Category: Veeva Knowledge

Remote working and remote solutions have never received as much attention as they are at present, with people across the globe required to explore alternative means of ‘meeting’. Since lockdown started in March:

In a space as heavily regulated as the pharmaceutical industry, this presents further challenges around compliance and the agility with which companies are able to adapt to not deploying their field force on the road. The good news is that the solution was ready, waiting and generally under-utilised. The answer is Veeva CRM Engage Meeting.

What is Veeva CRM Engage Meeting?

As those in the industry will know, initiating a video conference with an HCP using one of the many available tools on the market (Zoom, Skype, Teams to name but a few) simply isn’t an option. Pharmaceutical companies need to manage and control the content of meetings between their reps and HCPs and in a third-party video conferencing solution, compliance cannot be guaranteed. This is where Veeva CRM Engage Meeting comes into play.

For the many pharma companies already using Veeva as their primary multichannel CRM, Engage offers a simple and compliant means of delivering approved CLM content to an HCP from anywhere in the world. Due to its intrinsic links with the Veeva suite of solutions, it allows reps to present the same content that they would have run through on a Digital Sales Aid in the face to face environment. As such, rather than hampering the rep, the switch to virtual meetings actually provides an opportunity to increase sales force effectiveness with less of the rep and HCP’s time used up per appointment.

Features of Veeva CRM Engage Meeting

While some companies may have begun using Veeva CRM Engage Meeting primarily out of necessity, that shouldn’t prevent them from getting the absolute best out of the tool. There are a number of features that with the right development consultancy, their reps can benefit from.

Several features, such as integrated voice and video, simple single hyperlink invitations to meetings and a toll free/ ‘call me’ option could be seen as a basic expectation of software of this type. However Engage offers a lot more besides.

• Device flexibility – HCPs can join the meetings from any device, while sales reps can present their CLM content from their iPad, allowing them to replicate their in-person presentation style.
• Online scheduling – Reps and MSL hosts can focus on their calls, with online users such as call centre reps having the ability to schedule appointments using Engage.
• Strict regulatory compliance – Only approved, compliant content can be shared, so the risk of inaccurate materials being displayed is nullified.
• Activity tracking – With approved Veeva CLM content being presented, actions can be tracked and recorded in the CRM – allowing for a greater level of analysis.
• Content effectiveness & HCP sentiment monitoring – When set up in line with best practice, multichannel data and insights around every interaction are gathered and updated in Veeva CRM in real-time.

So what can pharma companies do to ensure they don’t just use Veeva CRM Engage Meeting, they genuinely harness its full capabilities?

Getting the most out of Veeva Engage

Many of the principles around utilising Veeva solutions for better sales outcomes remain the same when it comes to Engage. Are you still using flat, non-interactive content (essentially paper under glass) that neither generate or track/record HCP interaction? If you have made the leap to more interactive sales aids, are you confident that your design and development teams understand the very specific framework for producing sales aids within Veeva? A dull, or worse still, glitchy/ broken edetailer is going to be just as ineffective remotely as it is in person so now is the time to review the effectiveness of your visuals, messaging and analytics.

STEM Healthcare’s industry data from 2017 showed a 71% increase in good sell outcomes when field teams were given highly interactive and engaging eSales Aid content.

At twentyeightb, as multichannel partners and with our vast experience of developing for Veeva and consulting on best practice, we can help you and your agencies design and develop the sort of functional content that leverages the full potential of Veeva to better support reps in achieving good sell outcomes. In support of the current situation we are also offering a pro-bono 30 minute workshop to help you understand what best practice in Veeva CRM Engage Meetings could look like for you.

Get in touch to find out more.

At twentyeightb, we’re committed to maintaining a detailed understanding of the Veeva product suite in order to better advise our clients and partners. We know that with product life cycles often spanning several decades, having a consistent system is key to streamline what can be a long-winded process. Veeva Systems can manage the whole product life cycle. As a client you progress through the different Veeva suites as you move from the early preclinical stages all the way through to marketing and sales. Here’s what you need to know.

Scroll for the full life cycle

	Clinical Trials		Regulatory	Quality and Manufacturing	Medical Affairs	Field Medical	Marketing	Sales
CRM					Align CRM CLM Approved Email Engage Events Management MyInsights
Vault	EDC	CTMS eTMF Study Startup	Registrations Submissions Submissions Publishing Submissions Archive	QMS QualityDocs	MedComms		PromoMats
Network					Customer Master Product Master
OpenData					Oncology Link Customer & Compliance Data Email Services Data Services

Scroll for the full life cycle

As this image outlines, Veeva targets each stage of product development with a different application. We have put together a run-down of each stage of the lifecycle to explain how Veeva facilitates product development, ensuring their clients can bring products to market faster and more efficiently.

The Veeva Vault Platform is a constant throughout all stages of development. Easily scalable and customisable, it can amalgamate any of the Veeva Vault applications, from the early clinical trial Vault Coder all the way to Veeva Vault Promomats for commercial content and digital asset management. Its unique ability to manage both content and data offers a fully integrated end-to-end process.

The Beginning: Clinical Trials

Clinical trials can run for 10 to 15 years as the product goes through 3 phases before it can be licensed. A vast amount of data is produced within this time. The Veeva Vault Clinical Suite handles this stage of the life cycle, assembling data and operations on the central Vault platform. The suite can be divided into two sections. Firstly, the Clinical Data Management applications that streamline the huge amount of data developed in the trials. Secondly, the Clinical Operations applications unify the content and track the activation process.

Clinical Data Management

• Vault CDMS – this Clinical Data Management System unifies all of the data management applications.
• Vault EDC – the interface for capturing and reviewing clinical trial data.
• Vault Coder – offers innovative coding tools that yield fast and accurate coding for any clinical trial.
• Vault Data Workbench – integrates all types of clinical trial data into a consistently formatted data lake for cleaning, reporting, and exporting.

Clinical Operations

• Vault CTMS – the management system for integrating clinical operations
• Vault eTMF – an online ‘Trial Master File’ enables active TMF management for real-time inspection readiness, visibility, and control.
• Vault Study Startup – brings together study start-up activities and processes in a single, easy-to-use application.

The Regulation Stage

Before the product can be manufactured, it has to be regulated. The development team are required to assemble and submit a regulatory submission dossier to the regulatory agency. It is important that these submissions can be accessed before and after the submission. The Veeva suite for the regulation stage, the RIM (Regulatory Information Management) Suite, controls registration in three different applications. Once again this suite can be managed from the central Veeva Vault Platform.

• Vault Registrations – provides a single global application for planning, tracking and reporting on product registrations.
• Vault Submissions – assists in accessible authoring and submission assembly.
• Vault Submissions Publishing –  a unified solution for dossier publishing that dramatically speeds submission delivery.
• Vault Submissions Archive – an accessible store for all previous regulatory submissions.

Quality and Manufacturing

As the drug moves into manufacturing, it is essential to maintain strict quality standards. This is where you require the Veeva Quality Suite. Housed on the Vault platform, the quality control can be accessed by all parties, life sciences companies, contract manufacturers, and suppliers.

• Vault QMS  – allows for the global management of quality processes
• Vault QualityDocs – facilitates the sharing of GxP documents among employees and partners.
• Vault Station Manager – a mobile application for the shop floor that helps to ensure the right content is always available for greater compliance and efficiency.
• Vault Training – manages training requirements to ensure compliance and role-based qualification.

Medical Affairs

After the product has been approved, it is passed to medical affairs teams. The product is offered to the health service before it is opened up to competition. The Veeva Medical Suite is designed to unify the relationships between healthcare professionals, payers, regulators and patients throughout the post-approval life cycle of a product. Unlike the other suites, the medical applications do not run solely from the Vault platform. The new requirements that this stage brings means that the applications run between the Vault platform, the CRM platform and the OpenData platform.

• Medical CRM  – a social hub to help medical affairs engage with all stakeholders that offers face-to-face calls, email, events and digital interactions.
• Vault Medcomms – run from the central vault platform, MedComms assists the creation, delivery and approval of medical content.
• Oncology Link – links tens of thousands of oncology experts for better market intelligence and engagement

Marketing and Sales

As the product moves to market, competition emerges. This is where the Veeva Commercial Cloud comes into play. This cloud brings together customer data management, AI, commercial content and multichannel engagement to ensure an end-to-end streamlined customer experience. The Cloud encompasses a CRM suite of applications as well as another Vault application and the next-generation Veeva Nitro.

CRM Suite

• Multichannel CRM  – much like the Medical CRM, this application offers customer engagement through a range of channels including face-to-face and email.
• OpenData – offers access to approximately 16 million healthcare professionals, organisations and their affiliations, bringing together customer engagement.
• Align – a territory alignments process that gives commercial teams more direct control of  the sales process.
• Network Customer Master –  synchronises data to present a complete customer view.
• Andi – An advanced artificial intelligence application delivers recommendations into the teams’ daily workflow to drive intelligent engagement.
• CRM Events Management –  a central events planning platform offering total visibility from all parties.

Digital Asset Management

•  Vault PromoMats –  offers integrated digital asset management with review and distribution capabilities.

Commercial Data Warehouse

• Veeva Nitro – a next-generation commercial warehouse allowing life science companies to unify the most important data sources.

If you are interested in your own Veeva project, read our other Veeva knowledge resources or get in touch with twentyeightb today. We are certified Veeva Multichannel Partners and we can provide advice and guidance for the Medical Affairs and Marketing and Sales aspects of the Veeva platform. You can contact our Veeva experts on +44 (0) 1480 877 321 or drop us a line via our contact form.

Welcome to our Veeva Insights Video series, the series dedicated to helping brand teams and creative agencies better understand and leverage the tools available to them on the Veeva CRM approved platform.

Within this fourth episode, James Harper, Founder and Managing Director of twentyeightb, continues the discussion on functional content from episode three. James talks us through and demonstrates how to use functional content that is easy to navigate in an objection handling situation. He then delves deeper into how effective implementation of analytics can be employed to monitor content improvements.

Previous episodes:

You can also return to our first episode, in which we covered the basic functions of Veeva Approved Email,  our second episode where we walked through a more advanced implementation of Veeva CRM approved email.

We would also recommend watching our third episode, in which we began looking at functional edetailer content and how it can be used for market insights and enhancing in-field sales effectiveness, before watching part 2 in episode four.

Watch the fourth episode in our series below, read our key takeaways and feel free to share with your organisation.

What is functional content?

At twentyeightb, we refer to content as functional when it works hard for a living, engaging both the user and the customer, delivering more than simple text or images, it calculates, measures, records or personalises content for maximum impact.

Key takeaways:

Functional Content in the Right Place

(1:09-2:01)

If useful additional content cannot be easily navigated to, it can lead reps away from the core sales flow. Research shows that in a primary care setting there is a 2-4 times increase in good sales outcomes when the representative delivers all core key messages in order during a call. So content and navigation should be designed and implemented to enable and support this behaviour.

Functional Content in Objection Handling

(2:40-3:44)

In an objection handling situation, Veeva eDetail aids carry functional content in an easily navigable tab, that we at twentyeightb call a blade. The blade offers an infinite scrolling canvas for clinical data and other objection handling content such as inclusion criteria for a clinical trial. The sales representative can use bookmarks to scroll quickly to the relevant content, making the process even more efficient.

With one tap, the representative can guide the HCP back to the core sales flow, keeping them anchored in the sale.

Using Analytics to Inform Content Improvements

(4:01-5:02)

Analytics can be used to monitor content usage and inform content improvements. By using granular custom analytics, which in Veeva are called custom clickstream, you can see exactly what content is being viewed on these blades.

Analysing this data can reveal why certain objections are occurring. For example, they could suggest a concerted effort from their competition to undermine or call into question the validity of certain results.  This information could then be used for content improvement. You can update the content on the core efficacy slide to address this objection before it is even raised by the customer, streamlining the sales flow.

In the next episode:

In episode five, twentyeightb will be looking at the MyInsights dashboards in Veeva and how they can be used effectively to support the sales representative in a range of customer segments. If you have any questions about maximising the effectiveness of Veeva – feel free to get in touch.

Email can be a powerful part of your multichannel strategy. While it lacks the impact of meeting face to face, it has greater range and many HCPs that are hard to meet in person will still be contactable by email. However, corporate campaign emails tend to have lower open rates, as the message is not tailored to the reader, and handwritten emails are limited to plain text, and present issues with compliance. Veeva Approved Emails utilise HTML, can be tailored for a specific HCP, and are managed centrally through Vault to ensure compliance. To use them, all the rep needs to do is choose an account in the Veeva app, select an email template, make the adjustments they need, and send. In this article we will have a look at some of the key features that you should understand to get the most out of Veeva Approved Emails.

Content that comprises a Veeva Approved Email:

Email Template:

This is the only non-optional element; it is an HTML document which forms the base of the email into which other elements can be inserted.

Fragments:

These are chunks of HTML content that you can insert into the Email Template. There are two types:

• Email Fragments: These are pieces of content that can be inserted into the body of the email. They will be selected by the rep at the time of sending the email, based on what information they think the HCP will be interested in.
• Template Fragments: These are header or footer fragments containing boilerplate that will be standard across multiple Email Templates. They do not need to be inserted by reps as they are associated with Email Templates at the Vault level.

Tokens:

These are pieces of non-HTML code that are placed in the HTML document to tell Veeva to do something at that position. For example, {{insertEmailFragments}} is placed where the Email Fragments should be inserted. There are several types of token:

• Custom text tokens allow the rep to insert some handwritten text into the email, or select some text from a dropdown menu to add a bit more personalisation. You can block certain words such as the product name to prevent the sender from accidentally making the email non-compliant.
• Dynamic footnote and citation tokens can be used when you have fragments with their own citations and footnotes. They allow Veeva to automatically number all the footnotes and citations and put them neatly in one place, outside the main body of the email.
• Merge tokens pull data from the Account and User objects to automatically perform actions such as insert the HCPs name into the salutation line of the email or insert the sender’s name into the subject line. You also tag hyperlinks with merge tokens to track when a user has visited your website via that hyperlink. This requires setting up the website to enable this behaviour.
• Approved Email action tokens provide another way to track users clicks. This token creates a link that when clicked, creates a Multichannel Message Record, so you can use it to track click throughs. You can also leave the link target blank to implement buttons such as “Yes, I will be attending this meeting”, that create a record, but do not link anywhere.
• Document tokens link to Veeva documents such as promotional pieces. This allows similar functionality to sending an attachment in a normal email, but the linked document can be managed in Vault. You can also use them as a compliant way to send Veeva Surveys and Veeva CoBrowse invitations.
• Custom content tokens. This is the most powerful token which is also the most complex to use. It allows a value from any custom object, that the user has access to and is synced to the device, to be inserted in the email. In practice this token is rarely needed, as the other tokens cover most of the normal use cases, but it opens up a wide range of possibilities for inserting custom content text or HTML into the email.

Other features

Open Count

By inserting a 1 pixel square image into your email, Veeva can show you a count of how many times it has been opened, based on how many times the image has been loaded from their server. As Veeva does this by default, it’s the simplest way to find out if your emails are getting through. The downside is, if the HCP has “do not load images” enabled in their email viewer, Veeva won’t be able to detect them opening the email.

CLM integration

The Veeva CRM JavaScript Library provides methods to select email templates and fragments in the background and launch the Send Email UI. These actions can be hooked up to buttons or gestures in a CLM presentation, allowing reps to build up a tailored email while presenting. This can provide the HCP with further reading material on topics that they have expressed an interest in during the presentation, with minimal extra effort for the rep.

Extra information

The different email clients vary in their support for different HTML features, so care needs to be taken to produce HTML that renders nicely across different email clients, browsers and devices.

Interested in learning more about Veeva approved emails? Check out our video series, starting with episode one, or get in touch to find out how we could help you.

Welcome to our Veeva Insights Video series, the series dedicated to helping brand teams and creative agencies better understand and leverage the tools available to them on the Veeva CRM approved platform.

Within our third episode, James Harper, Founder and Managing Director of twentyeightb, talks us through and demonstrates the functional content designed for Veeva CLM Multichannel Presentations – often referred to as eDetailers, eSales Aids and Digital Sales Aids – within an organisation’s sales process. This content can enable Key Account Managers (KAMs) to set up sales calls, better understand their customer’s needs, facilitate strong closes and provide valuable insight for their brand team.

Previous episodes:

You can also return to our first episode, in which we covered the basic functions of Veeva Approved Email, or our second episode where we walked through a more advanced implementation of Veeva CRM approved email.

Watch the third episode in our series below, read our key takeaways and feel free to share within your organisation.

What is functional content?

Within this episode in particular we are going to focus on functional content, which is content that actively engages both the user and the customer, and that is able to calculate, measure and record personalised content for maximum impact. This is in contrast to other levels of content, including flat, static, non-interactive content (digital paper/PDF under glass), or interactive content; where a user can navigate around and within the content or engage with a simple animation.

Key takeaways:

Better understanding of customer needs.

(01:56 – 02:57)

Imagine that one of your products – that has an existing market share in the treatment of adult patients for a particular condition – has secured a new paediatric indication. A Critical Success Factor (CSF) for this product, therefore, could be to increase the recognition and treatment of children or another patient type with this condition.

To better understand their customer’s needs, set up a sales call and follow-up call, your organisation’s KAMs (Key Account Managers) can use the content within the Veeva CLM Multichannel Presentation to ask GPs how they are currently prioritising patient types that they see and treat for this condition.

The KAMs can then easily select and move various patient groups into an order that reflects the GP’s prioritisation. This will help them to not only better understand how their customer sees the treatment of this condition, but will also help them to tailor their sales process as a result.

Driven by personalised content.

(02:58 – 04:12)

KAMs are then able to take the sales process a step further by asking their customer what percentage of patients in each group they treat with medication. The data gathered from this can then be saved within the CRM, used to drive personalised content within the rest of the presentation, and also used to aid the sales process further down the line, such as during a close or a follow-up call.

Enhanced marketing plans and activities.

(04:13 – 04:35)

Once the data from the Veeva CLM Multichannel Presentation has been recorded, the brand team within your organisation can run reports that interrogate the data and gain invaluable market and customer insights. These insights will help to enhance their marketing plans and activities, so in this instance, it will help the brand team to deliver marketing activity that increases the recognition of a treatment for children – as identified as a CSF for this product.

In the next episode:

In Episode 4, twentyeightb will be looking at handling objections in a way that will allow your organisation’s KAMs to avoid distractions, stay on message, present the right slides and achieve a successful sales outcome using the Veeva CLM Multichannel Presentation.

Got a question that wasn’t covered in our previous episodes, or interested in a personal demonstration? You can get in touch with a member of our team by using our quick question form.

Welcome to our Veeva Insights Video series, the series that is designed to help brand teams and creative agencies better understand and leverage the tools available to them on the Veeva CRM approved platform.

Within this second episode, James Harper, Founder and Managing Director of twentyeightb, takes us on an advanced tour of Veeva Approved Email (VAE) by looking at a more advanced implementation of Veeva CRM Approved Email, and delving deeper into how your Key Account Managers (KAMs) can launch email directly within an eDetail and best utilise analytics and MyInsights to inform and enhance their effectiveness in the field.

Have a watch of the second episode below, or if you’re in a rush, read our key takeaways. For details on using the classic Veeva CRM Approved Email interface and performing the basics, take a look at Episode 1 of the series. You can also find out more about Episode 3 of our Veeva Insights Video Series, coming soon.

Once you’ve selected the relevant thumbnail and slide, which will be revisited later in this series, imagine that the product you are trying to sell has been favourably included in guidelines from NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence). You’re going to want to be communicating this great news to your customers.

1. Select a customer account from the territory
2. Launch the eDetail using the media icon
3. Select the relevant thumbnail from the selection

Here, Veeva enables the user to use the interface to best communicate approved guidelines, and give details on how customers can best align their clinical practice as a result of the update.

Ensuring time effective, targeted delivery.

(01:37 – 02:49)

Similarly, the user would be looking to help Key Account Managers (KAMs) to organise and manage local medical education meetings, with a national key opinion leader as the keynote speaker and a well-respected local secondary care clinician as chair.

1. Select the meetings tab on the right
2. Select the relevant place and time
3. Invite customers using ‘Book Here’ button
4. The correct VAE template should be selected

By using Veeva’s time-effective interface, KAMs benefit not only from quickly delivering their approved meeting invitation and return to selling their product, but also from not losing any specific targeting or personalisation attributed to a particular customer.

Using analytics to enhance ROI.

(02:49 – 04:29)

In order to progress and enhance offerings, KAMs will need a quick overview of how well a VAE has performed, without sacrificing any of the key analytics that will enable them to make important decisions.

1. Access MyInsights dashboard through the Veeva CRM
2. Dig into more detail by selecting the specific event