CSL Behring Breaks Down Business Silos with Veeva Development Cloud

After grappling with disconnected systems and siloed organizations, CSL Behring turned to the Veeva Development Cloud to help transform their technology landscape and operating model. Business and IT leaders from the global biotech company discussed the objectives and outcomes of the ongoing implementation during a fireside chat at the 2022 Veeva R&D and Quality Summit.

Consolidating systems in clinical operations

CSL Behring’s Veeva footprint spans clinical, quality, regulatory, and safety applications but their journey began with Vault eTMF. Charles Johnson, director of eClinical operations, talked about his organization’s desire to devote more time to innovation and less time to integrating disparate clinical tools. “We wanted to consolidate some of those bigger, clunkier systems onto a platform so we could share data more easily,” he recalled. Soon after, CSL added Vault CTMS to their portfolio and they have plans to implement Vault Study Startup next.

Johnson sees great value in connecting clinical documents and data both within his domain and across functional teams to drive end-to-end product development processes, saying, “That’s the really interesting part of the platform.” He cited FDA form 1572 as an example of how CSL Behring will be able to streamline the flow of information from trial sites into regulatory submissions.

Eliminating silos in quality

Vas Mavrogenis, global head of quality, said Veeva Development Cloud sparked the consolidation of multiple quality applications and the harmonization of global processes. As a result, CSL Behring now has one quality management system across all business units, which has enhanced how quality works, both internally and cross-functionally.

What’s exciting for us are the links with the rest of the organization, Mavrogenis declared. We’ve broken down the silos within manufacturing and quality, and we look forward to connecting with clinical and regulatory, especially for change control.

Cross-functional collaboration in safety

Richard Wolf, global head of pharmacovigilance (PV) operations, reiterated the value of bringing development organizations together in a connected technology landscape.

His organization’s implementation of Vault Safety will improve the interface between PV and clinical call centers, enabling the efficient intake of safety cases. We expect to see extraordinary results not just from Vault Safety, but also from working cross-functionally on a unified platform, Wolf said.

Lessons learned

The CSL Behring team offered these lessons learned for companies pursuing a platform strategy:

• Create a dedicated role to oversee the enterprise rollout and staff it early. Rynita Julien, who heads up CSL Behring’s Veeva implementation, said her primary responsibilities include program management, cross-functional governance, and realizing business value from the platform.
• Prepare business and IT stakeholders to think and work with a platform perspective. Set up cross-functional teams and establish strong data governance at the start of the project to reduce the risk of recreating the same information silos in a different system.
• Engage stakeholders to identify and mitigate implementation risks. Encourage honest, open dialogue, and maintain a critical eye on the project’s impacts and deliverables.
• Take time upfront to review data models and practices. Connecting processes and data across different application suites on a single platform takes a shared framework.
• Adopt a platform approach to managing Veeva applications. Pavan Dronamraju, associate director of Veeva platform, advised colleagues to limit customizations and standardize common IT processes like release management and user provisioning.

CSL Behring’s landscape is still evolving and the company’s next big project is to bring regulatory onto Veeva Development Cloud to further streamline product development. To hear more about their journey, watch the full fireside chat video here.