Information Technology

<h2 class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Q1. Could you start by giving us a brief overview of your professional background, particularly focusing on your expertise in the industry?</span></h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I have been in the enterprise software space for 10 years now, initially starting out at Roche (known as Genentech in the US) as an SAP consultant and later as a Business Process Manager. Those years gave me a solid foundation on which I later expanded my career, a firm understanding of how enterprise software supports key business functions and, most importantly, how large enterprises operate (Roche has 100,000 employees overall).</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">From Roche, I have been recruited to join the local office of Oracle after a few years. Joining them turned out to be a solid early career decision; I learned how to move and provide value in a pure engineering organization and also laid the foundation for what I would call a "mid-life passion," software engineering. With a firm understanding of how enterprise software is built and operated and my Pharma experience, entering the Veeva technology space felt like a natural path.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The last 4 years have been spent there, and it finally feels like I have found my long-term future. I have been doing technology consulting, leading engagements and managing enterprise applications for some of the biggest Pharma companies in the world (worked with 5 of the Global Top 20) as well as a couple of EU Pharma SMBs.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">As of January 2024, I joined Publicis Health to help them set up a pharma marketing Content Factory and played a pivotal role in establishing solid technical fundamentals for the organization.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h2 class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Q2. Suggest some key considerations that Pharma companies need to think critically about before deciding to migrate to Veeva Vault CRM, stay with Salesforce, or choose another platform.</span></h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It is almost decision time for most Pharma companies regarding their CRM platforms. Veeva's Vault CRM has gained significant traction; migrations from the legacy Salesforce-based solution are already underway for major Pharma players such as GSK, Novo Nordisk, and Bayer. Furthermore, just last week, <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/boehringer-ingelheim-commits-to-veeva-vault-crm-302306994.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Boehringer Ingelheim announced its commitment to Vault CRM</a>, which was another large win for Veeva Systems.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Having been a Veeva Systems employee before, this early success can be largely attributed to the company's agile and customer-centric approach. This level of flexibility and responsiveness is uncommon with mature enterprise software companies and gives them a distinct advantage over other providers.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">However, Salesforce is an established leader in the CRM space and has been the home of Veeva CRM since its inception. This long-standing relationship has resulted in numerous custom applications, business processes, and integrations built specifically for the Salesforce environment. The cost and complexity of migrating these systems to a new platform could be a significant deterrent, especially given current economic uncertainties and ongoing cost-saving efforts across the industry.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">From my perspective, the technological edge is with Salesforce due to its platform maturity. The Pharma industry is usually resistant to change. This, coupled with the fact that existing Salesforce instances already have necessary integrations and custom processes in place, means that some companies might wait and then decide whether to move to Salesforce Life Sciences Cloud or Vault CRM.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Veeva's strength lies in its focused expertise and deep understanding of the pharmaceutical industry, an area where Salesforce has less specialized experience. This niche knowledge positions Veeva well to develop a successful platform tailored to the industry's unique needs.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In essence, both platforms have their strengths, and the choice between them will likely depend on each company's specific circumstances, priorities, and willingness to invest in change.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h2 class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Q3. Are there any strategic partnerships that give one platform an edge in the pharma sector?</span></h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Salesforce has been making a ton of big moves recently. One of them is the partnership with Anthropic. They initially received an investment from <a href="https://salesforceventures.com/perspectives/welcome-anthropic/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Salesforce Ventures in 2023</a> and just announced in September that Salesforce is i<a href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/salesforce-partnership" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ntegrating Sonnet in its capabilities such as Einstein</a>. Furthermore, the push by Salesforce to gain traction in the Life Sciences Cloud market is underpinned by them <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2024/04/08/iqvia-and-salesforce-expand-global-partnership-to-accelerate-the-development-of-life-sciences-cloud/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">partnering with IQVIA</a>. IQVIA and Veeva Systems have been famously engaged in a <a href="https://www.pharmaceuticalcommerce.com/view/ruling-made-in-latest-round-of-litigation-over-alleged-data-theft" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lawsuit about their MDM solutions since 2017</a>.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">These coupled with the fact that Salesforce hired a <a href="https://seekingalpha.com/news/4031930-salesforce-hires-veeva-exec-head-life-sciences-business" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Veeva Veteran, Frank Defesche</a>, to head its life sciences cloud business tells me that Marc Benioff's team is laser-focused on standing up a true competitor to conquer Veeva's quasi-monopoly in this space.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Veeva, on the other hand, did not make a ton of splash in the partnership space but has several things going for them: they have the majority of the Global Top 20 pharma companies using their technology solutions and overall have the lion's share in the commercial life science space and are a significant player in research and development tooling. Veeva is still a <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2024/07/11/the-exception-to-healthtech-industrys-growth-pains.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sub 10K company and emphasizes staying lean as an organization</a>. This allows them to move and iterate fast. This, coupled with the fact that they already have some major organizations (GSK, Bayer, Novo Nordisk, Boehringer Ingelheim) commit to Vault CRM, gives them a head start, and this should gear up to be an interesting battle in the years to come.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h2 class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Q4. What are the development roadmaps for each platform? And are they aligned with future trends in the pharma industry.</span></h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">What was Big Data in the early 2010s and Metaverse in 2020? In 2024 it is all about generative AI. Pharma is not different in that it is all about GenAI at the moment, and large enterprises are looking for ways of embedding these tools into their operations.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Salesforce just announced <a href="https://www.salesforceben.com/how-does-salesforces-agentforce-work/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AgentForce</a>, a tool with which companies can deploy fully autonomous AI agents to complete tasks within the platform. What is new is that this will be a first-of-its-kind enterprise AI bot that does not work with calling an external LLM through an API but directly "lives" within the system.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Veeva also announced its CRM- and Voice bot last week. CRM bot will be used for the same purpose as AgentForce, automating mundane tasks and Voice bot will aim to help voice command the interface of Vault CRM leveraging Apple Intelligence.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Personally, I am interested in seeing what the boundaries will be for the usefulness of some of these tools. The non-deterministic output of LLMs will likely face some issues in the highly regulated environment in which pharma companies exist.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Veeva also recently announced Campaign Manager, a standalone solution aimed at Marketers. I am curious to see how that turns out. Based on the experience I have gathered over the years, big Pharma struggles with how their marketing and field functions work efficiently together. Although GenAI is cool, making Marketing-Sales collaboration more seamless is a very interesting and likely financially rewarding challenge.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h2 class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Q5. How well does Veeva Vault CRM vs. Salesforce vs. any other platform address pharma-specific needs (e.g., compliance, medical information management, key opinion leader tracking)?</span></h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Based on my experience, Veeva really excels in building customer-oriented solutions. The company's product teams work extremely closely with the largest pharma companies, and during my time there, I was truly impressed with the turnaround time of features that address critical business processes for commercial operations. They are nearing 2 decades of deep Pharma software experience, and I have no doubt that they will continue to build purpose-driven solutions for the industry. There is a reason why <a href="https://www.industries.veeva.com/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">47 of the top 50 Pharma companies have been using Veeva CRM</a>.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Salesforce, on the other hand, has no significant track record in this space yet. However, with all of the moves they have been making so far, coupled with the fact that they have the means to continue to invest significantly in the space, I am sure we will witness impressive solutions coming from their shop.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h2 class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Q6. If you were an investor looking at companies within the space, what critical question would you pose to their senior management?</span></h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">For Veeva, the question is (as you would expect) how Vault CRM will flip the picture. Salesforce is coming in hot with the IQVIA OCE partnership, and even though Veeva owns the lion's share of the total addressable market for Pharma CRM, it is widely expected that at least some major customers will end up opting for Salesforce. This can also have a significant impact on Veeva's pricing capability and potentially adversely affect their bottom line.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">My question would be to understand how they are planning to further diversify revenue in the life sciences (especially the commercial) space and if there are plans by Veeva to deeper embed itself into the digital marketing space, potentially expanding into their own version of Salesforce Marketing Cloud.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">For Salesforce, I have been impressed by the moves so far and the pace at which they are executing. However, they are much more of a "general purpose" enterprise software company. I would love to understand what the big picture vision is in the life sciences vertical and how this newly set up product line folds into the larger company strategy.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p>