Well, hello everyone and welcome!
I hope you're having a great day
and I would like to welcome you all
to this new episode of Pharma Insights
the talk show created by Platforce
with the aim to connect, network
and exchange ideas with professionals from the pharma industry
from all over the world.
As you may already know because of the banners and things like that,
my name is Juliana Kreisel
and I will be a host, or one of your hosts for today
In today's discussion,
we will navigate the CRM landscape,
the shift from rep-centric to content-centric strategies.
We will dive into the dynamic world of CRM
and Omni Channel strategies
within the Pharma and healthcare sectors
and explore how these tools have changed
the roles of marketeers and medical professionals.
As you all know, I do not do this show by myself
because I'm a little...
I get nervous in the camera
so I will introduce my co-host and colleague from
Platforce: Stefan Repin.
He's head of marketing. Hi, Stef! How are you doing today?
Hey, hello! Hey! Today I'm free,
I don't have any football to watch.
Well, unless you're rooting for Copa América,
but in Europe we don't have any football
to watch, so today you guys all
can glue your eyes to our wonderful webinar.
I'm really happy to...
We were actually discussing the football with our guests.
ha ha ha
We have a French person here and we have a Belgian here today.
so they had some, a bit of a...
a conflict, but hopefully there's not going to be any conflict on the webinar
because the topic is super interesting.
It's about the upcoming changes, and you guys all know about this.
So we'll run this a little bit different.
Philip will give us a bit of a context
about what are we talking about
and please prepare your questions right away
because there's going to be a lot of very interesting insights
and we have amazing guests today.
And just really like A star guests
Let's go on presenting them.
Sure, first we have Philip Vyt.
Phillip, how are you doing today?
Hey guys! Thank you for having me.
I'm really doing good.
Happy to hear that, that you're happy with the soccer match haha
on the soccer tournament.
Yeah we didn't play well, but we continue and that's...
that's a positive thing, we meet France once again
It still hurts the last time we lost with them,
but we'll try to do a good job.
How good to hear!
Then we have Florent. Hello, how are you doing today?
Hello, I'm doing well.
Actually you know I'm French
but I'm living 1 kilometer away from Belgium
so I will be careful what I say about about Belgian football
You know, Belgium guys,
if you want to search for him, we're going to share his address later on.
No, I'm kidding!
Thank you! ha ha ha
And well actually going to football,
sorry I call it "soccer" I don't know why.
I'm Argentinian. We are...
Football is our life.
so basically we are enemies with Florent
but we are not, right? ha ha
No, absolutely not. No, no!
I think you won the last time right?
That guy named Messi, I don't really know him...
He seems kind of a bit old now but he's still good, right?
He's very good haha
I mean, what can you do?
I would like to introduce our last friend for today
our last expert: Chris Wade. Hello, Chris! How are you doing today?
Hey, everyone! Thanks very much for having me!
Oh we're super happy to have you!
Any comments on the football match or the soccer tournament?
I'm Australian, so it is "soccer".
Sorry, guys. Football is a very different sport where I come from.
but I live in London now, I've been here about 25 years so
I think England's all ready to be knocked out in the semi-finals as usual
ha ha ha Wow!
Well, if you want... "Pharma Insights" is the name
of this incredible project,
or if you want soccer or weather information,
you can always connect with us
and we will be happy to share it.
Before we start with this incredible talk show,
I want to give some
comments I will say to our attendees
please drop your question, comments,
anything you want to hear from our experts
on the comment section below
and we will bring it up for them
so they can answer or connect with you.
Our social media guru and colleague Malén D'Urso
is moderating in the chat and the comment section
so don't worry
and my last information for today will be:
we would love to hear from you guys
what do you want to hear next
so we're going to also drop a form
if you can fill it out,
then we're going to choose the topic.
so without any further delay, and with the end of my
in Argentina we would say "parochial news"
I will go further with this conversation.
So, Stef, do you want to start with this talk?
Yeah! So,
As a matter of fact, Philip has prepared something for us
we have sort of a context, so we'll start with the context, with the story
Right?
Now you go!
Philip, do you want to lead on this? Or do you want me to do it?
I think it's frozen.
I don't know...
Philip, are you frozen?
haha He got stage frightened. No, I'm kidding.
Okay, I'll start. If he comes back then I'll give him the stage.
So, the breakup: In December 2022
Veeva decides that it will not renew the partnership with Salesforce.
The current license expires in September 2025
until then both parties are restricted.
Something new from Veeva.
Veeva announced its new CRM called VEEVA VAULT CRM.
which is a completely new CRM
And it's move to marketing automation.
Announcement of "campaign manager" at the Boston Summit in May 2024.
A new move from Salesforce: at this point it's like basically chess, I can see.
Salesforce announced a global partnership
with IQVIA to accelerate the development of life science cloud.
building on the OCE platform of IQVIA.
To be expected:
intermediate announcements are expected
by Salesforce at dreamforce September 2024
and Veeva Summit EU in November 2024
What's the big bang? The Big Bang is September 2025.
We expect Salesforce to launch its full life cycle
life science Cloud CRM offering
The deadline:
by 2029 all Veeva organizations should have moved to VEEVA VAULT CRM.
or other solution
Seven, the data lawsuit
Veeva open data and IQVIA one key are involved i
an anti-trust lawsuit on the use of customer data offering.
This has been going on for a few years, but we expect an outcome this year.
Yeah, ok.
Philip, are you here? Can you hear us?
Yeah, sorry I got disconnected.
I switched to my phone, so I hope that works.
but I think you already did the page, right? In my absence.
I did the page but you can start the comment.
Actually, from the past conversations I had
with people on this topic because this has been
a very high conversation topic on LinkedIn
we thought it was good to give some background
so when I was talking to Chris
a few months ago in London
we kind of saw like there's a few key dates
that you need to keep in mind
so all of this story started in December
when the marriage kind of broke up, right?
There's this kind of breakup story between Veeva and Salesforce.
and up to then they've been working really well together
Veeva had a license with Salesforce
they paid I think around 50% to Salesforce
and they were continuing like this
but then Veeva says "okay, we're gonna stop this"
and this kind of put a whole series in motion.
and the next
kind of timeline you need to keep in mind is September 2025
by that time the license is actually done.
and by that time Salesforce can bring in their own solution.
and also Veeva can continue with their steps into marketing automation
so they basically make Salesforce to move into the CRM part
and Veeva will move a lot more into marketing automation
and for Veeva this is really
This is Uncharted Territory, right?
they've been around the CRM, and their CRM solution was rep-centric
Remember Veeva was always telling about
the rep is in the center of the orchestration
They're now moving away from
that sentence and they're broadening their value proposition
with campaign manager to marketeers
taking also other channels into the scope,
like email, email automation, marketing email automation,
their website, so it's really a big shift for Veeva.
That big bang is happening September 2025
but in the meantime
like in Fall we do expect that a Dreamforce
Salesforce will already give an update
around their move with IQVIA and their life science Cloud solution
and the same thing will happen with Veeva in November, in Madrid
where they will probably give an update
on where they are with campaign manager
and they will do so in spring in 2025 in Boston again.
and I think Florent added this morning this last bullet to the slides.
It's a key one, right?
Yes, the CRM systems they are moving, they're evolving.
but I think I'll let this to Florent
to discuss this data lawsuit in the back.
Florent, I think it's really critical to take into account this as well.
Yeah because I mean, depending on how IQVIA, how the lawsuit
is going to rule the behavior, the commercial behavior of Veva and IQVIA could be very different.
Technically, nothing would prevent
IQVIA from saying we do not allow people
to use our data set in the Veeva proprietary CRM
because those guys have misbehaved with our data in the past.
And then that would create a challenge for the companies
who would have then to choose clearly a camp
which is to go Salesforce/IQVIA
or to go Veeva/Open data
and that's today no one is exactly there
I think everyone has a bit of a mix based on local market specificities.
So that could play a role in the decision of people.
And maybe interesting when Veeva announced
in December 2023
when in Madrid they talked about the first two customers that were signing up for Veeva Vault
that being Bayer and GSK
they actually said that they were also would be moving to Veeva Open Data
So that data, when they said
"Ok, we're going to be the two first customers that already raised our hands"
And said "we're going to continue with Veeva CRM"
they also said like and
"We're going to do that migration to another customer dataset"
So it does play, it does play a role
we do foresee
so it's not only migration of CRM
It's a lot more than that.
Yeah and I think it's interesting when you look at
the announcement that Salesforce made just
prior to the Veeva US Summit in Boston.
They spoke quite a lot about
that data landscape and
encouraging, you know, giving customers freedom
to make their own decisions about what data they wanted to use
and particularly when you think about essentially thinking about data cloud,
and that ability essentially to mix data sources
and then tether to that of course you have
you know the GPT side with Einstein
Once the data,
once that proprietary data from a provider whether it is
IQVIA, or is H1, or whoever that happens to be,
once that goes into that into Einstein
it will be impossible
to keep control of of its Providence
because that data then gets mixed
and new things get generated hence, you know,
the whole concept of generative AI
and at the same time IQVIA is making their own announcement
around their GPT or AI strategies
so it' be really interesting to see
whilst the initial announcement was
we'll work with everybody
the reality of having IQVIA
as a primary partner
when they are, you know, so dominant, their Core Business is data
sets up you know an interesting
next couple of years between
put the systems to the side
you know if you're effectively locked in
to say if we're going down the salesport path
it will be essentially IQVIA or nothing else
unless they don't operate in that space
and on the Veeva side it has to be open data
or Compass or you know their other data services
it doesn't really help the industry
No.
It becomes... It's another...
It's that next level of locking,
which I don't think you know is what nobody wants from this.
At least from the industry side is going from
you know going into a sort of...
you know situation
regardless of what happens to the lawsuit
Yeah and you also see that at this stage
because we're in this kind of vacuum
between today and 2025 announcements are pretty...
They're really careful with communication
When IQVIA, Salesforce-IQVIA partnership was announced
the press release was pretty vague
the same thing with Veeva communication
on LinkedIn it's pretty
they're really careful in what they announce
and it makes sense, right? We're in this kind of vacuum in between.
and probably everything will go crazy after September 2025 I think.
But I think, as you know, pharma companies
that's exactly the time we need
to think through I mean because
if today we were to choose between
I don't know Eseevo, Salesforce and Veeva, right?
to take those three
That would be choosing a tool
that would be exactly making the same mistake
I had the guys who are telling me "I want to do something with chatGPT"
They, yeah, no.
What is your business situation? What is your business challenge?
What is your opportunity?
And then let's define what are the best tools
to bring you where you want to go
and with whom do you have that conversation, Florent?
let's say you open that meeting
and have that conversation
because I think it's really important
who would you put around that table?
to have that conversation?
so I would put the GMs
of the company,
the guys who are actually owning the local pnls,
I would bring the Global Marketing,
Global Medical, Global Market access functions
and the people who do digital and tech
so that we all of us together define
okay in 2030 we will have to have moved
what are the capabilities the organization will need?
what will be the commercialization model that we will have?
and therefore what are the data and tools
that we enable to deliver our objectives?
and if you take it the other way around
that's really the tail wagging the dog, right?
I mean
The second bullet that you said is
what is the commercial... what does our go to Market model look like?
how is our pipeline evolving?
are we working into super rare disease?
are we still leveraging reps or going into reps plus?
do we have a key account or do we go fully digital?
so I think that conversation is really key
when we see now, when I now do an analysis
on who are the buying personas for tech solutions
It's IT. It's commercial excellence.
And then of course there's procurement, etc
But in this conversation people were focusing on
on really company strategy, launch strategy, TA, pipeline,
There really need to be different
people around that table because the conversation is way bigger
than doing an RFP on
technical requirements
that you really need to take your time to have that business conversation, what you just said.
and when I then look at the
people showing up at the Veeva Summits
and I think I don't know Dreamforce that well
but I can just reflect on Veeva Summit
it's basically business IT,
and then commercial Excellence
I do not see those marketeers
starting to discover
what is the whole world opening up of opportunities
and I think it
so I will... I think you know
naturally you will never see them because they're not going to come
you need to bring them here
and that's for me the role of commercial Excellence
allied with IT in the organizations
which is to let's say open the chakra
of the marketeers and make them understand that the world has changed
and that there are new ways their customer, their own customer
wants to be interactive with.
They want to see different types of content on different media
with a different urgency
in getting an answer to a question and
these type of things.
And that the standard marketing practice
that is I'm going to bring you a 130 page detailing
is irrelevant in 2024.
And that if you do that
you shoot yourself in the foot
like literally you show everyone
that you have not understood where the world has gone
and where your customers are.
And I think it's on us to educate those people.
to open them to the new world
Yeah and I think it's interesting about what we see
from a vendor perspective, is we see
a lot of organizations that at the moment say
particularly either larger organizations
which we think are sort of more innovative. you know, further down
the digital path
what they're doing is what they haven't done
in many cases for over a decade
in some cases over 15 years
is actually running a business requirements assessment
because if you, you know, contrast
the world pre-Veeva
and hey to their credit
they've pulled off a blinder in
leveraging a cloud approach
that has made changed the way that people think about
buying technology because pre-Veeva,
it was every 3 to 5 years you would run a
you know a big reassessment
because your licenses would expire
You bought your licenses.
That lasted three to five years, something like that.
And it would be time for a new system
because it'd be new releases, new versions, all of that.
That hasn't happened.
So the consequence is we've got
across the industry
there hasn't been a serious
reassessment of
what do we need these customer systems to do?
has the market changed? how has our business changed?
Yeah, to your point, Florent, what do we want to be doing in five years?
Hey what do we need to be doing now?
that we struggle to do
in effectively
using a solution model
which is probably more rooted in
frankly when I started working in
when I joined Dendrite back in 1997,
it was about etms, it was territory management.
and we're still largely in a territory management paradigm
with lots of you know parallel systems
in digital and marketing
which have to be sort of bolted on at the back for, you know, at the back end
to try and make it work
so what we've kind of see now is
not people running a technology assessment
because they're not ready for that yet
they need the business assessment to be done first
bringing all those stakeholders around the table and saying
how's it going?
you know, what is our market need?
what do our customers need? what type of brands do we have?
And, you know, what's the nature of decision making
around those medicines
that is going to dictate how we need to engage with the market
until that's in place.
It's like a phony war,
the kind of you know
well this system does that, this does that,
until that process is complete
so we're seeing, you know, a lot of the whether it's larger size
or you know midsize, specialists or
even quite small outfits getting very involved,
in that assessment process
but I think organizations of all sorts of sizes
and then they'll be ready to sort of say
"Okay, show us what you've got"
We know what we want to be looking for now.
hopefully it's been a robust process
and they've got some clear objectives
if we can't do these things,
you know however many points there are,
then that solution is not fit for purpose.
It can't just be business as usual
rolling from what we had to what we will have
on a kind of parity basis
you know it's too... you know
this is... And I think a lot of companies have
worked that out
and are doing that due diligence internally
at the moment and probably over the next year.
in part because they know that
the solutions landscape is very turbulent
we don't know
what vault's really going to look like yet
we don't know what life sciences cloud's going to look like yet
and that thing is interesting because
one of the reasons
when Bayer and GSK was on stage
in December was
that their main... One of the main drivers was stability.
to stay with Veeva
and one of the very interesting things
that I heard I think it was from the person from GSK
saying nothing changes for the reps
because the look and feel of the front page of the iPad
will still remain the same
of course everything in the back is
so that I also see a lot of people
maybe not trying to bring in change
to the field Force because what they said is
I do not want to announce
or I do not want to make the call to call in the Reps
for X number of days to retrain them
and I think I understand this
at a certain level but if you keep on thinking like this
this is basically where you say "we'll never innovate"
because I don't want to educate my field force
so I think
but the call of the fear
for picking something stable
even when we don't even know how it will look like
but one of the drivers they're selling is you're sticking with the same tool
which basically you're not, right?
and that's...
the way Veeva is bringing this in is that
content is at the center of everything
so they push a lot more their vault system,
their promo tool of saying
this is at the heart of every pharma company
so they want to
they sell basically the Vault system and the CRM as more of an extension of this
so I do see that shifting
but that call for stability
or that drive like guys
this is a stable solution, stable setup,
is something that they really push forward
Guys, we have two comments.
The first one is from Ben that it's
in two different parts, the first one says
it's not showing here, I'm sorry, but it says:
I see two main barriers to bringing marketing
Thank you. One sec.
I see two main barriers to
to bringing marketing truly as a stakeholder to the conversation
role churn, how can marketeers get the strategic
strategic level of input if they're jumping teams and roles every year or so
Reliance on what's done before
if their marketing director or creative agency
never got their heads around a strategic CRM use
of CRM, CLM content and the data that marries
the two together?
what's the drive to change?
what other challenges do the panel see
on bringing the right people around the table
and importantly how do we change this
in practical terms?
Let me do this, so you we can all see it better.
One second.
Ok, it's going to load on your right side, so you can read the whole question
that Ben is asking to the panel.
Those are very good questions
by the way.
Well they would be different...
I'm not surprised.
I think, I mean, if you look at... I think breaking
a couple of different points there but kind of
holding it on the last piece I think
it... the who's around the table,
it goes absolutely to both
what you know, Florent and Philip have said
Both articulated the need of bringing
the business leaders and the business stakeholders, not just sales.
And that homes in on
what Philip was saying if you set out
one of the reasons to make a
what is a multi-year potentially decade plus
decision that, you know, I don't want a hard life around retraining
you're putting your feet in concrete
you have to be prepared to change the business,
the business will under you
you know the market will drive change
because either your portfolio shifts or
you know how healthcare reinvestment is going to change
all of these factors of what you are
looking in the crystal ball to say where are we going to be in 5 years, 10 years, or so forth?
That's what, you know, I guess
market access and these other strategic things
are all over
yet if it comes back to the decision maker is
not even commercial IT, it's just a sales IT,
where it's been for decades, you know.
The field was the huge, was the big beast.
So many people working in that area,
all of the infrastructure around that,
the systems, everything was unique to sales,
And that's changing. Yeah, that's changed.
Not even changing.
You know the technology landscape has altered
massively around that, it's a lot easier to do
unified approaches integration
It isn't quite the same barrier that it used to be.
You know, through cdps,
things like that, where it's data cloud
or data verse, whatever that is
It is much easier to connect multiple solutions
than it was previously when it was
you know it was bringing Accenture,
bringing AI, bringing Delight to do
months of work to try and sort of build
all these connections
and that's part of what this shift is also going to be about.
It's going to be a huge amount of
consolidation and renewal about
modernizing stuff that's probably been in place for 20 years
but it wasn't broken so it never got it never...
there was never any pressure to
to redo it.
Guys, the second question was
Let me... Give me one second because
Florent, can you...? The question I think...
I mean the same thing would go with any role, right?
Pharma will probably need to kind of set up
Okay, guys, this is a major shift, it will be phased out
this is probably a multi-year program.
It's not a... Even if you stay with Veeva or if you move,
there's always a migration.
So staying means change
and moving means change so
you cannot outrun the evolution.
That's the bottom line.
So even if people, you would have a jurn
that problem will exist in every role, right?
You need to have your talent development,
your Educational Systems at scale
so not face to face training but at scale
to keep people, newcomers, etc, etc
at the right pace, so that's something to tackle
I think Commercial Excellence is your partner there.
So I think that's the key one.
What I do see is
Veeva is building Marketing Solutions
for a marketing team that is not ready for this.
There's a difference between
should marketing be at the table? Yes.
Are they ready to start working with
dynamic segmentation, with email automation, with landing pages?
It's just something they have not done before
and all of a sudden a tool opens this bag of tricks for them
which if you would go outside of pharma
marketeers are producing website content,
they are producing fully engagement journeys,
they are doing dynamic segmentation, funnels,
top, medium, low funnel.
It's just not what is happening in pharma.
So I think, I think
this is groundbreaking for the role of marketeers
and medical of course due to our industry setup
This is groundbreaking, so the change will be
will be there, but they're not ready this.
This will take beyond 2025
and I think
when we said people that need to be around the table
to take that decision but then I think
there's this transition table that needs to be setup
where I think
which talent are you hiring by 2025?
If in 2025 in October you post
"we need a head of marketing"
the role description would be very very different
so your talent management, your talent development,
is really gonna...
It's gonna shift if you want to explore all the tech features
that are out there in the near future.
and that's five to ten years.
And I guess, Florent, it's like if you look at your own organization
where are your marketers coming from now?
are they traditional? It's coming... People are coming through the field
and have sort of moved out of field into marketing?
or are you hiring marketers?
Yeah so, I... I have...
I have a deep belief in progress and in human progress
when I see the new marketeers we are hiring
the ones that are you know 25 to 35 years old
they know modern marketing
and they are frustrated
by the dinosaur aspect of the traditional marketing of pharma
because they can't do what they want to do
and what they see their friends working in other industries do.
So we need to leverage that energy
by giving them the... what I would call
pierre de Rosette or the the Catalyst of the transformation
for me the Catalyst of the transformation is the customer centricity.
If you give those marketeers
who understand data, who understand dynamic segmentation,
the possibility to go and explain to their boss
that now they are segmenting, they are profiling customer
on 250 dimensions in real time
and that they can deliver a customer experience
that bring your net promotor score
from two to four and a half
I can tell you they're going to be listened to
and we need to create that post
we need to create that group of people
who are innovative enough to test things and then
be proud of their outcome and go around and evangelize the rest of the organization.
I do not think it can be real top down
like we take all the senior people and we bring them in a room
and there's a bright consultant selling them stuff
I mean we've been operating with that model for years
and it didn't work
so I really believe it has to come from the roots of the organization
from the camps
from the sales rep themselves
saying this is what I do in my daily life
why would it be different?
by the way every customer I talk to
tells me I want to be able to get an answer by WhatsApp
in less than five minute
why don't we offer that service?
and when people start to think about it, they are like "oh yeah"
"of course technically we can do it"
So I really I really believe that
the change in the organization is going to come from the doers.
It's not going to come from the long-term strategic thinkers.
We have another question.
Let me post it. Oh, sorry, it's not this one.
It was this one. It says: will this lead to
some sort of merging of the roles between sales and marketing?
Where should the line be?
I'll just say how we work
in B2B in complex industries, right?
In complex buying Industries, what normally marketing does
they do the early stage discovery
and at a certain point marketing hands over a customer to sales
and they continue with that customers until they
they buy that, and the switch is
at a certain level
what's the intent to buy? how ready is that customer to buy?
is he aware of the product?
does he know? does he show certain elements?
does he join a webinar?
does he have conversion points in certain content pieces?
and that's when sales steps in.
In pharma we work today in a different way
basically marketing is not a marketing, they produce
besides the brand
they produce a strategy and they produce content for sales rep
and I'm now putting it very black and white
but marketing does not engage
directly with customers today
I so that will change but I think
so that will change,
so the role of the marketeer will evolve drastically,
I think they will get a lot more hands-on
the question is can you still do this with one brand marketeer
in a country or does it need to be a brand marketeer
and a marketing doer role?
I think the last one is key
and does a role like SFE,
sales force effectiveness, how would that evolve in that?
because that's a bridging role, right?
I think both of them need to work very closely together
and the sales will need to understand
that somebody else also will own engagements and touch points
that are not run by sales purely
So I think...
Yeah I've got a little bit different take on this one because
what I see that this
defining what's the optimal engagement for the customer
is the question of portfolio and a question of
where is your product in its life cycle?
the more we are in Specialty Care setting,
the more the key account manager
becomes the orchestrator of the Omni Channel experience
We need to upgrade those people
so that they're able to pull in every
single channel so they're actually
selling but they are selling by using
webinars, by using approved email,
by using all this type of stuff.
The more you are in established brands
and toward the end of life of the product,
the more it's unafordable
to have camps, reps, and all that
and then you pivot to totally digital strategy
where in fact the marketeer
becomes a sales guy
the marketer because he knows the customer in the digital way
sells directly to the customer
and the real question for us today
is: even should that marketeer be an in-country marketeer?
or do we need to have a unit of above country marketeers?
who interacts directly with the customers in the countries
because they have more insights
on the customer in a centralized system
than the country can provide locally
with their knowledge of the country.
And that's a real debate and that you know
Global Marketing creating Global stuff and
cascading on local markets
everyone knows it never worked.
I received beautiful Global brand plans
when I was in Japan for four years
that were going straight to the chimney
to warm the cold night of Japan, right?
and because that was totally unusable
and so I think you know maybe
this is going to change specifically for the establishment.
I think the remark you made on
the different go to Market models
key account versus life cycle
I think it's a topic
in Omni channel it's spot on right by the way, Florent
because there is the full digital approach
has come and then so I think
the way Omni Channel kind of morphs
depending on the product
if you're in rare disease, if you're in specialty care
if you're in consumer health
that is very different
so how you put capabilities into play
is very very important. I fully agree with that one.
I'm gonna go one step further
than Floren because I think one of the challenges we have is
we have still a very one-dimensional concept of customer.
so when we look at
that question of sales and marketing
everyone immediately piles into
if we're talking about sales, we must be talking about the reps
and of course the Reps don't sell anything.
There is no buyer, you know.
The doctor, the hcp does not go out
and you know get their credit card out
and buy something so they are selling
influence, they're selling knowledge and
I have a great argument with
people like James and others out there,
there around that sort of that side of it.
but one of the challenges that we have
and to your point Philip about the
sort of complexity of the market operate
is that there are many customers
and there are buying processes
that are in play
when you look at what the commercial team are doing
what Market access is doing,
what country leadership or above country
teams are doing on
you know, access arrangements on pricing
on ultimately selling a product
and making that available for patients in
you know, that market or that institution
and one of the challenges when you look at the sort
of how CRM has been designed
it's basically ignored that reality
like a lot of commercial teams
Correct me if I'm wrong, Florent,
they don't need CRM
because it's talking about the bottom of the pyramid
it's all about hcps
not saying that they're not important
but there are layers of customer and decision-making above that
which you have a whole multitude of people
internally who are, you know,
working together, collaborating,
coordinating what they're doing
because there's a a big payoff at the end of that process
of getting, you know, that new drug
you know, on formulary
accessible, all of that stuff and
obviously all of the postdecision pull through on
on is it actually happening?
how do we support you?
that's right so there's a lot of selling that goes on.
But it's happening outside
what we define as sales and marketing
in a lot of these conversations
and I think when you look at
some of this decision making
that's going to be going on over the next...
now and over the next couple of years
is, you know, we've seen the size of the sales forces
going in one direction
so at some point you know
a sort of singularity of
do you even have a salesforce?
in the classic concept of do I have a rep?
an hcp facing field representative?
If you do, you have to have a good reason for doing it
if you don't, you've got a good reason for not doing it
and that may well be because actually
they have no impact on buying
so when we think about defining this sort of new
way of the new sort of CRM Paradigm
is it more business to business?
is it more hybrid B2C, B2B?
If those are the kinds of conversations, which I hope,
are happening you know at
senior levels to say we've got to rethink
the way we work and the way we bring
our products to the market
because if we don't, we're just sort of
like circling an ever smaller opportunity
Yeah, no, but
that's totally totally right and
you need to build on top of that another layer
which is, you know, I think Stefan for instance
is a great marketeer
but he's a little bit the doctor woo of marketeers
in a sense that he is interested in tech
marketeers very often in Pharma
are totally not interested in Tech,
not interested in systems
we are running about 600 Salesforce marketing Cloud campaigns
the marketeers never log into any system
any system
We tried with Veeva, we tried before it with...
They don't. They live in PowerPoint land, and Excel.
You know, Excel.
And I really think
it's a big challenge if you plan to choose
your technology solution
thinking those guys will actively do something in the system
you may have difficult mornings waking up
Honestly. So I really think we need to start from
what's the strategy?
what's the portfolio? where are the customers? what do they want?
and then how do we commercialize our products?
irrespective of the people
you can always change the people, you can always train them
you can up skill them but that
as Philip was saying that's going to be a multi-year journey
Yeah and you need to rethink
operating the same way we were
rethinking the operating model
in the whole conversation about centralized content
and modular content
this will have a similar conversation as well
but what I do want to do is
because we see a lot of challenges, right?
what I do very much welcome is
the courage that Veeva is taking to go,
step away from "everything is about the fields"
and that they do take on that journey
to bring us the tools like what we see
with Hubspot and Maretto
happening in the other industries
that they say we're going to open and we're going to broaden
towards a broader engagement portfolio because
they have been only talking about
when they sat around Omni Channel
and they have a few I think pulse reports
where they say the 360 of the HCP
and they only talk about their channels, right?
which is rep, which is veeva engage
so they've always had like a slice of that pizza
what they now saying okay guys
we're going to take that courageous step and going beyond
I think we need to welcome this.
Even campaign manager is not
but know it will be a long Revolution, right?
but it's the first time that in a company like Veeva
they stepped away from that
the rep is at the center of the engagement
and in some ways it will
but they really go beyond that piece, so I think
it's a courageous move
and I think it's very dynamic times
for us to be there
to watch this happening
because this doesn't happen every X years, right?
I think this is really good.
I think my call for Veeva would also be to
still try to reach what you just said
to still try to reach some of those key influences in the marketing
atmosphere to really...
because they will need to start thinking about a change even
because otherwise they will have a product
which will not get the adoption
so I think they will need to start
together with their partners and their ecosystem
not only saying this is the new tech which we have
but also how would you start enabling this?
adopting this? how does this fit with brand planning?
because otherwise they will be
selling licenses
and you know what happens when Tech is not used?
It's always the fault of the tech.
It's never the fault of the... so I think
Veeva will also need to
all of a sudden activate their ecosystem
in a whole new area I think.
To make sure it's not implemented
but they have an adoption Focus
but they do, to be...
To be fair with them I've seen more Veeva people
in the last three months than I had seen in the previous five years
So... And that's coming from them
and it's all good engagement,
and all good discussions and a lot of
great will to collaborate with the pharma companies
so I think they are trying to get back onto
Ok, we are not eternal because we have decided
to start to, you know, cut the branch on
which we're sitting yeah
The question is relevant, this one. Yeah
Yes, please!
It's a great point that.
Yeah, because so... Most of the customers that I see
they have a tandem Veeva Salesforce
and they have this integration
Now I think this
would still work in the future
question is how good it will work?
because there's now a whole different conflict of interest
I think on this level.
but I would assume that this will still be able to work.
So, when you say
should I be sticking with Veeva?
and will their automation Suite, will it be on par with Salesforce?
Yeah, I think
this is a very very difficult move for them to make
because Salesforce is so far ahead
just from Tech
yeah just from a tech perspective,
the current solution that we have for instance
where you know things are integrated
in between Salesforce on one side
Veeva on the other side
where we start to use Einstein on Salesforce
to push things into Veeva and all that
that still is totally suboptimal
versus having one single platform
where we can have our Azure data Lake,
where we've got our layer of artificial intelligence
wherever we are in the system
whether it's in a screen used by the rep
or in a campaign from a marketeer
the AI is going to access the same data
and going to produce the same type of insights
or next best action or whatever
if we have the...
the more we have bridges, and connections and stuff like that
the more complicated it is and the more expensive it will be
And I think all...
does the aspect of Salesforce CDP or the
I cannot judge it from a fully technical level
the open of Salesforce of course
is open up to a very different
levels of industry, right? I think healthcare
the 15% they got from
Veeva is only 1% of their revenue
so basically it's just a tiny piece
so Salesforce will always be
the faster mover because they work with different industries
with different higher demands
so that's I think another interesting angle
and I think then
I mean there's a lot of comments on Salesforce CDP
not actually being a CDP etc but I think
if you're already focusing really on Omnichannel engagement,
dynamic segmentation,
the question of CDP and really taking a step back
and assessing that full Suite
that I think becomes important as well, so it's not only
what about my tandem Veeva Salesforce?
Can I still make that work?
And do I need to take that decision?
I think the complexity is slightly bigger.
But it is a relevant one,
but they will...
They will... If
they keep hiring people who understand and know pharma
that one of the challenges, historical challenge of Salesforce was
their lack of expertise and understanding of Pharma
and try trying to push on us models that were working on other industries
that couldn't work for compliance reason or
for whatever kind of, you know, commercialization model
like having leads with dollars in my CRM
doesn't help me in Europe, it's even
preventing me from using the screen
so I think they are learning
and they're hiring a lot of people from the pharma industry
which is a good thing
The reason why you think
they would really
set up this partnership at IQVIA to say
we know pharma, and now we have a partner with OC
that kind of...
because it gives them that partner, that life science partner, right?
I think they are buying their ticket into pharma this way
Obviously you've seen the shift of
you know the essentially
the product engineering team for oce
have moved
so it's, you know, it's a partnership, but it's a pretty deep one
from that point of view, and so it gives them
that product, and that team behind it who have
I mean I know some those guys on it
they've been working in this space they go, you know,
driving all of that era
they've got decades of experience
in this place.
But I think one of the challenges of course is, you know,
business technology moves fast
you know and the challenge that
I guess, you know, when Veeva's
if you want to sort of look for kind of unfortunate coincidences
I think it was September 22 that
that it was announced in the investor call
that they're going to not going to renew
the partnership agreement with Salesforce
and kind of like
what was it? sort of 90 days later
the world is on fire with GPT
and you've got companies whether it's Microsoft
you know Amazon and Coke
literally spending billions of dollars
on server Farms,
on buying up every
Nvidia chip there is in the world
you know all of that side of things
As much as we'd like a nice cozy ecosystem,
you know that's just perfect
for our industry
it's a big world out there
and we can't afford to be myopic
and there is a real tendency to have this kind of very inward inward focus
of let's just do the stuff that's just right for us
and somebody will choose something else
let's move them faster
you know change quicker, be more agile,
be a better commercial organization
and it will come back to haunt people
that you know they've made decisions on
on purely, on what was the rear view mirror
all I'm doing is looking at what was behind me,
and I'm not seeing what's coming.
So this is going to be, you know,
and we've seen in terms of those sort of
like announcements that have going on obviously
Salesforce are throwing everything
at Einstein you know
they've rebranded the product, you know: Einstein One
It is the new
sales force brand of the unified
solution data Cloud Einstein GPT
all of the different Cloud Solutions
but it kind of masks the fact but it's still separate solutions
Salesforce is a multicloud model
you know because
marketing is a separate Cloud environment to sales to service
and that has implications
to Florent's point on
you still got integration, even if those are
managed by the vendor
it's still separate systems
and these are those sort of big waves
of investment and
technology development
that take years to come to fruition,
you can't just do it in five minutes
and this is you know I think, I guess
where you sort of have the technology side
going sort of clashing heads with
maybe the people who are kind of like comfortable with Asis
but the Asis isn't going to work any longer
if you haven't got an army of reps
you don't need a CRM system that is designed
around armies of reps.
and we kind of... there's a lot of thinking still going on
but you do have people and companies
who are saying "Ok, I can see what's coming"
Effectively what we see is the application today
isn't going to exist in 3 or 5 years time.
It will be a generative
ask the question, get the answer
what do you want to automate? what do you want to achieve?
that generates the process, that generates the application
You've got the data.
it's like it's a whole different paradigm of working with technology
that just sort of like leads to
where we are today with our sort of mega rep
that sort of tries to do everything
and it gets a bit top heavy
you know looking pretty archaic
and that's part of you know
is these are some... Look at how Gartner talks about this
they're saying some of those big
themes of technology driven change
it's like that has to sort of coexist with
what the business is trying to achieve
but on the customer side,
they're changing too
they're taking full advantage of
digitalization in healthare, they're investing
heavily in AI to improve
diagnosis, to improve drug selection
it's not going to be down to who had the nicest sales
as to what my prescribing decision would be
it's been taken out of the hands of the HCP
in many situations, so that changes the nature of
of what is our Market, what is our commercial process,
which makes this you know
parts of the kind of CRM conversation
feel a bit kind of like quaint
Guys, we have a question.
We have a comment and then we have a question.
So I'm going to put it here so everyone can see it.
The question is
from John it says manufacturers are
challenged with hiring the kind of
technical expertise being discussed,
How are Veeva, Salesforce, and Exeevo doing with
stuffing up to address this transition?
going to be a lot of work on both sides
whether stay with Veeva, or move to SF, or Exeevo.
Were you, John, were you listening to our conversation before the call?
Because this is exactly what we were talking about
Hahaha yeah, maybe he was and we didn't know
But I think you can answer how you do it
but it's clear.
It's clear that it's going to be a challenge for everyone.
Internally, for the companies as well
because we don't have you know as a pharma company
we don't have a lot of expertise on Veeva
Salesforce or Exeevo
we have expertise on what is the business process
that need to be supported by the system
and who needs to see which data to take what decisions
and then from there
when it goes to tech
we rely on the Accenture, the cognizant, you know
Accurance and other companies of the world
to help us run this business
because everything is in the cloud,
nothing is on premise.
The role of our own IT teams
in that space is generally limited to vendor management
so we are not going to be the one doing the heavy lifting
of the migration
we're going to pay people for that
so it's interesting to see what will be the offering
on the vendor side
Veeva, Salesforce and Exeevo
in terms of okay we are going to carry you
half way through the bridge.
Yeah, or you know
and you've got to you know pay the piper.
And it's I think there's a lot...
and it's a whole other area
where we see
technology playing you know a huge role
in automating things which had previously been
basically pretty manual
If you think about... If you talk to you
people on the AI side
who do system integrations work
and deployments and things like that
data migration, data mapping
was a big task
and a lot of that was sort of... it took months
to often do the data load
to get data ready, to bring it from an old system to a new one,
and it was you know
very painful for everybody because
you're kind of trying to run the business at the same time.
but not surprisingly, you know that doesn't stand still either.
So you've got a whole raft of
of companies who specialize in
the tools to aid migration whether it's
Salesforce to Salesforce
which in effectively that's what you do,
what you're talking about doing
if you're going to say I'm on Veeva today
and I'm going to move across to
different Salesforce based platform
it's a Salesforce to Salesforce migration
Salesforce to Vault
different migration question.
Salesforce to Microsoft
that's what we build on at Exeevo
Those tools exist, people like Sonata systems
they're kind of big in this area
where they're building those automation tools
to basically go out and look at
the data model that you have in your current system
analyze the data model it's going to go into
and work out and to how to
automate that migration
but to Florent's point
that doesn't say anything about the business processes
and of course when you look at the CRM tools today
often they're just forms
there's actually very little process
in the system
because there's not very much worklflow
and where it is it's
probably pretty much linked to approvals and things like that
so often what you just have
is forms and forms and forms, tables full of data
and then you've got a sales process
or a customer process over the top
and unless that customer process
is properly documented
it's going to stay still, it'll be the same process in the new system
so there's no kind of renewal or innovation there
or gets lost in the process
and you get have some pretty unhappy people
when it comes to switching it on
And there's a lot, there's a whole debate
on the price and the cost
of all that migration
I think there's a lot of comments around the cost.
and it's true I mean we have no clue how much is going to cost
Today, the one thing I know is that
it's not sexy
I mean if you go to a CFO or CEO
you tell him: you know what? I need $5 million
to change the Veeva system that we implemented five years ago
it's going to be: are you nuts?
you know why? you didn't even say AI
why would I give you any money if you don't bring AI
to my company? and it's just like right now
most of the companies are very busy
launching products and you know
investing in new technology and stuff
and you come with an old problem. The CRM? Really?
I thought it was fixed.
So getting the right level of investment
is going to be a challenge.
Okay guys we are one minute away
so to have an hour of the conversation
I don't know if you guys wan to
if the attendees have any more questions or...
we can leave it with a cliffhanger
and we will see on
the second part of this incredible talk show
So I'm um up to what you guys want to do.
I think we...
we should launch a survey
for all the people who attended need the webinar
to know where they would put their money, you know what?
Everyone can put two euros, 5 pounds or something
and we give the money to a charity
when at the end we know who's going to win.
hahaha all right I love your strategy.
You've got such confidence in the UK economy.
haha okay
hey guys but I think it's because there's a lot of things
some of the topics like we always talk about the change for pharma
companies, there's a massive change
coming for medcom, for communications agencies,
content agencies as well
but I think September dreamforce I think
coming back with this group in September discussing
I'll be doing
trying to get the Veeva Summit as well
they're not really keen on
letting everybody in, they're pretty selective but I think
I think those will be two key events
for this team also to follow up and keep that conversation going as well.
Yes, I agree.
well they can all invite us and then we can discuss about what happened over there
So it's a win-win situation haha
If they invite us haha
We could do a podcast from San Francisco and from Madrid
I'm always up for that, you know what?
Stef, you heard that
so I need to travel to San Francisco
and then Madrid I'll let you know
We'll sit on the pavement outside, how about that?
Yeah okay haha
Ok, the, so you have heard.
we are going to have a second part of this incredible talk show
on September, maybe September, end of September
so be aware,
keep an eye on our posts so you can know when
and we will see you then
I would like to thank our incredible speakers for being here, thank you so much.
Our attendees, this would not be possible without you
So thank you again.
and I will see you all on our next
Pharma Insights.
So thanks everyone!
Thank you! Bye bye!
Bye!