Veeva Systems Announces New Cloud-Based Customer Interaction Repository For The Global Life Sciences Industry

Veeva Network initiative brings together the leading multichannel marketing companies and industry consultants to improve multichannel sales and marketing effectiveness

Veeva Systems introduced Veeva Network recently to over 700 industry leaders at the Veeva Global Customer Summit, being held this week in Philadelphia, PA. Veeva Network is a cloud-based customer interaction repository (CIR) that spans all sales and marketing channels, standard data formats supported by the leading multichannel marketing companies and complete service offerings from the life sciences industry’s leading business consultants. Powered by the very latest in cloud computing and big data technology, Veeva Network provides the customer interaction data required to better analyze the return from multichannel investments. It’s already being characterized by pharmaceutical leaders as ‘revolutionary’ for its promise to easily capture, store and disseminate consistent data across life sciences companies and their outsourced partners and agencies.

Inaugural Veeva Network partners include Physicians Interactive, MediMedia Health, D&R Lathian, Giant, GroupDCA, Intouch Solutions, Knipper, MySTRO and WebMD. Together, these companies represent well over 50% of all direct-to-physician multichannel marketing campaigns deployed in the United States every year. In addition, ZS Associates, IBM, Deloitte, Cognizant and Accenture have developed Veeva Network service offerings to assist customers with preparation for and rapid adoption of the new solution.

“Having the support of the industry’s leading multichannel marketing companies enables Veeva to deliver a truly ground-breaking platform that will transform pharmaceutical sales and marketing,” declared Matt Wallach, co-founder & chief strategy officer of Veeva Systems. “Never before have so many industry leaders come together to enable our collective life sciences customers to measure the effectiveness of their total commercial spend.”

Key to the Veeva Network solution is the industry-wide agreement upon standard data formats to manage the exchange of customer interaction data across all communication channels. This seamless data exchange between multichannel marketing companies and life sciences manufacturers will save the industry tens of millions of dollars annually while providing better information and insight. And the seamless, bi-directional integration between Veeva Network and Veeva CRM will power the sought-after coordination between sales and marketing.

“Veeva Network has the potential to be truly revolutionary for our industry,” forecasted Chris Carol Bremer, senior vice president of marketing at Grünenthal. “For the first time, marketing and sales will be able to share common data, in real time, about what they are saying to HCPs and – conversely – about what the HCPs are saying in response.”

Pratap Khedkar, managing principal at ZS Associates – a global leader in sales and marketing consulting, outsourcing, technology and software – adds, “Truly integrated multi-channel marketing has become a business imperative for the pharmaceutical industry today. Everyone would like to be customer-centric even as budgets are shrinking. But it has been challenging because channels have always operated in silos; the newer channels have been hard to scale for a long time and it is harder to measure a team-of-channels as opposed to a team-of-reps.”

Fellow managing principal at ZS, Jean-Jacques Raoult, agrees, "As companies continue to search for a path to the ‘Holy Grail,’ this type of a technology-driven breakthrough that unifies sales and marketing channels can serve as a key enabler. Moving from brand-centric towards customer-centric models will require a stronger customer-facing mindset, interwoven processes from both sales and marketing at all levels, and a healthy dose of advanced customer-level analytics."

Projected to be a pharmaceutical marketing breakthrough, Veeva Network has additional industry kingpins already talking:

Physicians Interactive’s CEO and Vice Chairman, Donato Tramuto, suggests, “Physicians Interactive supports the industry’s need to drive full integration of information and technology at the point of care for Healthcare Professionals. Such an approach can provide an indispensable opportunity to improve the overall promotional efficiency.  As a leading digital partner for life science companies, Physicians Interactive also understands the need to improve marketing integration with the sales force. The Veeva Network initiative will improve quality and efficiency of the industry’s communication with its partners and improve patient care – the reason we are all here.”

Multichannel marketing firm, D&R Lathian’s Quang Pham says, “It’s no secret that our industry is improving its marketing execution. We’re supportive of Veeva’s vision especially in that it will enable enterprise-wide brand and sales coordination.”

“The Achilles heel of multichannel programs is ‘unnormalized’ data – trying to match different sets of incongruent data with any kind of accuracy is almost impossible,” said Ron Scalici, chief innovation officer of GroupDCA. “So a platform that allows the data to integrate would enable better communications about physician interactions with all channels throughout the campaign.”

“The pharmaceutical industry is unique in that its marketing teams do not execute their own campaigns,” said Phil Deschamps, CEO at MediMedia Health. “This outsourcing of marketing execution is what created the need for a program like Veeva Network. We see the promise of this initiative and are excited about its ability to help us offer better results to our customers.”

“Marketing and sales in pharmaceutical companies have historically operated as two silo’d organizations,” added Faruk Capan, CEO and founder of Intouch Solutions, a leading digital marketing agency in the life sciences industry. “But, Veeva’s cloud technology can play a huge role in facilitating this connection and provide a breakthrough in enabling true multichannel marketing campaigns.”

“Veeva’s reputation as a technology innovator, and the company’s very loyal installed base of customers, gives us confidence that the Veeva Network will revolutionize pharmaceutical marketing,” commented Michael Laferrera, COO at J. Knipper and Company.

According to executives, Veeva is committed to working side-by-side with the entire life sciences industry to further expand the partnerships that, backed by the very latest technologies and an open services model, will enable levels of marketing effectiveness never possible before. For the first time, various dimensions of multichannel marketing campaigns will be measurable in real time. Marketing and sales effectiveness will skyrocket with both teams empowered by shared communications. And, brand managers across the enterprise will have an open window into the complete interaction history of every healthcare professional.

“Veeva Network will have a major impact on the global life sciences industry,” concluded Wallach.

About Veeva Systems
Veeva Systems is the leader in cloud-based business solutions for the global life sciences industry. Committed to innovation, product excellence and customer success, Veeva has over 150 customers, ranging from the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies to emerging biotechs. Founded in 2007, Veeva is a privately held company headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, with offices in Philadelphia, Barcelona, Paris, Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo. For more information, visit www.veevasystems.com.

SOURCE: Veeva Systems