So you’ve decided on Veeva for your pharma CLM or digital sales aid solution, but where to begin?
Our digital development consultants have put together 10 quick tips to help you get started and on the path to achieving maximum digital impact!
- Don’t go it alone: Find and engage a Veeva approved digital specialist to help you maximise the potential of Veeva for your brand. They can advise you on the best route to launching your digital sales aid, even if the starting point is existing materials. If you already have a great creative agency on board, but they don’t do development or don’t have enough Veeva experience, consider bringing in a specialist Veeva developer, like 28b. Consider the potential risks if the developer you select also creates content and competes with your creative agency – this can lead to conflict and delays.
- Put business objectives first: Work with your Veeva experts to evaluate the solution that is right for you and your brand. Whilst natively designed DSAs provide a fully immersive experience, the most engaging content, shortest download times, most detailed analytics and integration into Veeva Vault; Powerpoint conversions, linked PDFs or flat image based detail aids can also be appropriate solutions in certain circumstances.
- Get content approved early: Late changes can be accommodated, but will almost certainly disrupt the development flow, which carries the risk of the delivery becoming out of sync with project requirements.
- Get your KPIs upfront: Design to the output rather than designing the DSA then trying to analyse the results later.
- Involve your field team: There can be resistance from pharma reps, sales managers and HCPs to a new eDetailing solution. Fears can include monitoring, information leakage and friction to the presentation process. Reduce potential friction by engaging rep champions who input into the process and feedback on designs and structure.
- Start small and iterate: Build the first DSA with a minimal set of content, roll it out then gather feedback from the reps.
- Leverage expertise: Get your brand team together with your creative agency, Veeva approved developers and, if you can, your compliance team, to agree a working framework.
- Work the deadline backwards: Start from the fixed immovable deadlines (conferences, update cycles, approval dates, launches) and move back to the current date to ensure everyone has adequate time to deliver. Be prepared to reduce features, content or functionality to hit the deadline. A small, well-crafted DSA will be better than a large one which doesn’t work or gets rejected by your regulatory team.
- Smooth the publishing path: Veeva is a corporate tool involving corporate IT, so be prepared for delays in getting the final product moved from your Veeva approved developers‘ test environment onto the corporate production server and available for the field force to use. Find out early what they need and how long it will take, and build this into your project plan.
- Make sure your experts collaborate effectively: Make sure your creative agency is happy working closely with your Veeva approved developers. You and your brand will be best served by expert teams who are happy to collaborate rather than teams that are in competition for your attention and budget.
We hope you find our top tips useful and would love to hear from you if you have any further questions or require any assistance with your Veeva CLM project. You can reach us on +44 (0) 1480 877 321 or drop us a line via our contact form.