Category: Veeva

7 hot topics and takeaways from Veeva Commercial and Medical Summit Online, Europe

Posted on by Andrii Nikulin

What’s the perfect meeting place for pharma marketing, communications and IT professionals to exchange their practical insights and experiences over the past several months? Numerous excellent events exist to express tendencies and ideas, but when it comes to real-world, tangible cases, the first thing that comes to mind is the platform provided by a giant innovation enabler that is Veeva. Year by year, Veeva Commercial and Medical Summit has been justifying its reputation as that single powerful community builder one conference after another – and 2020 is not an exception.

Fresh intriguing findings from the world of medical reps, HCPs in the time of crisis, sophisticated, COVID-proof marketing strategies and sudden answers to questions with a long history, such as customer experience in pharma – all of this was wrapped in the format of a virtual event. No single blog post would suffice to describe everything, so let us just look at the seven most intriguing ideas – and suggest viewing the sessions themselves on demand for the ultimate immersive experience.

It is definitely worth the time. We at Viseven Group, being certified Veeva Technology Partner, Multichannel Partner and a provider of solutions and services for Veeva users for years, can confirm this from an insider point of view.

Setting the scene

In the opening keynote to the event on November 17, Chris Moore, President at Veeva Europe, noted one thing that most of us working in and for pharma communications can relate to the year 2020 has been truly special in terms of innovation and creativity. Looking back on these days, we are likely to see them as a turning point that made hundreds of professionals rethink almost everything, from digital tech to value propositions. The changes urged by the world situation will stick around and affect both the “digital haves” and the “digital have nots” – but what are these changes in practice?

Two interesting sessions seem to define quite many of the hot topics and ideas that resonated through later panel talks and Q/A’s. One of these was a session with a medical representative and the other an inspired talk between marketing specialists. Together, these two organizationally unrelated episodes make for a perfect exposition of the event.

The “fireside chat” with Romain Piccolo, Sales Representative (Respiratory) at Boehringer Ingelheim, was dedicated to the experiences and insights from the fields that only actual reps can provide. No need to say, this year especially such insights are valuable, considering how the tables have turned with digital and remote engagement. Beside the observations on how to engage HCPs in the new remote format in a country like Spain, where the traditions of in-person visits are strong, there are surprising and quite encouraging findings.

For example, it turns out the “traditional”, go-to demographics like age have little to nothing to do with the actual digital affinity score for an HCP, with various groups completely ready for the format itself. It looks like in the future, the golden number of, say, 15 visits a day will give place to a golden ratio between different channels in the HCP engagement structure. While trying to diversify that channel mix, however, pharma unlocks yet another challenge, and that is content.

While the “how” of HCP engagement is now being secured by nifty solutions – e.g. the HCP being able to request what they want to see, and health centers organizing calls – there is a mismatch between the available and the perfect when it comes to content. Particularly physicians tend to value content that is created by peers (such as key opinion leaders) more than the more commercially wired variety, and of course, more scientific topics is a common wish, not to mention the need to personalize the information that comes to the doctor.

The second session that defined the hot topics for the summit featured Melissa Fellner, Global Marketing Director at AstraZeneca, and Veeva’s Business Consulting specialist Leonie Goddard, discussing the journey to digital excellence that AstraZeneca is undergoing. Apart from the vital role that Veeva’s assistance played in adapting to the new digital norm, several other things are noteworthy here.

First and foremost, it’s the customer experience. Looking at what other industries now have to offer to the consumer, one cannot but wonder how to emulate that in pharma. Essentially, good omnichannel means integrating the brand offering in the customer’s own lifestyle, and it turns out life sciences are capable of that even regardless of the regulatory environment and other well-known “impediments”.

The future of pharmaceutical communications, according to that view, is determined by factors such as deep customer insights, integrated campaigns and dynamic segmentation. These, in turn, equate to supplying personalized content (content again!) across an extended, modifiable channel mix that includes digital services from pharma. With handy tools that provide the next best actions and prompts (for example, to the medical representative as the engagement orchestrator), brands can arrive at the stage where they deliver carefully tailored experiences that can be measured and perfected along the way.

Below are seven ideas that were partially outlined here, as expounded in other sessions in more interesting detail – ideas likely to influence 2021 and the years to come.

1 Let the HCP decide!

In the eventual turn of events (even if we don’t think of the pandemic for a moment), letting the HCPs themselves decide to a bigger extent what they want to hear from pharma proved inevitable. This attention to what the HCPs themselves experience and feel is noticeable even as one looks at the summit agenda. On Day 2 of the event, several sessions were specifically dedicated to listening to practicing healthcare providers, one in English, one in Spanish, yet another one in Italian. Companies have been relaxing the messaging intended for those medical professionals most under pressure from the coronavirus, and adapting the tactics for the rest, which is just an extension of a trend that emerged earlier on: recognizing the importance of the audience’s choice.

As a climax of this development, Veeva introduced a solution called MyVeeva for Doctors in a session led by Paul Shawah, Senior Vice President for Commercial Strategy, and Chris van Löben Sels, General Manager, MyVeeva for Doctors & Veeva Labs. The idea behind MyVeeva is simple and powerful – a single app intended to make it easy for the HCP to connect with pharma and search for reps or MSLs. Once invited by their representative to use the app and successfully registered, the HCP can not just communicate with that particular rep in an in-app chat, exchanging files and messages, but also find other representatives, as well as schedule meetings and enjoy a number of other services, including digital leave-behinds, patient resources, samples and more.

2 Meet the hybrid engagement model

While in March it may have seemed that remote engagement is the eventual horizon for everything and everyone until COVID-19 is a chapter in history books, the actual practice proved otherwise. Human interaction in F2F mode is extremely difficult to eliminate from the equation, and frankly speaking, it is not to be eliminated entirely. On the other hand, the restrictions and safety considerations have opened the potential of other channels, leading to the emergence of a “hybrid” model – with some touchpoints occurring at rep calls as before, and others either orchestrated by the rep or done via non-personal promotion and led by the marketing teams themselves. In his presentation, Giovanni Luca Merlotti, Head of Global Multichannel Execution, Sanofi Pasteur, explored the intricacies of balance between the rep-driven channels versus the HQ-driven ones in the mix. Eventually, such a mix is intended not just to expand the reach and increase the frequency of interactions, but also strengthen customer engagement as such. Remote detailing, as empowered by Veeva solutions, plays a crucial role here, and so does content.

A similar sentiment can be observed in the strategy discussed at another session featuring, among others, Adela Schulz, Multi-Channel Customer Engagement and Digital Transformation Lead at MSD: decisions now have to be made what topics should be discussed F2F, and which ones online. This measure was the result of the crisis, but its consequences will naturally extend into the future. Another participant of that same session, Anna Casanovas, IMCM Business Integration, Bayer, supplemented the topic of agility in life sciences’ communication strategy by emphasizing the need for personalization and modular content.

3 Customer experience, 4 Value proposition, and 5 Push and pull

At the current stage of omnichannel development, pharma is in the position where other industries can provide an insight into how customer experience can be furnished in better ways. However, there is obviously no single set of pre-packed ideas and solutions, since industry specifics plays a major role. There is much room for creativity, and a lot of questions to be answered, especially when it comes to the regulatory nuances and sensitive topics. However, is this the real blocker along the road to great CX?

An attempt to split the problem into manageable chunks was made by Victoria Serra Gittermann, Principal Consultant, Business Consulting, Veeva, in her presentation titled The Six Imperatives of Great HCP Experiences. The analysis started with identifying the six common blocks that impede building a successful CX for the physician audience. The first of these is the desire to exert too much control over the dialogue and formalize the customer journey, essentially robbing the HCP of the opportunity to make choices. A frequent mistake at the initial steps of omnichannel implementation, this is typically solved once the engagement model moves to the next step of maturity, not least due to better data work (see below).

Another problematic point is a value proposition that is inherently narrow because it focuses heavily on the product itself, instead of offering something broader and “growing” from the actual working practice. At the same time, this leads to lack of transparency about the objectives of communication – a known detriment to building trust that the reps’ personal qualities only partially bridge. One more blocker that stems from here is the “mass content coverage” practice from yesterday’s playbooks, with insufficient personalization and targeting.

In practice, this entails the focus on “push” tactics rather than creating enough “pull”. Finally, if you add the limited coordination and governance around customer engagement, siloed workflows and lack of agility in the processes, the picture becomes complete enough for the problems to be solved.

To untie this knot, the presenter suggests six imperatives:

  • Move from static to dynamic insights (behavioral/attitudinal segmentation, dynamic customer journey mapping, etc., content tagging)
  • Align value proposition to customer needs (targeted key messages, focus on health outcomes)
  • Build trust (transparency, consistency, doing the right thing over time, shared purpose, ecosystem, evidence)
  • Making it easy to engage, on the customer’s terms (channel integration, predictive analytics & next best actions, automation)
  • Make it personal (Modular content, metrics and tagging, content automation)
  • Build a customer-centric operational model

The need to work on a broader definition of value proposition was also emphasized in the session led by Suzy Jackson, Executive, Life Sciences, Accenture, dedicated to the impact of COVID-19 on the digital field model. One of the key findings cited was that in the light of current changes, pharmas are starting to “…redefine their relevance… and healthcare providers are seeing the value.” However, this particular session also contributed interesting insights to illustrate the next point.

6 What’s there in-house? Take stock of your processes, capabilities, and skills

The need to build in-house digital capacities is a recognized one by now. After all, convoluted processes, reliance on too many external agencies and subcontractors, together with silos, have long stood in the way of even the most ambitious projects. Of course, no one talks seriously about transferring all the digital activity inside the organization – rather, it is now the matter of flexibility, ownership and agility.

Notably, much has been spoken about pharmas’ in-house talent in terms of data management. This is an extended topic that would require an entire blog post all to itself even if only to scratch the surface. Here, we can mention such sessions as Bayer: Advancing Digital Transformation with Data & Technology with Elie Dubrulle, CRM Project Manager at Bayer Healthcare, and Angela Genco, Head of Integrated Multichannel Marketing & Sales, Bayer Italy.

However, it is not just with data strategy that a revisioning of in-house capacities can lead to good results. Turning back to the Accenture session mentioned earlier, an interesting insight was revealed: when a medical representative has the autonomy to send an Approved Email with a link to pre-selected content, impactable sales rise by 7%. Is this about content? Yes. Is this also about letting more flexibility into the working model and allowing decisions to be taken in a multi-level pyramid? Definitely. Does this presuppose educating the workforce? Of course, it does.

New governance and process models are also beneficial in the realm of content, to be sure. This is, however, just a small part of how content work has changed.

7 What does the perfect content look like?

Any equation for communication excellence will necessarily involve the content variable. What’s the catch? The very fact that content is, in fact, a variable – because each HCP’s needs are that, too. But then, how do you ensure the content you deliver is flexible enough to function as such?

A presentation by Puneet Srivastava, Content Strategy Leader at Bayer, explores the ins and outs of content excellence as it is available to Veeva users. In an intriguing classification, the different types of content are placed along two axes:

“Long” content – “short” content

and

“Active” content – “passive” content

In this way, one may characterize, for example, remote and face detailing and webinars as “long-form” and “active” (with real-time HCP involvement and interaction), websites, ebooks and videos as “long” and “passive”, and email/SMM as “short” and “passive”. However, there is one missed spot, and that is the one offering short and active engagement. This, in practice, corresponds to the new content consumption patterns and requires even more interactive materials to be designed and deployed.

How to enable content production and circulation at such rates? The answer lies with processes, governance and tracking. Plugging together strategic content creation, on the one hand, and content publishing, on the other, presupposes rethinking the way content itself is handled.

Much has been spoken about, and already implemented, in the realm of modular content for life sciences. In essence, the materials circulate as flexible topical units that can be assembled into channel-specific templates, which allows for better, more meaningful tracking – and easier governance and MLR procedures (you can read more on this in our previous publications, since Viseven has been among the pioneers of the approach and covered this topic extensively in first-hand accounts).

Back to the presentation, with the modular strategy in hand, Bayer is able to ensure not only the right structure, but also a well-defined content taxonomy and tagging, pinpointing performance indicators and tracking, and a standardized content supply center. All of this allows the company to maintain a high level of informational value offered to its vast HCP audience across channels and along the axes of the content-based touchpoint spectrum.

This overview is just scratching the surface of what was discussed at the event. You can request video recordings of the sessions that interested you on-demand at the official event page. For all purposes linked with Veeva expertise, related services and collaboration around Veeva ecosystems, feel free to address Viseven team as a certified Veeva partner.

5 highlights from Veeva Commercial and Medical Summit Online 2020

Posted on by Andrii Nikulin

There is nothing special about the fact that a summit hosted by the pharma digital tech giant Veeva is special every time. The North American edition of the Veeva Commercial and Medical Summit 2020 on June 9-10, however, was even more noteworthy. This was not just because of its online format or the very slowly dispelling shadow of COVID-19 lockdowns – but also since so many relevant topics were addressed from a practical point of view. Modular content, AI, digital engagement, customer journeys, omnichannel, data integration – over the past years, these topics were presented at pharma events from a theoretical, somewhat idealistic position. This time around, we are seeing a whole bunch of more practical takes on these. The seed of new tech-inspired visions seems to have come to fruition at last.

Much of the content from the summit (except the roundtable talks) is still available on demand until July 8 on the official event page. Now, this would be too bad of a spoiler for the audience to give away everything we the Viseven team have appreciated about the sessions – and this would take at least 5-7 blog posts like this – so here are just the 5 top highlights for your consideration. Our own experts have more or less unanimously agreed that these will have the most impact on the way digital pharma will run engagement campaign and manage content in the coming years. Before we take the plunge, though, let’s have a very brief overview of the topics that defined the summit and its atmosphere.

Veeva Summit Online: a bird’s eye view

One of the recurrent topics at the summit was (naturally enough) the forced transition to different forms of remote engagement when interacting with HCPs and other stakeholders. With the “new normal” being the buzzword of the year so far, its meaning for pharmaceutical marketing and communications is more or less clear: it is time start that digital multichannel engagement already. With the new accent on remote eDetailing, online events and Approved Emails, enterprises are trying to discover digital engagement that is as personal as the F2F rep calls. An anxious-looking question on whether or not Approved emails can really be considered personal engagement (posed at one of the sessions) was a perfect illustration of that eagerness to stay in contact. Further delving into the issue was done in a session by Crossix on “bridging the gap” between personal and non-personal promotion. As part of the commercial operations flow within the summit, Mark Fleischer, CEO Physicians World, Veeva, delivered a presentation on virtual events organization, including the choice of content and platform.

This, naturally, makes the companies lay more accent on customer engagement strategy – in an effort to avoid simply aggregating digital channels and look at the way it looks from the customer’s perspective. Jennifer Turcotte of Salesforce presented a practical take on building automated customer journeys. On the other end of the spectrum, an entire session (led by Veeva’s Ian Hale) was dedicated to the relevant metrics throughout the content lifecycle. Measuring content performance was an idea that reverberated across several superb presentations, including a take on modular content by Jay McMeekan of Bayer (accidentally, also the highlight #3 in this list, see below). An interesting moment was letting an HCP have a say and describe their perspective on digital engagement – in a Q/A session with hematologist/oncologist Andrew Moore, M.D.

Another big question was data. The current situation requires a more progressive approach to insights – and approaches are not something that is solved in terms of CRM metrics alone. In Jay McMeekan’s words,

Compared with other industries, and pharma in other countries, U.S. pharma has a preponderance of data. But for the most part, it’s not about access to data, it’s more about ho w to use it – and how we plan our engagement, taking into account that information, and not just using it as an afterthought, or justification for an outcome.

An entire section of the event was dedicated to data and intelligence issues, with sessions on Veeva OpenData, Vault API use for data exchange (a topic that fascinates IT departments), as well as a marketer’s and strategist’s take on customer reference data from Biogen. A Veeva Data Cloud Overview (including planning, patient segmentation, commercial analytics, AI, territory design, targeting, and incentive compensation) on Day 1 should be noted, as well.

Of course, this is by no means an exhaustive overview of the summit – with still more on commercial operations, expanding role of the rep, Veeva Nitro, compliance and Approved Notes worth noting for all those who plan to request the summit sessions. Meanwhile, let’s move to the highlights that impressed our specialists and are most likely to produce long-lasting impact.

#1: Best Practices for Approved Email Success (roundtable)

Approved Emails, Veeva’s own service for rep-triggered email messaging, has provided pharma with a way to sidestep the shrinking rep admission rates and keep up the frequency of interactions even before the pandemic. Now its relevance has skyrocketed for Veeva users, who are increasingly interested in, and aware of, the possibilities of this tool. This roundtable featuring Cindy DiNitto, Manager, Commercial SMB Customer Success, consultant Amy LaForgia, and Maria Ruoto, Senior Customer Success Manager (all Veeva professionals) reveals the key points about the service and channel. While Approved Emails present the way to maintain contact and is easily combined with other channels, recent months have seen increased use, not only with the traditional cases but also as a way to invite the HCP to a remote meeting.

On the other hand, there is the problem of overloading the target audience. Email is a great channel as long as it is not annoyingly frequent. Everything above a certain saturation level turns it into spam, which is a great concern. According to Cindy DiNitto,

It’s not like, “wow, I have all these templates on my iPad, let me just start sending these out”, it’s really having use [case] based training for your field so then you know when is the good time to send that email.

Although (or even because) the system does not impose any hard limits on the amount of emails sent (only a warning message), field reps have to be trained in order to develop a sensitivity as to when sending an Approved Email is appropriate. We can add that this is, in fact, one of the staples of omnichannel thinking – operating in terms of touchpoints – applied to CRM field activity.

Of course, there is also growing interest in the possibilities of personalization, such as free text fields in the templates. That factor draws in its “evil twin”, namely, the need to track and maintain compliance. As mentioned by Maria Ruoto, among other things, a good practice is setting restricted words for free text inputs; however, the truly best practice is providing adequate change management to allow reps feel in control while keeping compliant.

#2: Automating Claims Management with Novo Nordisk (Session and Q/A)

A core claim is an object that represents a piece of information, e.g. “Brand® demonstrates 48% higher efficiency in eliminating long-term effects of [condition]”. Besides the text, this object holds fields for supporting data, obligatory and desirable references, maybe diagrams and additional meta information (from text variants to notes as to how an agency should place this claim on a slide or email they develop). Managing claims is new and promising approach in pharma brand messaging, and was discussed by Bernie Klemmer, Director Marketing Operations at Novo Nordisk in a session and Q/A at the summit. At the time of writing this, his team is in the process of approving the first batch of such claims – the first stage out of four in a process of implementing this innovative mindset.

Apart from, obviously, achieving greater consistency and compliance with medical and regulatory, the approach allows to streamline MLR review and make it easier and quicker for agencies to create compliant content. Once the claim document template has been developed with brand team and MLR, it becomes possible to build a library of preapproved claims for such use. Potentially, this allows for more advanced tracking, as well.

At the initial stage of implementation, the pilot stage, Novo Nordisk singled out just one brand and one audience to test the approach and identify possible points that require attention. This involves, among other things, enhancing the claim object with fields to hold data for size and placement, additional text, footnotes, (optional) required or related diagrams, etc. At the second stage, more organizational questions are solved, covering the approval of text variations, expiration procedure for claims, etc. Overall, this approach is very likely to be adopted (with variations) across the industry, since it responds to pharma’s inherent MLR review issues and presents good opportunities to solve them.

#3: Impactful Customer Engagements – Making the Modular Content Connection with Bayer (Session and Q/A)

Modular content is a huge topic in pharma marketing circles right now. A module is essentially the molecular unit of any content – a claim (as in #2 in this review) plus a component or component group (an image, diagram, chart, etc.) that illustrates it or provides context. Such a building block is essentially channel-agnostic and can be featured in an eDetailing presentation, an email, a website, banner, or any other digital content type. This approach is now revolutionizing the way marketers and agencies work with content, with great benefits in terms of cost efficiency and message consistency.

Jay McMeekan, Senior Director, Digital / Multichannel Marketing at Bayer, with his characteristically pragmatic take, starts addressing this issue with data. We have already quoted this session above: the way pharma uses insights is a more pressing issue even than where to obtain them. McMeecan continues along the following lines: how do you know if the content your organization pays for is performing well and resonates with the audience?

In an analogy with personal finance planning, he proceeds to compare content with expenses and channels with payment methods. If you really want to track the ROI of your content, you have to be able to look beyond single channel and converge data:

You need to begin with a clear measurable goal from the start, or you will never be able to access your performance against your expectations. Especially if you only rely on historical sales data or market share. Waiting until you get your credit card bill to know if you can pay it? I think we can all agree it is not a sustainable financial strategy.

To this end, content modules created must be channel-agnostic and easy to use within different content types. This allows for an additional source of cost efficiency: not only is duplicate agency work eliminated (as predesigned modules are mixed and matched), but the marketer makes sure and continuously tracks that only the content likely to perform well is produced. This assessment of customer engagement in real time is made possible by a clear, hierarchical tagging of modules. Each module comes with a tag composed in a certain predictable was that is unified across the organization. We shall see in the very near future how this approach evolves further on – and it will be interesting to say the least. Our own expertise building modular content strategies for our pharmaceutical customers at Viseven has so far yielded impressive results and the concept is constantly improved.

For more on modular content within this article, see the bonus section below.

#4: Compliant Content to Support the Customer Journey (customer panel with Roche and BMS)

This customer panel featuring Samantha Knott, Global Customer Operations Lead at Roche, Cara Pellegrini, Senior Director, Business Practices Group at Genentech (A Member of the Roche Group), and Dinesh Salvi, Head of Enterprise Veeva and Commercial Systems at Bristol Myers Squibb, and led by Pooja Ojala, Vice President, Commercial Content, Veeva, was an ambitious endeavor. In about 45 minutes, the participants managed to cover their organizations’ approaches and solutions to current issues with commercial content and operations – an impressively wide topic with dozens of possible starting points.

In this case, the starting point chosen was a systematic overview of recent effort, starting with situation and challenges, through solution and outcomes for each of the organizations. The result was a panoramic view, with some of the challenges and aspirations overlapping.

A focus on evolving the operational model is present across the companies. Among the challenges Roche encountered and solved was the huge decentralization, with notable silos, e.g. between commercial and medical – and no dedicated project resource. At the same time, BMS aimed at resolving the challenges of competing priorities and changing marketplace. The two stories coincide in their solution – namely, evolving operating model.

The ways to achieve this were different, but sometimes involved thinking along similar lines. While Roche and Genentech supported this with end-to-end content management (and not just facilitating the MLR), Bristol Myers Squibb, too, made an effort to control and streamline the entire content lifecycle. In this latter case, the modularization (“atomization”) of content was also involved.

#5: Veeva Andi Roadmap (yes, it is AI in your CRM)

Veeva Andi is an AI embedded in Veeva CRM to make next-best action suggestions. As exciting as it is by itself, considering how this can enhance field performance with the ability to process loads of data, there is even more to help pharma users facilitate the workflows. Brian Mahoney, Practice Manager, Digital Field Engagement, Veeva, unveiled several key points about the roadmap for the upcoming Veeva Andi features.

The roadmap was presented along two principal lines – (1) customer touchpoint optimization, and (2) making AI easier. With the power of data and intelligent suggestions, Andi is “poised” to offer additional digital channel models based on the analyzed interactions, as well as suggest what content will engage and perform better. Additionally, such features as weekly top territory insights and targets and models and traits for field users are supposed to be added later on.

In terms of facilitating AI use, Andi is going to be more than a smart “black box”, with the possibility for the user to choose data sources in Cross Data Source Logic Agent Builder, as well as look inside the process and take a more proactive stance with a suggestions editor.

This is by no means an exhaustive list – more functionalities covering samples and Marketing Cloud integration, to name a few, were also announced.

One interesting observation

When looking at the discourse in the pharma communications and tech circles over the past year or so, an interesting observation can be made. Business rules, workflows, people and skills, tech, content and strategy – all of these factors are now finally being treated in conjunction that they deserve. People have started talking holistic – and taking steps towards a holistic approach, where tech is part of the equation, as is everything else.

At the same time, the very tech used in pharma has become more integrated and integratable – gone are the days when business unit heads had to break everything they had in place into pieces in the name of innovation; today’s technology is plugged into the existing business models. It adapts itself – and slowly, painlessly transforms the organization from deep within.

+ even more on modular content and how to start

Modular content is an example of such a mindset. While enabled by tech solutions, the concept of modularization is a response to needs and challenges at multiple levels.

Content reuse and repurpose possibilities boost cost-efficiency; the approved and redistributed nature of modules circulating across the company’s ecosystem facilitates MLR and improves agency workflows; core claim tracking enables greater data – coming full circle at ROI again. How do we know this? Viseven team has been among the enthusiasts and pioneers of modular approach and has successfully implemented it with a number of global pharma and life sciences customers. For example, a recent case demonstrated speeding up MLR all thanks to a modular content authoring solution integrated with Veeva Suite.

This is where we as a Veeva Technology Partner help start with modular content approach. eWizard content authoring solution not only supports the creation of modules, but is integrated with Veeva, provides the possibility to dive into deep editing directly from Vault PromoMats, serves as a connector between Veeva and systems like Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

You can see how easily all of this is done in practice in a set of videos showing the functionality and workflows – the shortest possible guide into starting out with modular content. Additionally, have a look at what eWizard platform can offer you to streamline Approved Email production and approval in Veeva. Select one of the sections below to access the overviews.

How to make pharma brand messages reinforce one another with email fragments (2 practices)

Posted on by Andrii Nikulin

The tactics then work like this: providing the type of content the HCP finds most valuable and diluting it with the messaging that the company needs to make them aware of. For example, an HCP mostly interested in a cost-efficient treatment option can be engaged with a calculator, accompanied with information on prescription. Without this information, they would require a second step to consider prescribing the product – namely, searching for that information online. Making that step easier helps stimulate the dialogue.

When one message boosts the other

What’s important here is that each interaction presents real value for the HCP. Instead of engaging the physician at one touchpoint to capture their attention and then hoping to “push the agenda” on the next one, the two are combined whenever possible within one interaction – e.g. one email.

While this was more or less what field reps were trying to achieve in F2F calls, in remote engagement this becomes more important. A rep’s own experience and empathic skills allow them to sense when to say this or that, but with things like remote calls, emails and the web, without “seeing the eyes”, maintaining attention is trickier. No matter how great your previous email performed, there is always the chance (however small in the best case) that the next one will go unopened because the subject line did not engage enough.

And this is where the “digital oversaturation” starts to matter. With many a marketer freaking out at the start of national lockdowns, customers experienced a storm of messaging – and pharma recognized the dangers. With email, this is especially easily trackable – after a tipping point, the open rate starts falling down and unsubscribes get more frequent.

The good thing is that the solution was found quite fast – being twofold:

  1. more value
  2. think intensive, not extensive engagement

This is, in many situations, perceived as a matter of common respect to the HCP audience. A characteristic quote from an expert (in an interview to pharmaphorum) goes:

It’s time for the pharma industry to treat physicians as professionals, not as marketing targets. HCPs don’t prescribe something because someone says it’s a nice product. They want the good of their patient and offer them the most appropriate treatment. We need to have real discussions and move toward ‘augmented representatives’, who can use authorised sources on the internet or elsewhere to inform physicians and deliver better customer experience.

Florent Edouard, SVP, Global Head of Commercial Excellence, Grünenthal group

How difficult is it to implement this, though? Practices vary, and in many cases, this boils down to content. One does not simply launch the production of hundreds of, say, email templates to engage anyone in any possible combination of circumstances along the omnichannel journey.

Enter the new approaches to content creation.

“Smart content development” approaches

According to statistics, as many as 58% of pharma spent over $50 million on content annually – and only 13% of marketers in pharma/biotech thought they were efficient in leveraging content. This was several years ago, and now the situation is starting to improve gradually for some players (although the measurable impact is now only noticeable individually for each enterprise or affiliate).

The tactics that help improve are somewhat alike. Instead of “feeding the beast” and struggling to get the budgeting for evermore, pharma is adopting smarter material development approaches based on content reuse.

This means that instead of having to create a lot of similar (but a bit different) content items – email templates, CLM presentations, etc. – marketers first work to single out the “recurrent”, reusable elements in them. For example, telling the doctor about the results of a recent clinical outcome in digital content typically means the lines of code (and designs, and layout, and concept) that should look the same in different emails. However, traditionally, they were developed separately by different agencies, creating duplicates and making the company essentially pay for the same thing twice.

In the new approaches, these fragments are developed once to be reused across as many content items as possible. This is especially easy to illustrate with email templates: a fragment represents an entire block that can be inserted into an email template anywhere between the header and footer whenever needed.

HCP Webmail

What are Email fragments and how they work

As of now, there are two practical implementations of this strategy when it comes to email, and we at Viseven are now experiencing a surge of interest from different customers to both of them. The difference boils down to when exactly the predeveloped fragments are added to the template:

  • In the office at the final production stage. This is also called Modular content, and the flow is like that: initially, email modules and templates are developed. The “dirty” work of coding and testing is done when there is time enough, and when the right moment comes to unleash the content to the market – the office (marketers, in-house teams) use a content authoring tool to simply combine these blocks into whatever final form they want. In a recent case, it took a company only 3 days to produce and approve fully functional emails for urgent communication.
  • By the end users in the CRM/CLM system. This is as ad hoc as it gets, and this is an option that Veeva CRM The templates are produced with “slots” for a fragment to be inserted, and the fragments are published in Veeva Vault by themselves (and approved each one by one). The field rep can then send an Approved Email, to with they “drop” the fragment with which they decide to engage the HCP, making a lightspeed decision on the spot.

For a practical case with the former of these variants, look at this case study. Here below, we will focus on the practices with Veeva. What you will read is a summary of several cases into just two that generalize the trends.

Practice 1. Going beyond eDetailing to provide more value

As a reaction to coronavirus-related restrictions, many companies adopted remote eDetailing practices to keep HCPs and reps in touch with one another. Remote Detailing, as a channel, typically gets supplemented with email activity – namely invitation and confirmation emails, as well as follow up Approved Email from reps. This spelled opportunity for the users of fragments. A “standard” follow up email for a remote call typically thanks the doctor for taking the time to engage and provides a way to give feedback on the interaction. It is only natural, though, to include additional information that can interest the account. Some organizations practiced profiling their account database according to preferences and psychological types, some left this to individual reps. Suppose we have three types of HCPs:

  1. those who value RWE and clinical trial data, and are interested in the scientific part of information about any product
  2. the patient-centric thinkers who peruse profiles and want examples of how the product will actually solve particular issues and complaints
  3. the HCPs with a strong sense of community, relying on guidelines and key opinion leaders.

A generic email template is first created: This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is fragm04.png Then, the fragments are developed as soon as the general need for them is identified. In each individual case, then, it takes minutes to complete the Approved Email with additional valuable information: This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is fragm05-1024x1024.png In this way, the field engagement tactics get more flexible, the HCPs receive more value from each interaction, the marketers can instruct reps on prioritizing fragments to give more emphasis on particular key messages, all the while content production itself gets rid of repetitive load and becomes more cost-efficient.

Practice 2. Having key message transported by transactional emails

In the previous case, it was one template, several fragments with different information/key messages. In this one, it’s reversed: one and the same fragment dedicated to driving home a particular message, is used across a number of email templates. The particular key messages used in this case may vary; for the demonstration purposes, we can assume it is an upcoming virtual event. A fragment is developed to promote it, providing information and a link to register: This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is fragm06-1200x673-1-1024x574.png Then it can be inserted into the invisible vacant slot in different email templates: This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is fragm07.png In this way, the promotion of the event does not require an additional touchpoint with the HCP, instead relying on the engagement and interest sparked by the email that hosts the fragment. The overall touchpoints reduce, eliminating the oversaturation risk, but their intensity rises. In both cases, the content was created and managed using eWizard content authoring solution by Viseven team – integrated with Veeva Suite and covering a broad range of functionalities useful for pharma content creation and management.

Pharma promotion in the post-COVID-19 world

COVID-19 may go away some day. The large push towards innovation that came with the quarantines will yield results that likely won’t. If one could summarize what is happening with pharmaceutical companies’ communication to HCPs now in 1 point, that would be

  • fulfilling the promise.

While the industry has long promised – and to a considerable extent delivered – value-driven interaction, this was considered a long-term transformation that would take decades until the ideal would be reached. Under the present circumstances, though, this has become an imperative for here and now, ASAP. It is safe to assume that tomorrow’s HCP engagement will be exponentially increasing in personalization, infinitely attentive to the HCP’s needs and preferences – and much more efficient, flexible, with ROI expectations rising. Email fragment and modular content practices are just some practical steps on this way – but also among the first to take. Viseven is currently experiencing a rising interest for these practices and approaches. Our professionals engaged in such projects will be glad to share the insights and experience with you – as well as demonstrate the platform that enables them. Do not hesitate to request more information and a free demo here.

Pharma’s communication with HCPs can be an odd phenomenon. Strategically, it is a mission of bringing value to physicians; on a tactical level, it’s a complicated game of smart, creative approaches. The pandemic situation worldwide pushed ever more life sciences marketers and brand managers to emphasize engagement via digital channels. However, the fear of “digital oversaturation” (i.e. HCPs getting spammed and fed up) stimulated smarter takes on making communication more intensive at each touchpoint. In this article, we discuss 2 variants of an interesting approach to reinforcing brand messages – based on Veeva Approved Email fragments.

Turning up the volume on remote communication in pharma

The spring of 2020 may become material for a chapter in marketing books for future generations. Because of COVID-19, pharma marketing experienced a more violent disruption than ever before, as F2F rep calls suddenly stopped being an option. In a survey by PM360, 63% of respondents confirmed rep access was “near zero at this time”. The rapid, hectic rethinking of entire marketing cycles, with the obligatory shift towards every other channel except in-person calls is starting to bear fruit right now.

Until recently, many an organization, especially regional affiliates, used to consider digital channels of communication as supplementary to the “true” F2F eDetailing. Now these are no longer the experiments for the digitally advanced – the “alternative” channels have gained their moment in the spotlight in everyone’s strategy.

These include, among others:

  • remote eDetailing sessions
  • rep-triggered email
  • mass mailing campaigns
  • social
  • messengers
  • web (sites, portals, landing pages)

Of these, of course, email has become the general favorite – understandably so: name an HCP who does not have a mailbox. However, exactly this channel was where anxieties and questions have started to arise. As early as April 2020, experts already warned that inconsiderate and abundant use of email would desensitize HCPs – with more and more emails even from famous and trusted brands landing in spam, and doctors unsubscribing en masse.

This is where the already digitally savvy managers saved the day for many a campaign – instead of playing the old game of who shouts louder, they started experimenting with approaches more empathic to the physician – emphasizing value and providing fewer but more intensive touchpoints.

By May, about 60-70% HCPs still wanted to continue the dialogue with pharma even in times of the coronavirus – so it’s definitely worth it to study how exactly life sciences managed to maintain attention.

Personalization: a horizon, an asymptote… a necessity

In mathematics, an asymptote is that imaginary straight line on the graph denoting a value to which the main trend is getting closer and closer without ever reaching it completely. Even if it seems the graph has crossed that line, you only zoom in to find there’s still some way towards it. In a way, this is what personalization is to marketing; the more of it brands provide, the higher and more refined the audiences’ expectations and standards. It’s a horizon to follow indefinitely, chasing the sunshine of customers’ attention.

Putting aside the philosophical question of whether 100% personalization will ever be achieved, “chasing the sun” is definitely a necessity. Marketers in numerous pharma companies are now adopting omnichannel customer journeys and rigorous database analytics, raising the plank for everyone. Approaches to personalizing the engagement for physicians vary and multiply.

Just one of these involves studying the psychology of the target HCPs and establishing a segmentation based on their preferences and “archetypes”. An example of this approach has been provided by McKinsey and Across Health even before the pandemic.

Veeva Commercial & Medical Summit 2019 – key takeaways

Posted on by Andrii Nikulin

With over 600+ customers from across pharma and biotech that Veeva Systems provide with cutting-edge tech solutions, it’s small wonder that an event like the Veeva Commercial & Medical Summit draws attention. It’s what one could call a whole universe of tech-savvy organizations – the Veeva universe, and in early December, over >1200 of life sciences professionals were exchanging insights in Barcelona. Viseven Group, as a Full Service Veeva Partner, could not stay aside – so here are just some of the key points we feel were the essence of the event. Stakeholder and customer engagement, data and CRM excellence, as well as sophisticated approached to content management – here are the highlights that still resonate with us several weeks after.

Across Veeva, in brief

One of the major strengths of Veeva is that it constantly expands the range of products and services it provides, so as to cover the entire spectrum of organizational needs. The opening keynote by Arno Sosna, General Manager, CRM, demonstrated this fact quite neatly, even though CRM is just one direction of work:

The various parts of Veeva Systems provide practical answers to the questions of marketing, sales, medical and service, engaging various stakeholders with a set of tools. The summit included a number of “deep dives” and “mini theaters” dedicated to the various solutions and services, such as Open Data, Vault PromoMats and Vault MedComms, as well as Veeva CRM Engage Meeting.

The outcomes of these solutions have been quite spectacular, as well, notably 88% increase in sales productivity with Veeva CRM, 75% reduction in content approval time with Vault and 95% saving in admin time with Veeva Align.

It’s about data, really…

In an intriguing case study, Philippe Houben, Global Head of Data Excellence, Boehringer Ingelheim and Rebecca Silver, General Manager of Veeva Open Data, discussed the model of what Veeva calls “intelligent engagement” based on a data-driven culture. The Veeva solutions at play here are Open Data, Nitro, CRM MyInsights, and Veeva Network.

In the “intelligent engagement” approach, three stages of the process were identified, going from data through insights to actions. For each, specific concerns exist: at the data level, it’s digital and F2F interactions and consent management, as well as reference data. When the data become meaningful insights, such as channel preferences and product usage, it’s time to present value. Actions are then taken at an individual level to improve customer experience.

This is where data quality becomes crucial:

If the data isn’t right, nothing else matters.

– read one of the slides in huge letters.

Another successful example of the “intelligent engagement” approach was presented by Parker Richardson, Director, Content Strategy & Standards at GSK. The essence of the “customer experience activation” is making real time decisions with the help of insight-powered intelligence, which in the end allows to provide more personalized customer experience.

…and customer engagement is what you need that data for…

It’s hard to disentangle data and customer / medical stakeholder engagement from one another – but the event organizers did it just to provide more structure to the summit, with Digital Engagement Track and Medical Stakeholder Track in the schedule. The topics in these largely formed a sort of dialog, providing answers to questions raised in each other.

This connection was demonstrated by Gerard Arnhofer, Vice President, Head of Integrated Multichannel Marketing at Bayer, in his presentation on delivering value to customers:

Although in the Data track, the insights had to do much with customer engagement, involving both questions of customer centricity and the use of Veeva Open Data.

The topic was also developed in a case study from Novartis, dedicated to transforming the customer approach:

In the modern, “Uber-connected” world, life sciences can learn something from other industries in terms of engaging customers, with interesting points being 2-way communication, consistency and quicker content creation. Which bring us to the next point…

…which you will attain with content…

Content is the fuel of any strategy, and making sure it is produced relevant and consistent with the insights received is vital. The amount of content (eDetailing presentations, emails, websites and landing pages, etc.) is growing in an almost perfect geometric progression. This can be seen, among other things, in Veeva Vault PromoMats statistics:

With that multiplication, the need arises to take up smarter, more integrated approaches to content. Attempts to unify content-related processes and establish working global-to-local management workflows are being made very actively. For example, Christian Scheuer, VP Commercial Excellence & Affairs, LEO Pharma, presented a characteristically integrated approach. At the data/insights end, the system is powered by a BI platform (One Way) absorbing data from sales and Veeva CRM activities. CRM has one global configuration to facilitate this. At the same time, content is created based on the insights received as Global Master versions pushed to Veeva Vault Brand Portal.

Visual aids are the “basic setup”, while email and other channels (e.g. Veeva CoBrowse) are add-ons.The cherry on top is the integration with Salesforce Marketing Cloud that allows, among other things, SFMC activity from mailing campaigns to appear on the Veeva CRM activity timeline, while managers also use SFMC Journey Builder for personalization.

These integration efforts are being made for a reason, and it’s a good thing Veeva supports them. In the long run, there is already a vision of a new model of content management – one that several companies have adopted as blueprints, and we at Viseven have recently endorsed, as well.

…managed in a completely innovative way.

There has been talk of modular content. This strategy has been developed as an answer to long-standing content management hurdles, including approval, reuse, personalization and time-to-market. In short, the essence of the approach is thinking about (and creating) content in the form of flexible multichannel modules that can then be combined to create content assemblies (presentations, emails, web content) adjusted for local markets – with a hefty amount of automation thrown in. (Here is a more extensive perspective.)

Steps are being taken to ensure this already. Morten Kruse Sorensen, Global Director, Multichannel Excellence & Operations, Novo Nordisk, has presented a practical case study illustrating the process of establishing modular content processes. Instead of struggling to “feed the beast”, the organization establishes an ecosystem (“content hub”) based on three nodes:

  • PromoMats used for content formal approval;
  • Brand Portal acting as a single source of truth for global and local content;
  • Production stage, where modular content is crafted based on templates.

This enables affiliates to pull global content for adoption and efficient reuse, with faster time to market and reduced development cost. Together with new Veeva features like Auto Claims Linking, the amount of manual work is reduced to the bare minimum.of searching for assets to link with the claim (references, etc.)

6 Minute Demo: Vault PromoMats Auto Claims Linking | Veeva

Another organization working with modular content is Shionogi. Tiago Caria, Senior Manager, Digital Innovation Europe, presented the universal, not-channel-bound nature of modules as “naked content”, reflecting the idea of ultimate connectivity.

Viseven team is proud to be among the pioneers of connected modular content, which we are currently implementing for several leading enterprises based on Veeva capacities and our own eWizard content authoring solution integrated with Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Adobe Experience Manager. Our approach is based on the concept of Channel-Agnostic Modules (CAM) that can fit any content type and is used to assemble content in approved Master Templates.

Seeing the evolution of the way content is managed makes us quite enthusiastic, since today, at last, we have the technology that helps solve the familiar content-related issues and attain true customer centricity.