begin with the overall objective in mind. From the onset, view your brand strategy and marketing processes through the lens of the customer journey and the needs from a patient and provider perspective. Customer needs vary widely, ranging from basic disease awareness to detailed study results. You will also want to define specific metrics beyond classic reach and frequency models.

Ultimately, it’s about connecting patients and providers with the right information when they need it and through the channels they prefer. That’s not to say that regulatory requirements won’t come into play, but initially considering all options can spark the creative process, anchoring everything around what’s best for the patient.

Content production and distribution. You will also want to consider how to optimize content production by figuring out when and where to apply the right resources. Different models work for different types of content. Production processes for simple replicable content could be significantly different from sophisticated dynamic content. You’ll also want to integrate best-of-breed review and approval methods across your end-to-end process. Providing this continuity up front improves the efficiency of handoffs, reduces the risk of reviewing the wrong piece of content, and speeds time to market. And don’t forget about distribution. How do you get content to reps and ultimately into the hands of the customer? Most organizations don’t focus enough on distribution.

Set the Organizational Foundation and Plant the Seeds of Change

Organizational structure. As you design an organizational and reporting structure, consider everyone you need to involve to facilitate your new processes. This includes anyone that must touch a digital asset, including marketers, commercial managers, regulatory teams, and agency partners. Then come up with job descriptions that clearly specify digital responsibilities, especially for new roles such as digital content librarians and local champions.

Training. In order to lay groundwork for the new digital environment, it’s essential to establish guidelines, properly educate employees about new digital channels, and agree upon consistent technology terms to use. Once people are ramped up on the details, they can focus more of their time on improving the customer journey.

Digital natives. A very effective change-management strategy is to integrate “digital natives” throughout your culture. In this era of pervasive digital channels, you can harness the proficiency of the next generation of employees that were raised in the digital age. These individuals are already comfortable with technology and can serve as local champions that help motivate and guide other colleagues around the world throughout their digital transition.

Maximize Existing Assets for Efficient Reuse with a Consistent Content Structure

Content templates. The most important element of your digital content structure will be to identify content and create templates that can be reused across customers and regions. Select these assets with the knowledge and confidence that state-of-the-art digital platforms will be able to seamlessly facilitate the repurposing of content in a collaborative, safe, and compliant fashion.

Content chapters. Once you’ve spent quality time identifying key content, you can organize materials under a handful of chapters. The end result is better and more consistent reuse of existing content. Chapters could include efficacy and safety, dosing and administration, pricing, and patient resources. This format will make it easy for stakeholders to quickly select the right material and spend more of their time tailoring the messages to meet the specific requirements for each drug. It also helps new hires and other individuals not as closely involved in particular parts of the supply chain get up to speed more quickly.

Content fragments. Organizing more specific elements within the chapters also helps to ensure that content gets reused. Fragments could include text, images and videos, references (prescribing information), and important safety information. Consider choosing fragments that provide the right amount of detailed, granular information but that don’t require a lot of updating for reuse.

Enable End-to-End Content Management for a Seamless Digital Supply Chain

Enterprise-class cloud software. Now you’re ready to select a digital asset management solution that will underpin your new-and-improved content program. When exploring your options, remember the desired outcomes you want to achieve. These could include streamlined content creation and collaboration, better compliance, effective digital asset management, and faster time to market. Make sure to select an enterprise-grade and end-to-end platform that provides all of the right capabilities to support these priorities.

Solution partner. Your partners should be able to help you lay out a multi-phased implementation plan that includes change management efforts to help groups adapt along the way. Choose a partner that can provide robust domain expertise and support services to help you harness the benefits of your new digital supply chain. This could include everything from ongoing support and industry best practices to specialized services for digital content that can help you evaluate and improve your current strategy and processes.

Gain a Competitive Edge Through Commercial Operations

As companies across the globe increasingly use digital channels to engage their audiences, it’s clear that digital marketing is here to stay. Now is the time for life sciences companies to invest in the digital supply chain so that fully compliant materials are delivered on time and within budget. With all of these efficiencies, key stakeholders will have more time to focus on strategic aspects of their work. Imagine the possibilities for further innovation that could occur as a result!

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Learn more:
Article: Digital Disruption is Coming: Are You Ready?
Article: Claims Management in the Digital Age
Whitepaper: Streamline Your Commercial Content Review Cycle—Sound Appealing?
Infographic: Accelerate Your Global Digital Supply Chain

When software doesn’t work, it makes routine tasks and processes more difficult. Here’s how to turn technology from a barrier to an enabler of your digital business.

We’re living in a software world. As consumers, we expect it to just work. Songs download. A video call is seamless. Food and transportation arrive with a click. In the early days, we tolerated bugs and a less-than-perfect software experience. Not anymore.

So why lower expectations in the office?

The words “enterprise software” often conjure thoughts of complex systems that are clunky, slow, and difficult to use. Instead of the software working for the business, users often work around the software. Multiply that experience across many software applications and the headache can get substantially bigger.

Research shows a consistent majority of business users have significant issues with enterprise software, from insufficient capabilities to applications that don’t meet business requirements.¹ In other words, software-as-a-barrier (SaaB) has become a common model in enterprise software.

SaaB makes routine business tasks and processes more difficult because of technology that doesn’t work well together. It complicates, rather than simplifies. SaaB is in many corners of the enterprise, from human resources to accounting and financial systems to enterprise resource planning.

When software doesn’t work as intended, the business rejects it and people don’t use it. It’s why so many life sciences organizations still resort to spreadsheets to track content, quality changes, regulatory information, and clinical trial data.

Remove SaaB and Help People Focus on the Business

When SaaB is removed, people become empowered. Take the dreaded expense report. Typically, hunting down receipts to create and submit an expense report is burdensome. Expensify changes the entire expense management process with cloud software that automatically tracks expenses in real time. Every time a credit card or debit transaction is made, it shows up in Expensify. No more attaching paper receipts to a hardcopy expense report or struggling to remember which credit card was used. The routine task of creating expense reports is now fully automated and simple.

Veeva is taking a similar approach with many mission critical processes in life sciences. For example, the simple task of email is one of the most effective ways for pharma field reps to reach physicians. Yet, sending personalized emails was nearly impossible and reps were not taking advantage of this otherwise standard way of communicating. So we created Veeva CRM Approved Email to make email a reality in life sciences. We tied multiple technology systems together in the cloud to enable sending an approved, compliant email as simple as, well, sending an email.

In these examples, software is no longer a barrier, but simplifying core tasks and, consequently, giving people time back to focus on important things for the business. Arguably, removing SaaB is much more critical in life sciences than other industries, considering the importance of getting the right information to doctors and speeding the right treatments to the right patients. Many organizations are starting to remove SaaB to take advantage of new digital opportunities. For example, commercial operations are using digital to gain better intelligence of market dynamics, holistically manage commercial content globally to stay compliant, and create closer connections with customers.

The word of the decade will be “digital,” a recurring theme we heard from many customers at Veeva Commercial Summit last summer. In life sciences, breaking down software-as-a-barrier presents a significant opportunity, for example, to transform engagement and collaboration with healthcare professionals and create a more efficient digital supply chain.

Digital Transformation is Possible if SaaB Disappears

Digital is disrupting every industry. In a survey of almost 1,200 C-suite decision makers, 90% agree that their business needs to evolve to thrive in a digital world, while 98% say their business or organization has already been disrupted.²

In life sciences, the commercial business model is still pre-internet and has yet to be disrupted. Companies approach digital channels differently, they’re often disconnected, or they’re use is limited. This severely impacts doctors’ experiences with pharmaceutical companies, especially in relation to how they interact with companies in other industries.

Consequently, it’s difficult for busy healthcare providers to get the new drug or product information they need, when and where they want it. We all know that engagement is becoming more digital, but software-as-a-barrier is preventing life sciences from making the transition to running a digital business.

The changing expectations of healthcare providers and their patients will drive transformation. With more drug innovations, life sciences organizations will need to create more targeted and flexible content that better informs physicians and patients. Additionally, healthcare providers will want to connect and engage with life sciences companies through digital channels for the information they want, when and how they want it. These dynamics are prompting many companies to change quickly and replace SaaB.

Steps to Break Down SaaB and Enable Digital Transformation

It is clear that software will drive innovation in commercial and enable the new digital business in life sciences. But in order for that to happen, companies need to remove software as a barrier to innovation. Here are a few steps you can take now.

Get More Efficient in the Cloud

Start by modernizing your operations in the cloud. By 2020, 67% of all enterprise IT infrastructure and software spending will be for cloud-based offerings.³ Additionally, the use of industry-specific cloud applications is expected to increase, with half of the respondents of the Future of Cloud Computer Survey indicating they are or will use an industry cloud offering within the next 24 months.⁴ For life sciences, that means applications that are fine-tuned to your business will become more commonplace.

As companies revamp their internal operations to streamline sales and marketing in life sciences, the natural place to start will be legacy, standalone, on-premise systems that require point-to-point integrations and too many user workarounds. Focus on areas that are most strategic to your business and that have the most opportunity to provide a competitive advantage, such as customer-facing applications or content management systems. If these systems are creating complications today, it’s an area ripe to take out SaaB and move to the cloud.

Streamline Processes Across Your Digital Supply Chain
The use of digital media and content is rising in life sciences. As companies transition to operate in a digital marketplace, commercial organizations face the daunting task of creating, reviewing, approving, distributing, and withdrawing commercial content at internet speed.

Typically, the root cause of an ineffective digital supply chain is too many fragmented processes and systems. As a result, the wheel is reinvented in many areas – every brand across the company figures out and implements its own website or digital engagement strategy. Everyone pays for this inefficiency.

Removing SaaB can transform how brands operate and drive new, repeatable processes across the digital supply chain. When the digital ecosystem is simplified, a significant amount of time, cost, effort, and compliance risk can be reduced when getting content to market and, ultimately, help the business capitalize on new market opportunities.

Create a Partnership with IT

Fundamentally, the proliferation of SaaB happens when people with competing priorities make decisions that impact the purchasing process. The end result is software that doesn’t work for anyone. So partnership between the business and IT is critical.

Many CIOs now have a cloud first mandate in the life sciences industry and their role is shifting to leading their organization’s digital transformation. The opportunity for commercial teams is to align on priorities with IT and identify technology limitations where SaaB is holding the business back.

2017 Will Bring New Purpose in Eliminating SaaB

We’re living in a software world and the consumerization of technology has set high expectations for it to work. The opportunity to reinvent commercial operations and break down software-as-a-barrier will pave the way for digital transformation for many life sciences companies to get more drugs and treatments to market faster globally with greater speed and precision. Companies will eventually be shown an easier, more efficient path, and they’ll take it. And the cloud will be at the epicenter in driving new efficiencies and levels of engagement. Embrace what’s coming and watch the digital transformation happen.

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Learn more:
Blog: Making the Move from Software as a Barrier
News: New Veeva CRM Engage Meeting to Transform Digital Engagement
Article: Veeva CRM Engage Named Top Innovation of 2016

¹Enterprise Apps Customers Have Issues (Paul D. Hamerman), February 26, 2010
²Fit for Digital: Co-creation in the Age of Disruption (Censuswide), September 2016
³IDC FutureScape Web Conferences Will Present 2017 Predictions – Dawn of the Digital DX Economy: New Rules, Roles & Requirements (Frank Gens); September 2016
⁴ Future of Cloud Computing Survey (North Bridge and Wikibon); December 2016

Digital transformation in the life sciences industry will accelerate in 2017. These are the five trends that will have the most impact on commercial organizations and drive greater efficiencies and ways of working that will help companies capture new opportunities this year.

We are in the golden age of life sciences and 2017 promises to be another exciting year as the industry continues to grow and push new frontiers in scientific breakthroughs that improve the quality of life for people around the world. As innovations increase and the landscape becomes more complex, there will be greater pressure for companies to modernize commercial operations for the digital age.

The consumerization of technology is expanding into the enterprise and will bring digital disruption to life sciences. Today, digital demand is being driven by customer and patient expectations to have information online, on demand, and all of the time – through any channel or device. This shift is forcing life science companies to embrace digital technologies to fundamentally change how they operate their business. However, the transition to digital has been slow, with regulations, organizational siloes, and fragmented systems holding life sciences back from making the shift.

The focus for many commercial teams will be to use the power of digital in areas such as content management, digital engagement, and data analytics. This transformation will allow companies to improve execution of product launches, drive consistent and effective engagement with health care professionals, and empower sales teams with actionable insight.

This sustained focus on transformational change to drive greater efficiencies and ways of working will enable life sciences to capture new opportunities in 2017.

Here are the five trends that will significantly impact commercial organizations this year as the industry prepares for digital disruption.

Cloud Innovations Modernize Commercial Models

Many aspects of the commercial business model are still “pre-internet” and ready for disruption. It’s like taxi cabs before Uber, hotels before Airbnb, retail before Amazon, or airlines before Sabre. This way of working is forcing many life sciences companies to re-invent the wheel in multiple areas – every brand across the company develops its own website, digital engagement strategies vary from country to country, and key opinion leaders (KOLs) are identified from scratch for each new launch.

Life sciences will continue to shift to cloud-based unified solutions to address these inefficiencies, enable end-to-end processes, and streamline commercial operations. Commercial teams will move to a single platform to manage content and digital engagement to deliver a more coordinated, valuable customer experience across many touch points.

Collaboration Makes it Easier, Faster for HCPs to Connect with Industry

The rise of specialty medicine is creating a greater need for healthcare professionals (HCPs) to have more timely and tailored information. In addition, they have greater expectations to engage through the digital channels they prefer. However, there is too much friction that makes information access difficult. For example, a single pharma company may have 10-15 digital channels with different ways of recognizing and registering the HCP. Multiply that by the number of companies a HCP works with and you have inefficiency and frustration for the customer. The result is they look elsewhere for information.

Industry collaboration will make it easier for healthcare professionals to connect with life sciences companies. The industry will come together on the commercial side to define and adopt industry-standard processes for their shared customers to get the right information faster, leading to better outcomes for patients.

New Digital Channel Opens up Between Pharma and HCPs

As consumers, making video calls is simple and online meetings in other industries is easy and commonplace. In life sciences, however, the ability to engage online has been out of reach due to regulations and technology limitations. Facilitating a video call with a HCP required awkward workarounds and multiple presentation technologies to share approved content, ultimately leading to a poor experience for the field rep and the customer.

Online meetings will open up as an important digital channel between life sciences companies and healthcare professionals. Digital engagement will be easier and compliant with integrated applications built to meet the industry’s unique requirements and regulations. The use of this digital channel will become more ubiquitous and help life science companies increase reach to more HCPs and meet customer’s growing expectations for interactions to be online.

Medical and Commercial Teams Improve Customer Coordination

Life sciences companies will prioritize improved collaboration between medical and commercial teams with the goal of developing a deeper, more accurate understanding of their relationships with healthcare decision makers. For example, we’re seeing companies in the immuno-oncology space launch new products quarterly, raising the stakes to have a collective view of all the stakeholders they need to drive engagement with. And since medical affairs and commercial teams are often engaging with the same stakeholder, there is a lack of coordination which leads to a frustrating experience for these decision makers.

Life sciences will continue to make cloud technology investments that remove siloes so medical affairs and commercial teams can work together in a responsible way. With tighter integration, medical affairs will be able to quickly identify key stakeholders and have a more holistic view of their interactions with commercial teams, so they can deliver a more coordinated and tailored customer experience.

Data Driven Actions Come of Age

The growing volume of data has created tremendous opportunity for life sciences, but delivering contextual insights and making it easy for sales teams to take action is challenging. Today, the spectrum of a sales rep’s insight capabilities ranges from having to go to multiple places to get information to having no quality insights to use at all. The workflow isn’t optimized, hindering the commercial team’s ability to turn valuable insight into a competitive advantage.

Advancements in cloud technology will make it easier for life sciences companies to deliver relevant insights, when and where commercial teams need it, so they can take immediate next steps. For example, a sales rep out in the field would get real-time recommendations to inform their next action with a customer (i.e. send an email, make a call, drop off a sample).

With these new data driven insights at their fingertips, they can make better decisions about which materials and resources are utilized and what messages will be delivered. The ability to turn vast amounts of data into digestible and actionable insight about the life sciences customer will improve commercial’s sales and marketing strategies.

2017: Seize the Digital Opportunity

With so much new opportunity to capture in 2017, we expect life science companies to break new records and achieve new product and organizational milestones. As companies set forth on their digital transformation journey, cloud innovation and adoption will support these efforts and drive the operating model of the future. In this new model, life science companies will be more agile and ready to react quickly to changing market conditions, and ultimately will be in a better position to capture the digital opportunity.

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Learn more:
News: Top Global Pharma Companies Establish New Industry Standards Group
Article: Digital Disruption is Coming: Are You Ready?
News: New Veeva CRM Engage Meeting Available to Transform Digital Engagement
Webinar: Delivering Next Generation Commercial Capabilities

We sat down with our team of Veeva experts to get their thoughts on the trends that will have the most impact on life sciences organizations across commercial, R&D, and medical. Here’s what to expect in 2017.

While cloud computing has helped life sciences companies modernize many of their business processes, we are still in the early innings. The next phase of cloud adoption will usher in an era of transformation throughout the industry.

Specifically, the use of industry-specific cloud applications is expected to increase, with half of the respondents of the Future of Cloud Computer Survey indicating they are or will use an industry cloud offering within the next 24 months. For life sciences, that means companies will adopt applications that are fine-tuned to business processes to drive greater efficiencies.

So what factors will accelerate this next wave of cloud adoption for life sciences? For commercial teams, digital transformation and industry collaboration will be top priorities for continued modernization. In R&D, the increased expansion into secondary markets and a growing ecosystem of complex stakeholders in clinical, regulatory, and quality will lead many organizations to break down siloes and unify their systems for better collaboration.

Here are the major industry trends you can expect this year across commercial, R&D, and medical.

Cloud Innovation and Adoption will Modernize Commercial Models

Many aspects of the commercial business model are still “pre-internet” and ready for disruption. It’s like taxi cabs before Uber, hotels before Airbnb, retail before Amazon, or airlines before Sabre. This way of working is forcing many life sciences companies to re-invent the wheel in multiple areas – every brand across the company develops its own website, digital engagement strategies vary from country to country, and key opinion leaders (KOLs) are identified from scratch for each new launch.

Life sciences will continue to shift to cloud-based unified solutions to address these inefficiencies, enable end-to-end processes, and streamline commercial operations. Commercial teams will move to a single platform to manage content and digital engagement to deliver a more coordinated, valuable customer experience across many touch points.

Industry Collaboration will Make it Easier for HCPs to Work with Life Sciences

The rise of specialty medicine is creating a greater need for healthcare professionals (HCPs) to have more timely and tailored information and they have greater expectations to engage through the digital channels they prefer. However, there is too much friction that makes information access difficult. For example, a single pharma company may have 10-15 digital channels with different ways of recognizing and registering the HCP. Multiply that by the number of companies a HCP works with and you have inefficiency and frustration for the customer. The result is they look elsewhere for information.

Industry collaboration will make it easier for healthcare professionals to connect with life sciences companies. The industry will come together on the commercial side to define and adopt industry-standard processes for their shared customers to get the right information faster, leading to better outcomes for patients.

A New Digital Channel Opens up Between Pharma and HCPs

As consumers, making video calls is simple and online meetings in other industries is easy and commonplace. In life sciences, however, the ability to engage online has been out of reach due to regulations and technology limitations. Facilitating a video call with a HCP required awkward workarounds and multiple presentation technologies to share approved content, ultimately leading to a poor experience for the field rep and the customer.

Online meetings will open up as an important digital channel between life sciences companies and healthcare professionals. Digital engagement will be easier and compliant with integrated applications built to meet the industry’s unique requirements and regulations. The use of this digital channel will become more ubiquitous and help life sciences companies increase reach to more HCPs and meet customer’s growing expectations for interactions to be online.

Data Driven Actions Come of Age

The growing volume of data has created tremendous opportunity for life sciences, but delivering contextual insights and making it easy for sales teams to take action is challenging. Today, the spectrum of a sales rep’s insight capabilities ranges from having to go to multiple places to get the information to having no quality insights to use at all. The workflow isn’t optimized, hindering the commercial team’s ability to turn valuable insight into a competitive advantage.

Advancements in cloud technology will make it easier for life sciences companies to deliver relevant insights, when and where commercial teams need it, so they can take immediate next steps. For example, a sales rep out in the field would get real-time recommendations to inform their next action with a customer (i.e. send an email, make a call, drop off a sample).

With these new data driven insights at their fingertips, they can make better decisions about which materials and resources are utilized and what messages will be delivered. The ability to turn vast amounts of data into digestible and actionable insight about the life sciences customer will improve commercial’s sales and marketing strategies.

Medical and Commercial Teams Improve Customer Coordination

Life sciences companies will prioritize improved collaboration between medical and commercial teams, with the goal of developing a deeper, more accurate understanding of their relationships with healthcare stakeholders. For example, we’re seeing companies in the immuno-oncology space launch new products quarterly, raising the stakes to have a collective view of all the stakeholders they need to drive engagement with. And since medical affairs and commercial teams are often engaging with the same stakeholder, they are tripping over each other which leads to a frustrating experience for these decision makers.

Life sciences will continue to make cloud technology investments that remove siloes so medical affairs and commercial teams can work together in a responsible way. With tighter integration, medical affairs will be able to quickly identify key stakeholders and have a more holistic view of their interactions with commercial teams, so they can deliver a more coordinated and tailored customer experience.

RIM transformation takes center stage

It will be an exciting year for regulatory as they prioritize transformation programs to solve operations challenges created by a changing landscape, including expansion into international markets and increased pressure to speed time to market.

A key challenge driving the industry’s need for RIM transformation is due to regulatory information being captured in a multitude of disconnected information systems that manage everything from product registrations, submission content plans, health authority correspondence and commitments, source documents to published dossiers and more, resulting in duplicate data, documents, and effort. These inefficiencies make it challenging for life science companies to respond quickly to health authority inquiries across global markets, delaying time to market for new products.

RIM transformation programs will take shape and gain momentum as life sciences companies seek greater visibility and global alignment across regulatory activities and a growing ecosystem of stakeholders. These programs will include strategies to improve compliance and process efficiencies between headquarters, regional offices, affiliates, and business partners.

Unifying RIM technologies will be a key enabler to allow regulatory teams to streamline processes, improve data quality, and respond more quickly to health authority inquiries.

The Rise of Outsourcing in Quality and Regulatory

It’s no surprise with the rising costs of drug development and increased need to get products to market faster that life sciences are embracing outsourcing. This has been more prominent on the clinical side, where contract research organizations (CROs) are now integral strategic partners. In the wake of high merger and acquisition activity over the past several years, the industry is looking to better manage costs associated with global submission management and production.

We can expect to see life sciences increasing use of contract submissions and contracting manufacturing organizations for quality and regulatory, making both vendors an integral part of their business models. A recent report indicated that the global contract pharmaceutical manufacturing market will grow at an average annual rate of 7.5% from $54.54 billion in 2013 to $79.24 billion in 2019.

The expected increase in submission and manufacturing outsourcing will bring added efficiencies and help life science companies bring more products to market faster.

Explosive Growth for Cloud Content Management in Clinical

The rise of genomics and precision medicine is creating a data explosion that will accelerate the adoption of cloud solutions for R&D, especially clinical. Since the cracking of the human genome code in 2003, personalized medicine has taken off and now represents 42% of drugs in the pipeline, according to a survey by the Tufts center for the study of drug development. In addition to the genomic data explosion, the harnessing of real world data from wearables are contributing to the massive data processing needs which make cloud computing critical. 

In this new landscape, life science companies are challenged with managing all of the content and complexity that comes with genomics analytics. Life sciences companies will expedite adoption of next-generation cloud-backed content management solutions to solve these challenges, reduce IT footprint, drive greater efficiencies, and lower costs.

2017: Embracing Industry Cloud
We are in the golden age of life sciences and 2017 promises to be another exciting year. Industry cloud innovation and adoption will transform the life sciences industry and enable new ways of working and organizations can capture new opportunities and continue to improve the quality of life for people around the world.

This year promises to bring some exciting changes across the life sciences industry. Here’s a list of what we at Veeva believes lies ahead in CRM and the major trends we see for the coming year.

Industry collaboration
Driven by digital disruption, the life sciences industry is increasingly moving toward a model of collaboration among sponsors. For instance, companies have an opportunity to reengineer how they manage customers across the complete lifecycle. Currently, there is no unified identity linking personas for customers who may be an investigator, a prescriber and a key opinion leader (KOL) – and not just for a single company, but for the industry as a whole. As a consequence, the customer experience can be quite fragmented and incomplete. Common standards will simplify the provider experience as well as harmonize the way healthcare professionals (HCPs) interact with sponsors to create a new air of openness and collaboration.

Rise of the data-driven rep
The ability to provide real-time information to providers is critical. Field reps must be ready to respond quickly to HCP inquiries and actions, such as event registrations. In the past, however, it has been challenging for sponsors to respond in a timely manner. With the advent of the digital era, sponsors now have the ability to respond much faster. Going forward, a rep’s interaction with their CRM system will move from using a big app on a big device in their bag to an entire information ecosystem that actively “surrounds” the rep (i.e., smartphone, tablet, desktop) so that they can receive information any time, any place. Sponsors can thus move towards implementing data-driven engagement initiatives in which smart CRM systems make predictions about what messages and channels to use.

Content lifecycle
It’s been two decades since Bill Gates published his famous “Content is King” article and it remains as true today as it was then. Companies that are successful in the digital space are the ones that continually produce high-quality content. Reusing the same promotional material is simply not sufficient. Digital channels require fresh content at a more rapid pace. The content lifecycle therefore needs to speed up, even if budgets aren’t necessarily increasing. Sponsors can address this challenge by becoming much more efficient at managing the content lifecycle, for instance, streamlining collaboration between themselves and agencies. This has some added advantages, as the content remains compliant throughout the creative process.

Shifting to a key account model
The industry is continuing to further shift to a new, account-centric model. This type of account-based selling model is necessary as a majority of US physicians now operate as part of an integrated delivery network (IDN.) This means that sponsors are increasingly finding themselves in B2B type sales situations. The industry will want to leverage new commercial capabilities to enable a team of people to work collaboratively on a complex account with multiple stakeholders. This is far more complex and nuanced than in the past when reps were educating a single provider on efficacy and safety. This is a new sales model, much more akin to a B2B approach. Sponsors that normalize the actions of an entire team, measure group success, and learn from the team’s shared efforts will be much more likely to be successful in the new norm.

2017: an exciting year for CRM
After a decade of cloud-based CRM adoption in the life sciences industry, we still believe that innovation in CRM is far from complete. Competitive advantage in 2017 will be judged by the ability to lead in an era of disruptive change, leverage data-driven reps, transform the content lifecycle, and operate in an account-centric model. CRM is entering an extremely interesting phase – one that, if managed correctly, can yield significant new opportunities in 2017 and beyond.

Study start-up content consists of documents generated during the study start-up process, such as investigator site contracts, informed consent forms, and financial disclosures. These documents form the basis for decision making during the study start-up process, and are also used to illustrate good clinical practice and compliance. 

Whereas, data is typically information that can be reused or reported on. It is often merged into a document itself. In study start-up, data takes the form of milestones like planned country ethics committee approval, projected site initiation visits, and site activation greenlight.

Nearly 70% of study start-up milestones (i.e., data) on the critical path to site activation are tied to documents, yet today milestones and documents are managed separately. For example, milestones might be managed in a clinical system or tracking spreadsheet, and documents in a content management system such as Microsoft SharePoint. The documents are also typically exchanged with a non-trackable system like email. The result is a difficult puzzle to put together. The correct version of documents needs to be uploaded into the content management system, all steps have to be manually tracked, and data from the documents needs to be entered into the tracker to manage the status of the milestones.

Managing study start-up content and data together in a single application, however, allows organizations to remove duplicate study start-up processes, spend less time tracking, and more time executing on business processes. Checklists can go away. Document exchange is done within the system. Milestones can be used to track documents and activities. And sites get activated faster.

In our upcoming webinar – Gaining Control and Visibility of Your Study Start-up Activities – on February 22, I will explain in greater detail the benefits of managing study start-up documents and data together, including the importance of robust content management. I invite you to join me to learn about a new approach to the study start-up challenge.

If you are attending the SCOPE Summit today, join Jason Methia’s presentation, Integrating and Leveraging Start-up Content and Data to Speed Site Activation, on Wednesday, January 25 at 4:30 p.m.

Veeva Creator Series interview with Cindy Chiang: “Insights that Bridge the Gap Between Marketing and Field Execution”

The Veeva Creator Series consists of regularly published interviews with Veeva product leaders and strategists highlighting the backstories that led to key Veeva CRM innovations. This month, we interview Cindy Chiang, Director of Product Management, about Veeva CRM Suggestions.

What is Veeva CRM Suggestions?
Veeva CRM Suggestions provides reps with “next best action” recommendations for their healthcare provider (HCP) interactions. It does this by leveraging the analytical power of data science to provide clear and actionable recommendations.

How exactly does it work?
The recommendations, which can include the best message and the best channel to engage the HCP, are delivered directly in the reps’ workflow, so that they are available where and when they are needed. What’s really nice is that reps can provide feedback on the recommendations they receive, which further feeds the data analytics and improves future suggestions. All of this is standard functionality within Veeva CRM, no additional licenses are required, though a data science partner is required if you don’t have your own analytics engine.

Did customers request this functionality?
Yes, though indirectly. The idea evolved over time through many customer conversations. The common thread among companies was a long-term vision for getting more insights and more analytics out of their CRM data. We also frequently supported integrations of Veeva CRM with third-party BI tools. And as we helped our customers with these projects, we came to understand that the results of this analysis would be best served if they could be fed back directly into Veeva CRM. Customers could then take immediate action through a specifically designed dashboard. This would eliminate the need to surface insights in separate apps or display them through custom objects and related lists.

If you think about it, there’s really no good reason why reps should not be able to benefit from the data they generate. Such capabilities have been fairly common in consumer technologies. We thought to ourselves, “Why is this not available in the life sciences space?”

Can you elaborate further on the link between consumer technology and Veeva CRM Suggestions?
The crux of sales and marketing has always been to understand the customer, their business environment, their purchasing patterns and their communication preferences, and to then utilize that knowledge to provide them with the right information. Most of us are pretty familiar with this from everyday consumer applications. Netflix and Amazon capitalize on displaying personalized recommendations for each user.

I’d argue that in life sciences, there is even more data available to analyze than in retail. Veeva CRM is just one of the many systems that’s generating data that can be evaluated to determine next best actions. In the past, field reps would do this analysis in their heads, with no systematic way of knowing how effective they actually were. But now, with the volume of data growing and the introduction of multiple ways of engaging an HCP, as well as more stakeholders that each field rep interacts with, it’s simply too complex for even the most seasoned reps to do this type of mental math.

What were key challenges when developing this capability?
One of the main considerations we had was whether or not we were going to build the rules engine that runs all the analytics. We quickly concluded that it didn’t make sense for that to be in Veeva CRM because of the multitude of other data sources out there that need to be taken into account in addition to CRM data. Several of our partners excel at big data analytics and already have existing relationships with Veeva customers. So we collaborated with them to understand their capabilities and how their analytics would best be utilized within Veeva CRM. Of course, customers can also choose to integrate with their own proprietary analytics engines, if they have them.

What is the one thing customers should take away from Veeva CRM Suggestions?
One customer, a top 20 global pharma company, actually called it the “foundational capability to our customer engagement strategy.” They went further to state, “Turning data into insights and ultimately bridging the gap between marketing strategy and field execution through Veeva CRM Suggestions is paramount.”

So reps should come to understand that this is the tool that streamlines the analysis of the data for them, so they don’t have to spend their time sifting through the data. Instead, they can be out in the field having more effective interactions with HCPs.

About Cindy
Cindy Chiang has been with Veeva for four and a half years. She leads the Veeva CRM product management team and is responsible for customer success and building products that delight users. Her favorite thing about being at Veeva is the team effort that comes from all parts of the organization to ensure customer success, from services to support, product managers to engineers to QA. “Everyone gives 110% and works together on behalf of the customer.”

A New Model to Dramatically Speed the Publishing Process

In the manufacturing world, drugs are often produced using a serial process with stops and starts between steps. Increasingly, companies are adopting “continuous manufacturing” to improve the speed and quality of drug production.

In the regulatory world, dossier publishing can and should go through a similar transformation with the adoption of “continuous publishing.” Since continuous publishing isn’t a common term, I wanted to describe what it means and how it can improve submission delivery.

Traditional publishing is a serial process. First there is a submission plan; then individual documents are authored and reviewed. Approved documents are transferred to a publishing tool where publishers add PDF navigation and QC the documents. Publishers then compile and validate the submission until it is clean for delivery.

In the continuous model, publishing activities—such as adding bookmarks and navigation—are moved upstream with content creation. Other activities—such as hyperlink testing, XML compilation, and validation—are automated and running behind the scenes from the very start.

One benefit of the continuous model, is that quality is built into the process. Issues are identified earlier when they are easier to fix. A second benefit, is that there is less work to do at the end. If publishing activities are happening throughout content development, there is very little left to do when the last document gets approved.

Much like in the manufacturing world, continuous manufacturing wasn’t possible until the technology existed to support it. Technology silos have resulted in a serial publishing process. In order to create documents and publish in tandem, the publishing and document management applications must be working on the exact same copy of the document. When documents are transferred between systems, the documents must first be approved and deemed “ready-for-publishing” before publishing can begin. When the two systems are unified, there are no document transfers. Authors and publishers are working on the same documents, with the same metadata, at the same time.

The introduction of Veeva Vault Submissions Publishing will unify submission authoring, publishing, and archival within Veeva Vault RIM to deliver a continuous publishing process for life sciences companies. Continuous publishing will speed submission delivery and bring a little peace of mind during submission crunch-times.

Veeva Vault Submissions Publishing is planned for availability in early 2018.

To learn more, visit our product page or contact us here.

No one can say how it happened, but it has. I looked in the mirror and found myself transformed into a data geek. Perhaps the journey began in my early days as a sales rep, while trying to record simple details about discussions with my customers. Surely it progressed as I grew to lead sales operations, witnessing at close range the perils of poor data. Through the frustration of implementing slick new CRM systems, and then loading them with the same bad data, I developed an obsession with data quality.

The business of customer reference data is an interesting one, as it aggregates hundreds of data sources into a single pipe. Bringing a quality product to market means that we need to control our data quality at the point of creation through a strong governance program. This includes having the best people, the best process, and the best technology to support the program.

Now the proud leader of a global data organization, I embrace my identity as a data geek. Let me reflect on the signposts of my evolution, and explain how you benefit from it.

Signpost #1: Breaking the bonds of legacy

When I initially joined the Veeva OpenData team, we were constrained by legacy technology inherited from an earlier acquisition. There was no ability to monitor data steward performance, QA processes were manual and lacked ownership, and it was a slow, cumbersome effort to get the data to reps in the field. The situation demanded resolution, and I responded by coordinating the move to Veeva Network. Now, with Network master data management as the backbone of Veeva OpenData, we’ve developed a strong quality profile. Data stewardship performance is 50% stronger, while data delivery to the field is 71% faster. In addition, Network’s suite of reports lets us proactively monitor OpenData for quality issues, and quickly resolve them. The upshot? Data quality scores are up by 92%.

Signpost #2: Using better data to streamline CRM implementation

During my first Veeva CRM implementation in 2009, Peter Gassner suggested that I help customers conduct not only software design reviews, but also data reviews. Brilliant! We did, and we identified a significant data issue that might otherwise have caused a long delay. I’ve seen this experience repeated many times. Simply put, bad data is a major cause of IT project delays. And the opposite is true as well. As pharma companies implement new commercial capabilities in CRM, quality data allows for a smooth transition and lower change management costs.

Signpost #3: Connecting the dots with a single ID

Pharma companies want data products that are pre-integrated with each other. Pre-integrated data will result in better analytics as companies achieve a more complete understanding of their own customers. In the case of Veeva, you have OpenData, KOL data, email data, and other, related offerings. We connect the dots with a single, global ID, so customers don’t have to match separate data offerings during an implementation. They can spend less time prepping, and more time analyzing the data for meaningful business insights. Over time, I expect that the commercial pharma analytics teams will become Veeva’s biggest data quality advocates.

Signpost #4: Compliance matters

Pharma is a highly regulated industry. Not only do we have federal and state regulations, but we’re now seeing major cities implementing their own regulations. Veeva OpenData’s compliance data is superior, and our customers depend on Veeva to provide accurate state license, specialty, and DEA data so that they can maintain compliance. OpenData’s rigorous data governance program results in more accurate and timely data for our customers. This is not an area that can be compromised, because of the risks associated with non-compliance.

Signpost #5: Data governance is a team sport

It is true that OpenData and Network reduce the data governance burden for our customers. However, this part is just the MDM governance program. Enterprise customers require a holistic approach, covering all systems and all owners of the data. During an implementation of OpenData, we offer a data governance workshop that maps out the applications and people consuming the data. This makes the ‘data switch’ a proven, repeatable process. Once commercial teams understand how each system uses the data, they can identify any changes required in upstream and downstream business processes, so everything works like it should.

Changing how pharma thinks about data

When I look at Veeva’s growing data portfolio, I get really excited about the possibilities. Veeva is growing and expanding data offerings with OpenData, Email data, KOL data, and more. Because quality determines the value of our offering, Veeva has created a comprehensive, end-to-end program. Understanding the impact of strong data governance practices drives the Veeva OpenData team to continually enhance the data we bring to customers. And, as the industry learns the value of Veeva’s data offerings, we are changing the way pharma thinks about data. We’re raising the bar on the level of data quality that currently exists in the market.

I am excited to be part of that transformation. That’s why I’ve become, and will remain, a data geek.

Many different systems, from EDC and eSource, to eTMF and CTMS, among other applications all contribute to study start-up. But distinct systems on different platforms cannot communicate directly with one another, duplicate information is created, and it is difficult to get a full picture of the start-up process. The administrative burden for inputting data, requesting information, and uploading documentation is also significant.

Leveraging a study start-up application on a common platform with these other clinical systems allows sponsors and CROs to unify clinical operations and better manage the start-up process (see our previous blog on the benefits and value of having a unified clinical environment). When evaluating a study start-up application, it’s equally important to review the platform it’s built on. The three most important elements to consider are the platform’s flexibility, fit with other essential applications, and its ability to grow.

Flexibility
Flexibility allows the study start-up application to adapt to an organization’s unique requirements, as well as support changing regulations and processes. To begin, determine what functionality is “hardcoded” in the application (i.e., cannot be changed) versus what is configurable. It’s important for the platform to be configurable and not require complicated code to customize, which can have a downstream impact on future upgrades and make it more difficult to use future enhancements.

In order to ensure proper flexibility, make sure the platform can:

Fit with other essential applications
When looking at how a study start-up platform fits with your other applications and systems, it’s beneficial to not only think of study start-up as an end-to-end process, but to conceptualize it as part of an end-to-end clinical trial process. Even if the current focus is a point solution, looking at the bigger picture will help ensure you don’t get stuck later. If the platform doesn’t fit with your systems it will result in manual workarounds, inefficient processes, and silos of information.

A platform should have:

Ability to grow
Most life sciences organizations have an expectation to grow over time as their development portfolios mature or partnerships deepen. Planning for this future trajectory when evaluating a platform ensures your technology will support you as more users are added and processes become more complex.

A study start-up platform that has the ability to grow to meet your evolving needs should have:

While this is not a comprehensive list of everything to evaluate when looking at a study start-up application and platform, it should help you start to determine whether the underlying platform suits your needs. Looking at the whole picture with an eye to the future and ensuring you are flexible enough to adjust quickly will help you get the most value out of your study start-up investment.

To learn more, read how inVentiv Health has unified their study start-up processes and clinical operations on the Vault Platform to accelerate site activation.

Life sciences is doubling down on its investment in medical affairs, with mid-sized companies spending an average of $10 million on their global MSL teams – and as much as $48 million for top biopharma. However, despite this increasing stature, the industry lacks an effective means to measure the impact of medical’s core competency – strategic stakeholder engagement – against business objectives. Beyond direct thought leader surveys – currently leveraged by 58% of life sciences companies, according to industry research – companies are struggling to define what success really means when it comes to medical affairs.

This gap creates a disconnect between the crucially important work medical affairs does – providing deep scientific expertise to improve patient outcomes – and the actionable insights it is able to glean from these engagements. Guidance from compliance organizations strictly firewalling the commercial and medical aspects of life sciences has made companies cautious about how they approach measuring the impact of medical’s activities. Moreover, assessing the often-intangible aspects of scientific relationships is not straightforward. Reach, frequency, and other measurements handed down from commercial teams barely scratch the surface of medical affairs’ relationships, failing to capture their strength and depth.

Of all the engagements that healthcare decision makers can have with life sciences, these peer-to-peer interactions with medical are the most unique, and arguably the most valuable. They have the ability to produce a staggering amount of information on healthcare data points that life sciences companies often try to piece together from multiple of sources. By aligning on qualitative KPIs to complement their existing work, and bringing these metrics together with an accurate view of the healthcare landscape, medical affairs would demonstrate true organizational impact to help companies achieve long-term objectives. These include measures linked to enhanced development and commercialization timing, improved patient retention, and the evolving delivery of accurate and trusted data. Today, industry leaders are evolving strategies to apply new metrics that fully leverage the value of medical’s work, connecting medical engagements to more impactful measures.

In a recent report, Sanofi CMO, Dr. Ameet Nathwani describes this growing trend. “We have to become an agile evidence generating engine,” says Nathwani. “We have to develop the data scientifically, put the data into context for a healthcare system, and, in particular, be able to describe the value in terms of the benefit to patients. All this has become a fundamental skill.”

Our upcoming webinar, “Leveraging Medical Insights for Better Healthcare Engagement,” outlines a new approach for using strategic medical insights to gain deep visibility into individual stakeholders and better understand the full network of critical decision makers within a therapeutic area. Join me and Sital Kotecha to gain in-depth best practices on increasing organizational share of voice in healthcare, and get your stakeholder engagement questions answered. Please drop by—I look forward to hearing from you on how your medical team is generating insight today.

¹ Cutting Edge Information, “Managing MSLs in a Global Medical Organization: Budget, Staffing and Compensation Benchmarks”(http://www.cuttingedgeinfo.com/research/medical-affairs/msl-benchmarks/), 2012

² Cutting Edge Information, “MSL Activities and Performance Measurement: Harnessing KOL Relationships for Optimal Clinical Support” (http://www.cuttingedgeinfo.com/research/medical-affairs/msl-medical-science-liaisons/), 2012

³ eyeforpharma Medical Affairs, “Reinventing Medical Affairs,” (http://1.eyeforpharma.com/LP=15342?utm_source=ArchitectsofValue&utm_medium=Portal),2017

Taking Back Control of Quality

Globalization and outsourcing has created unique opportunities and demanding challenges for the industry and regulators alike. Requirements and standards are also evolving, and legacy solutions are incapable of meeting new business needs. These trends call for a new paradigm in global supply chain management.

Historically, data was managed by the brand owner – close by and easily monitored. With outsourcing, quality oversight is strained at best. To take back control, companies must have access to quality metrics in real-time. This approach offers three key benefits:

Improving Supply Chain Visibility, Control and Collaboration

Growth in foreign and outsourced facilities as well as increased variety and complexity of globally sourced products is forcing companies to rethink three core aspects of supply chain: visibility, control, and collaboration.

Visibility – With improved visibility, companies can better manage risk and make more informed decisions. Systems that provide access to internal groups as well as external partners can increase alignment and strengthen partnerships.

Control – Providing management access to critical supplier data increases control over the supply chain and the ability to comply with track and trace requirements.

Collaboration – Finally, by collaborating with suppliers and regulators, organizations are better positioned to adhere to the changing regulatory landscape and continually improve quality.

Without proper visibility, control, and collaboration, brand owners run the risk of not only poor product quality but also regulatory backlash for failure to comply with existing regulations.

Is Your Quality Control Unit (QCU) Ready for Metrics?

Quality metrics are used throughout the drug and biologic industry to monitor quality control systems and processes, and drive continuous improvement efforts in manufacturing.

The FDA Quality Metrics Program intends to calculate the following based on industry reporting:

The agency asserts that the ‘product reporting establishment’ has a responsibility for oversight and controls over the manufacturing of its drugs to ensure product quality. In addition, they state the QCU at ‘product reporting establishments’ should already possess, or have access to all of the quality metrics data needed for the report.

Not More Systems, Just Better Systems

FDA has increasingly observed cGMP violations involving data integrity issues during inspections. Ensuring data integrity is an important component of ensuring the safety, efficacy, and quality of drugs. To address data integrity risks and violations, the answer is not necessarily implementing more systems.

In fact, the industry already suffers from a multitude of stand-alone systems. Functional areas have historically implemented a system to address a specific business need or respond to a regulatory action – leading the industry to become experts in playing regulatory whack-a-mole.

For example, a 483 observation at one company’s facility prompts a system implementation to address the issue – whacking one mole. The FDA then goes to the next facility issuing another 483. The company responds by implementing a different system – whacking another mole – instead of looking at the problem holistically. Many legacy systems are siloed, preventing a broader understanding of how quality events are related. Modern cloud-based quality systems make it easy to bring together geographically dispersed groups and disparate data to gain a more complete picture of quality.

Adopting Smart-Sourcing Strategies

Brand owners should adopt “smart-sourcing” strategies; evaluating the total cost and potential risks, not just the initial investment. By implementing a commercial, legal, and technological framework that promotes the exchange of information, external partners can become a true extension of the brand owner’s quality and information system.

Functional areas were traditionally vertically integrated. With outsourcing, brand owners no longer generate, or own the data, within their four walls. Third parties – that are often located in a different part of the world – generate the data. This makes it difficult to collect the data and gather intelligence.

Assimilating quality metrics data for submission to the FDA can be tricky in an outsourced environment. Brand owners often generate data from quality management (QMS) and complaint handling systems, whereas manufacturing data from an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system or other quality event information reside at a supplier, contract manufacturer (CMO), or other partner.

In order to modernize quality management, brand owners should consider:

Modernizing with Cloud

Modern quality management incorporates QMS processes and quality-related content in one unified system. This allows users to do their work more efficiently and provide complete end-to-end visibility over processes that span documents and data or across functional areas, such as change management or change control.

Cloud-based QMS systems can help drive global transparency with a single source of truth for quality-related data and processes. Cloud solutions offer easy, online access anywhere in the world. However, dynamic, role-based security features must be built-in to the solution and work flows need to easily align with business processes. With solutions such as Vault Quality Docs and Vault QMS, brand owners have access and full control over their data regardless of where it is generated.

Armed with data and strengthened by intelligence from modern QMS solutions, companies can move from reactive to predictive quality organizations.

Reactive – Management often focuses on issue and task tracking, investigating issues as they occur.

Proactive – Management has access to dashboards with key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor supply chain related activities and make adjustments.

Predictive – With visibility into the entire supply chain, management can identify trends and focus on continuous process and quality improvements that unify internal and external quality.

Regulators are encouraging industry to leverage modern quality management systems to improve visibility, control and collaboration across the supply chain. To hear more, the webinar is available on demand here.