Navigating Complexity with Connected Customer Data: Master Data at Commercial Summit

May 28, 2025 | Todd Bellemare

The opening keynote of Veeva’s 2025 Commercial Summit acknowledged what many life sciences leaders experience every day: the industry operates in one of the most complex customer landscapes. Healthcare professionals (HCPs), patients, health systems, payers, and administrators all influence decision-making, often without a clear hierarchy. The industry’s complexity is constantly evolving, and navigating it efficiently requires flexible, intelligent data systems.

During Summit, customers in the Master Data zone offered perspectives on how their organizations are tackling this challenge. Sessions highlighted modern master data management (MDM) approaches to deliver faster, smarter customer engagements and achieve measurable results. We explored topics such as delivering clean, fast data for AI and field teams, improving segmentation and targeting with HCP access data, and connecting master data to software.

Session spotlight: Leading biopharmas share master data insights

In one Master Data customer session, I was joined by two biopharma leaders, a senior director of field and data operations, and a director of commercial data strategy. They shared how their organizations are leveraging connected data to navigate industry complexity and empower their field force to deliver high-impact customer experiences.

The senior director of field and data operations at an international biopharma spotlighted an organization-wide initiative to better understand HCP behavior and define organizational hierarchies. Through close partnership with the field, their team identified where HCPs spend the majority of their time, mapped primary HCP affiliations, and defined the structure of key relationships. They noted how Veeva’s Data Cloud has helped close gaps between previously fragmented data sets, enabling a more unified, insight-driven approach to engagement. Their organization draws insights more clearly from disparate information and is working toward building connected data across its business.

The director of commercial data strategy at a biopharma that recently shifted focus from primary care to an oncology-driven model shared a different but equally strategic data journey. The organization’s shift in focus intensified the need for accurate account hierarchies and better segmentation. They focused on building out top accounts, defining community versus academic centers, and organizing data in ways that align with evolving priorities. They highlighted that the real value emerged not just from the data itself, but in how much more powerful Veeva products become when used together in meaningful ways with integration, linking, and interoperability, driving measurable value.

Driving modern MDM forward: OpenData and Network roadmap highlights

OpenData

In the OpenData product roadmap session, I highlighted how we are focused on ways to reduce the time field teams spend on data change requests (DCRs) as we simplify, connect, and enhance commercial data, giving you more accurate insights with less manual effort. We are focused on achieving a zero DCR future, where proactive data enhancements minimize the need for manual entry.

OpenData key initiatives include:

• Establishing alignment to synchronize HCP and healthcare organization (HCO) addresses, to reduce inconsistencies, and automatically create affiliations.
• The impending release of HCP primary affiliation data delivered by a new data science team and integrated with diverse sources like Compass claims and CRM Pulse data.
• A dedicated research team to conduct primary and secondary research to ensure the accuracy of organizational structures, contact details, and physician rosters, alongside monitoring for near-real-time data updates.
• OpenData 2.0, which will offer a web portal and more standardized schema for quick HCP and HCO lookups and a direct data API for full and incremental data snapshots to power AI applications.

Network

The Network roadmap session outlined how we continue to evolve as an MDM platform built specifically for life sciences. With capabilities designed around industry needs, organizations can reduce customizations, leading to less complexity, lower integration and maintenance costs, and an easier-to-manage system. By connecting data directly with software, Network enables companies to streamline their master data approach from day one. Upcoming enhancements will make it even easier to manage your ecosystem, with simplified Vault CRM migrations and improved system maintenance.

Watch the roadmap sessions for OpenData and Network to learn more about upcoming product enhancements.