Enhancing preparedness to navigate the Veeva-Salesforce CRM split

Five key actions from Slalom’s Breakthrough Day to create a future-ready CRM strategy

In the world of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for the life sciences industry, a significant and somewhat emotional split is underway. As Veeva and Salesforce split, the CRM landscape is reshaping. Life sciences organizations must be proactive in assessing their CRM strategies to navigate this transition smoothly. Slalom hosted a “Breakthrough Day” event, gathering industry leaders and experts to explore strategic approaches for future CRM readiness, emphasizing the importance of preparedness, stakeholder engagement, robust data strategies, and effective change management to ensure continued growth and success while minimizing disruption and risk.

Over a decade and a half ago, Veeva and Salesforce began a powerhouse partnership utilizing Veeva’s life sciences industry expertise and leveraging Salesforce’s cloud infrastructure to craft CRM solutions that were custom-tailored to enable growth and operations for pharma and biotech companies. Now that these companies are parting ways, the industry faces challenges, opportunities, and the promise of new beginnings that can reshape the lives of everyone involved. As Veeva transitions from Salesforce to Vault CRM and Salesforce introduces Life Sciences Cloud, life sciences organizations must assess their CRM strategies and business needs to ensure their organizations are poised for continued growth and success while minimizing disruption to current operations and risk.

In addition to this, the overall landscape has changed dramatically over the past 17 years. The traditional interaction model with healthcare professionals (HCPs) has evolved in the post-Covid world. Increased usage of digital channels and omnichannel engagement have established new expectations for experiences. The focus on value and outcomes, along with the development of complex, personalized, and diverse products, has introduced challenges to access due to more complicated reimbursement policies. The shift to digital interactions and recent security breaches have necessitated stricter adherence to regulatory guidelines around data privacy and security. This evolving landscape has served as a catalyst for customer-facing teams to grow and upskill their knowledge in specialty therapies, diseases, access, and reimbursement, as well as the ability to navigate a variety of channels to respond to these changes.

Breakthrough Day

To help our clients address these challenges, Slalom hosted a Breakthrough Day event in Chicago, focusing on the future of CRM for life sciences. This event featured keynote speakers Kevin Chien, general manager of Life Sciences at Salesforce, and Slalom’s Life Sciences global industry lead, Johanna DeYoung. The event brought together CRM experts, technologists, and leaders across various functions within their respective life sciences companies. Slalom’s Life Sciences team led workshops with participants centered around the implications of the Veeva-Salesforce split, strategic approaches to CRM transitions, and the impact that CRM plays in the future of each organization’s success.

The goal of this event and its framework was to provide a platform for life sciences organizations to conduct their due diligence while evaluating CRM requirements and developing their own internal criteria for readiness, enabling them to choose the right CRM platform for their future needs. This framework ensures that each decision is tailored to align with each company’s unique strategic objectives and delivers maximum value to patients and the market.

The event yielded several critical findings that can guide life sciences organizations through their CRM transition.

1. Strategic alignment: Make decisions informed by each organization’s unique strategic objectives, context, and differentiated value in the marketplace. This strategic vision ultimately sets the North Star for clear direction and long-term objectives that influence priorities, resources, investments, future initiatives, and activities.
2. Stakeholder engagement: Focus on your customer and your customer’s customer. Engaging with all relevant stakeholders is essential for understanding and prioritizing your business requirements, pain points, opportunities, user stories, features, capabilities (including current customizations), epics, and initiatives.
3. Data strategy: Whether staying with Vault CRM or considering an alternative CRM solution such as Life Sciences Cloud, a robust data strategy that includes integrations, migration, experience, and governance is crucial. Ensuring data accuracy, security, accessibility, and literacy will drive better decision-making and customer relationships.
4. Technology and tools: Advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, automation, and predictive analytics can significantly enhance CRM capabilities. These technologies will improve efficiency, provide deeper and more actionable insights, support proactive decision-making, drive better experiences, improve speed to market, and ultimately improve outcomes.
5. Change management: Effective change management strategies will be critical for smooth transitions. This includes clear communication, comprehensive training programs, and continuous support to ensure user adoption and satisfaction.

The importance of preparedness and taking proactive action

In order to effectively plan their new path to minimize disruption and maximize potential for growth, life sciences organizations must take proactive steps to navigate the Veeva-Salesforce split. Preparation and strategic planning are essential to mitigate risks, seize new opportunities, and establish a foundation for long-term sustainable growth for the next decade and beyond.

Here are five tangible actions leaders at life sciences organizations can take to enhance their overall readiness and get closer to their future-state CRM.

1. Assess current CRM utilization: The most impactful and likely largest undertaking is conducting a thorough assessment of current CRM utilization across the organization. This involves comprehensive technical and functional evaluations of key business functions, stakeholders, workflows, and integration points, including crucial data, technologies, and customizations. Additionally, analyzing the total cost of ownership will help establish a baseline for current operations and help plan for future CRM options.
   
   Service blueprinting can be a strategic tool to visualize and analyze service processes. This provides a detailed map of interactions between stakeholders, customers, and service providers, highlighting behind-the-scenes activities, data, technology, and integrations that support those interactions.
2. Engage all stakeholders: Begin involving all relevant stakeholders in the decision-making process. Their input will be crucial to informing a CRM solution that meets the unique needs of each organization and can serve as the foundation for future governance. Additionally, understanding the associated functional skills and competencies will help determine future training needs to inform change management efforts. Facilitating discovery workshops and developing fit models working closely with business and technology stakeholders will help define current and future-state requirements.
3. Analyze data strategy: Design and build a data strategy that includes data migration, integration, data experiences, and governance. Begin assessing data to analyze the overall architecture, data readiness, data gaps, data mappings, and quality checks, and define integrations and migration plans.
4. Plan for change: No matter what path your CRM of the future takes, change is inevitable. Begin developing a detailed change management plan that includes communication strategies, training programs, support resources, and talent and competency mappings to minimize disruption to current business operations while also planning with an eye toward the future.
5. Commit to continuous learning: Proactively stay up-to-date on the latest developments for each CRM solution by engaging with industry leaders, technologists, and thought leaders. Gather qualitative and quantitative data points from these interactions to inform your CRM decision-making process.

Embracing new beginnings

The end of the Veeva-Salesforce partnership marks both a challenging period and an opportunity for new beginnings. Life sciences organizations can use this transition to reevaluate their CRM strategies, embrace the latest innovative technologies, and build stronger, more agile systems that better serve their needs across business functions.

The keys to success lie in proactive planning, stakeholder engagement, developing a future-proof data strategy, and leveraging the right expertise and tools that align with each organization’s unique strategic objectives and differentiated value proposition.

Life sciences organizations can emerge from this transition with renewed focus, enhanced capabilities, and a foundation that can empower and scale operational excellence for the next decade and beyond. By taking the right steps now, life sciences organizations can secure a bright and prosperous future and confidently navigate the complexities of the CRM landscape. This proactive approach will help maximize growth opportunities aligned with each company’s unique strategic objectives, delivering greater value to patients and the market.

For life sciences organizations looking to enhance their readiness and navigate the complexities of the Veeva and Salesforce CRM split, now is the time to take proactive action. If you’re interested in learning more about assessing your current CRM utilization, creating a due diligence roadmap to determine requirements and readiness, developing a robust data strategy, or planning for future growth, Slalom is here to help. Our team is ready to bring our Breakthrough Day event to your organization to help ensure a seamless transition. Contact Slalom today to start your journey toward a fit-for-purpose, future-ready CRM solution.

Slalom is a next-generation professional services company creating value at the intersection of business, technology, and humanity. Learn more and reach out today.