Veeva’s 2021 Commercial & Medical Heroes Innovate to Drive Engagement

Driving industry-wide change as an active voice in the community

“I love process improvement,” says Agnés Keltie, who’s been managing compliance at Norgine for more than a decade. “Something always needs to get better, quicker, or faster.” So, when she first heard about Veeva’s compliance forum in 2020, she jumped at the opportunity to join and talk shop with her peers. Since then, Agnés has become a key member of the Veeva community, contributing collective solutions and invaluable insights that are improving regulatory compliance across the industry.

That’s not to say Norgine hasn’t benefited from Agnès’ hard work and dedication as well. By implementing a leaner content review process supported by Veeva Vault PromoMats, Norgine has been able to streamline content approvals and create new opportunities for continuous process improvement. “Agnès is always determined to do the right thing—and with a sense of humor which makes her a pleasure to work with,” says Malcolm Graham, IT global business analyst at Norgine. “Her attention to detail always keeps Norgine on track with its compliance obligations.”

Agnés has been instrumental in energizing Veeva’s community and helping shape Veeva’s products. Says Emma Hyland, VP of global strategy for commercial content at Veeva, “She openly shares her extensive compliance expertise and leads impactful discussions around important topics, working toward solutions that will ultimately benefit the industry.”

Getting a big return from an investment in modular content

Morten has a passion for trains and he has certainly put Novo Nordisk on the right track for more efficient content production and distribution.

When he joined the Danish pharmaceutical in 2018, Morten laid down four guide rails for the journey to better content—transparency, efficiency, agility, and insights—and he embraced Veeva Vault PromoMats as the engine to make modular content happen. His goal was to create—and re-use—content more efficiently, get more content to market faster without a substantial increase in costs, and use data to make better go-to-market decisions.

He has succeeded on every measure. Novo Nordisk, which was producing 5,000 promotional assets in 2019, is now turning out 31,000. Despite the sharp increase in volume, reviews and approvals are happening four times faster. And while Vault PromoMats allows Novo Nordisk to easily collaborate with its many outside agencies, he has increased the amount of content work being done internally, avoiding what would have likely been higher outside costs.

“Morten bridges technology to business transformation, with a sharp eye on value creation,” says Thomas Thestrup-Terp, corporate vice president of commercial excellence & operations at Novo Nordisk. “He is a true leader and ambassador for positive change and advancing the pharmaceutical business model, delivering significant impact and results.”.

Champions of CRM implementation

Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Europe had only one fully compliant channel for engagement with healthcare professionals (HCPs): face-to-face meetings. Now, it has seven compliant digital channels, functioning uniformly across 16 countries and feeding data to a central location for analysis and reporting. Debbie and Paul made the transformation happen in just nine months. In doing so, they have enabled hybrid engagement at scale and set the foundation for meeting individual HCP preferences for channels and content well into the future.

After months of planning made more urgent by the pandemic, Debbie and Paul rolled out Veeva CRM in Q4 2020 to more than 350 field and office-based users. In 2021, working entirely remotely, they expanded the reach of their CRM implementation across Europe and set goals that included optimizing the development and use of digital content.

“Debbie and Paul launched our end-to-end commercial solution, exceeding expectations and partnering extremely well with the countries,” says Steward Pearce, vice president, marketing and portfolio strategy, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Europe.” Our success would not have been possible without their leadership and strong partnership with Veeva.”

Generating insights to better support customers globally

Harmonizing events management across a company with 88 regional offices and 50,000-plus employees is no small task. Just ask Beate Hansman and Aubrey Sevrin at Boehringer Ingelheim. The two worked together tirelessly and passionately to roll out global events standards and a central events platform that is now helping streamline operations and deliver new customer insights across the company.

Since launching Veeva CRM Events Management in 77 countries to support digital and in-person events, Boehringer Ingelheim has gained deeper visibility into customers’ event preferences and simplified the user experience for both attendees and event organizers. Despite the need to deliver all this in the midst of a pandemic, Beate and Aubry’s focus, drive, and determination ensured the program was a success for their stakeholders across all markets.

The duo’s shared success exemplified a perfect union between business operations and IT to help drive the company forward. “Beate and Aubry successfully rolled out new meeting and event platforms and system integrations with a high degree of user satisfaction,” said Carol-Ann Krupka, global head of customer facing execution excellence, Boehringer Ingelheim. “They excel in understanding and finding solutions to local business needs, while also maintaining a core global standard that ensures sustainability, effectiveness, and efficiency.” .

Getting key messages to HCPs quickly

L’Oréal’s Active Cosmetics division is the world leader in dermocosmetics, a status built on its in-person relationships with healthcare professionals (HCPs). The relationships around its six skincare and hair care brands are getting a significant digital lift from work by Jean-François, who is rolling out digital engagement channels for 2,500 users in more than 40 countries.

Jean-François deployed his full multichannel strategy to an initial group of L’Oréal reps in five countries in just 10 months in 2021. The approach includes a range of Veeva commercial solutions, including Veeva CRM and Veeva CLM. He has looked to address a range of L’Oréal business processes through the strategy to get the most appropriate and resonant message to the right HCP quickly. In Veeva CRM MyInsights, he had its Timeline view set as the primary landing screen to drive improved productivity. And because communications are regulated in dermocosmetics, the focus on Veeva CRM Engage Meeting means that L’Oréal has a fully compliant remote engagement platform.

“Jean-François has been a leader in digital engagement with HCPs for more than 15 years,” says François De Cormis, global division medical detailing director at L’Oréal. “His knowledge and experience were key to L’Oréal’s medical multichannel strategy and the successful global Veeva CRM deployment.”.

Going from digital engagement laggard to leader

Before Kate joined Astellas Pharma, the company was, she says, “pretty young” in its digital maturity. It had done pilots of Veeva CRM Engage Meeting in three markets, but it didn’t have remote detailing, and there were digital skeptics on both the commercial and medical sides of the business. In March 2020, that mindset had to change overnight, and it fell to Kate to make Astellas a digital engagement leader.

She did: In just six weeks, Astellas got Engage Meeting running in 44 countries. Since then, Astellas’ commercial and medical reps have hosted more than 30,000 remote calls. Their call duration has been clocked at 26 minutes—30% higher than the Veeva benchmark—and 80% of their meetings have earned a rating of 5 out of 5.

To make digital engagement happen as swiftly as it did, Kate focused squarely on what Astellas had to have to get through the pandemic, leaving the rest for later. Consent collection, e-detailing, and webinars were the priority. She separated the 44 countries into four waves, defined in part by digital maturity, and created standardized modular templates for both commercial and medical use. “The objective was to preserve a line of communication with our customers and ultimately our patients via virtual means,” she told attendees at Veeva’s Europe Commercial & Medical Summit in November.

“Kate worked tirelessly to roll out new digital channels and improvements across sales, marketing, and medical,” says Colin Williams, senior director, digital strategy and capabilities established markets at Astellas. “Her leadership brought effective remote engagement solutions to our customer-facing teams in an impressively short timeframe.”