2016 Veeva Commercial Summit: Capturing the Digital Opportunity in Life Sciences
CEO Peter Gassner: digital disruption is driving transformation in life sciences
The digital opportunity in life sciences was on full display last week as more than 1,200 professionals converged on Philadelphia at one of the largest events dedicated to commercial and medical solutions. The 2016 Veeva Commercial Summit, now in its eighth year, is the event for the industry to learn, connect, and share valuable insights and best practices on the big trends impacting life sciences. The energy and excitement was evident at this year’s Summit with more than 100 companies in attendance, making it the biggest event yet.
Veeva co-founders, Peter Gassner and Matt Wallach, opened with keynotes on digital disruption and the path to transformation in life sciences. The consumerization of technology is expanding digital into many areas of the enterprise. For example, there are now greater expectations of digitally-native physicians for information to be online and on-demand for fast, easy, convenient access anywhere, anytime. Industry experts, Amy Landucci of Novartis and Anne O’Riordan of Accenture, echoed that there is a “tsunami of change” and a growing role of digital solutions throughout the industry. As one global biopharmaceutical customer put it, “The word of the decade for us is digital.”
The focus for many life sciences companies is how best to use the power of digital for areas such as content management – where content reuse is key for a highly effective, efficient digital supply chain – and online engagement with healthcare professionals (HCPs). Much of the demand is being driven by the need to get the right information to the right person at the right time – through any channel or device. When you layer on regulation in life sciences, the shift to digital is challenging.
Some life sciences companies have progressed along the digital journey and are seeing impactful results. That was apparent in many sessions and conversations throughout the event as customers shared their stories. Cathy Hayes, director of commercial solutions at AstraZeneca, has been on a digital transformation journey for 12 months now. “Our goal is to remodel our commercial operations for a new market,” said Cathy. “As we shift our focus from primary care therapies to specialty products, digital strategies need to be embedded in all that we do. Within Commercial Operations, we created a Marketing Excellence team and are training all of our marketers and sales reps on how to fully leverage new technologies, such as Veeva CRM Approved Email, that are part of Veeva Commercial Cloud.”
Press Release: GSK Adds New Veeva Commercial Cloud Applications Following the Success of Veeva CRM
Customers are at different stages of their digital transformation journey, all with similar goals of greater productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness of their commercial operations. Every year Veeva recognizes the Veeva Heroes that are leading innovation and driving massive transformation in the industry. Each of these individuals have contributed significantly to Veeva’s history and product innovation and, in many respects, are paving the digital path that will benefit many companies throughout the industry.
Veeva CEO Peter Gassner honors the 2016 Veeva Heroes
The rapid pace of Veeva innovation continued this week, as we unveiled three new Commercial Cloud applications to support companies’ shift to digital. Veeva CRM Engage Meeting and Veeva CRM Engage Webinar will transform customer engagement by making it easy and compliant for reps to interact online with HCPs, while Veeva Vault PromoMats DAM will meet life sciences’ demands for advanced enterprise digital asset management capabilities, including larger file sizes, greater storage capacity, and more robust image and video file handling. All three solutions will be game changers in opening up online channels and managing rich digital content that is becoming more pervasive.
Veeva is also making continued investments in other areas such as Veeva OpenData and Key Account Management (KAM). Veeva OpenData provides a better alternative for HCP, healthcare organization, affiliations, email, and compliance data, currently spanning 35 countries today, with plans for 50 countries by the end of 2017. Veeva is also committed to delivering an integrated KAM solution to address the transition from selling to a prescriber as the sole decision maker to a multiple stakeholder model.
Moving forward, Veeva will continue to help support the life sciences industry through its digital transformation. Consumer adoption of digital technology will have profound positive implications in life sciences in areas such as personalized medicine and pharma and doctor engagement, for example. Matt Wallach summed it up best during his keynote: the golden age of life sciences is coming. There is no doubt that digital solutions will play a big role, and Veeva hopes to earn its place as one of the industry’s most strategic partners in helping customers capture the digital opportunity.
###