White Paper
Top 20 Biopharma Leaders on Why They Chose Vault CRM: 4 Case Studies in Commercial Excellence
Veeva Vault CRM, a deep application for commercial biopharma, delivers meaningful and compliant customer engagement across all channels. Over 100 biopharmas — including the top 20 global leaders featured here — have adopted Vault CRM. Their choice defines a long-term strategy for engaging a complex customer universe and delivering transformative therapies.
While different strategies drove their decisions, these leaders all selected Veeva as a proven partner on the Industry Cloud for Life Sciences. They gain a connected, data-first approach to stay customer-focused, using Veeva AI, orchestration, and dynamic targeting within the Vault Platform to eliminate distraction and hype.
Key drivers for choosing Vault CRM: connectivity and patient focus
Breaking through to healthcare professionals (HCPs) contending with high volumes of scientific information across channels is a common challenge. The stakes are higher with more acute disease states, increasing therapeutic complexity, and shorter launch windows.
Data shows that medical and commercial teams working together provide a connected flow of personalized data and content to customers efficiently to get medicines to patients faster.1 Yet, 65% of HCP engagements with biopharmas remain unsynchronized.2
In the world of specialized medicine, the featured biopharma leaders and many others have empowered complex field teams to work together. Their territory managers, account managers, medical and other specialists — along with marketing, inside sales, and customer service teams — are set up to be unified and customer-centric by default.
Other commonalities among these companies include:
- Preparing for major launches: Many are in a launch-heavy phase, relying on their CRM to innovate ahead of the curve and establish scalable processes for launch excellence.
- Minimizing risk: They agree it’s crucial to get technology decisions right the first time to avoid unnecessary risk, customizations, or restarts if a vendor’s focus changes.
- Seeking industry-specific AI: All seek the fastest path to scalable, agentic AI embedded in their core applications, supported by a partner who can ensure successful adoption.
- Expecting zero business disruption: These leaders count on their vendors to manage technology rollouts without distracting from their core focus on customers and patients.
Four top biopharmas reflect on Vault CRM’s advantages, sharing how the solution is helping sales, marketing, and medical teams advance commercial excellence and meet patients’ rapidly changing therapeutic needs.
Novo Nordisk: Driving innovation and growth with Vault CRM
Novo Nordisk is perhaps best known for mainstream obesity and diabetes medicines. However, the company is committed to expanding into new disease areas with unmet patient needs. Time is of the essence in delivering deep scientific information and resources to historical customers while engaging new ones.
“It's important to seize opportunities to be at the forefront to benefit patients. I’ve seen companies wait for ‘one more feature’ and never move. We want to ensure, as we move into our next 100 years, that our software is cutting edge,” says Frank Armenante, field systems director for Novo Nordisk. With Veeva as its partner, Armenante says the company will gain value through efficiencies and increased productivity while experiencing ‘rapid guided innovation.’
His team supports all business units across sales, marketing, medical, and market access. In migration planning they offered a menu of the innovation in Vault CRM and discussed what matters most to each unit. Industry-specific AI embedded in the shared platform will connect teams to more efficiently reach customers and patients, and Armenante says his team looks forward to using Pre-call Agent and Voice Agent for improved engagement planning and productivity.
Pre-call Agent generates a prioritized list of customers to interact with based on multiple factors, including adoption by indication, activity versus potential, previous and new activities, and other information captured. AI-powered voice control, called Voice Agent, will drive significant productivity gains and allow the field to focus on what he calls the value parts of their jobs — customer touchpoints.
He sees Service Center as another way to give customer-facing teams an edge, accessing data fast, working in the ways they prefer, and strategizing with the home office to deliver a customer-centric experience. This application in Vault CRM Suite ensures field teams work from the same customer data, content, and processes.
“You’ve got to have software that’s ahead of the curve. That’s what’s going to allow you to be innovative, thoughtful, a good partner — and do good for the world,” Armenante says.
"The decision to switch to Vault CRM was driven by the desire for the most innovative technology and a flexible partner, both of which Veeva delivers on."
Watch now: See how Novo Nordisk plans to innovate and grow with Veeva Vault CRM.
Boehringer Ingelheim sets the foundation for 20 launches in 20 years
A connected customer engagement model uses the strength of unified teams and technology to benefit stakeholders in biopharma. Sales, marketing, and medical teams working in harmony deliver deep scientific information more efficiently and improve patient adoption of vital new medicines.
“Delivering outstanding customer experiences and accelerating launch processes were catalysts for us in thinking about connected engagement,” says Dee-Dee Van Wormer, Boehringer Ingelheim’s senior associate director of customer facing effectiveness. The company is a top 20 biopharma committed to Vault CRM, a key part of its strategy to reach more patients in need.
While Boehringer Ingelheim maintains a strong presence in diabetes, heart disease, and other broad treatment areas, it’s preparing to launch 20 therapeutics over the next 20 years in new and rare disease areas with unmet patient needs. Vault CRM will help accelerate product launches by streamlining processes and enhancing customer experiences.
A connected customer engagement model has created a new approach to strategic account management for Boehringer Ingelheim, boosting field force efficiency and driving deeper understanding of customer needs, Van Wormer says. “We asked, ‘What behaviors do we want to enable and encourage?’ Veeva Business Consulting helped us shape the operating model. The project focused on ensuring our technology would facilitate teaming and sharing of insights, as well as speed adoption of the tools and data.”
The company is prepared to benefit from upcoming AI innovation in Vault CRM, allowing for even richer and smoother teaming. With the ability to quickly surface insights and content informed by prior customer interactions, field teams can supercharge their existing edge. An example is Voice Agent, Veeva Agentic AI that allows users to control the CRM with their voice to compliantly record and auto-transcribe call notes from any device or location.
“I was a representative in the field and thought many times, ‘Wouldn't it be cool to press a button and capture notes?’ Our field teams will be able to log customer call notes and assign a task to teammates in minutes,” she says. Sales, marketing, and medical will rapidly know what was discussed with a customer so they can plan for their next interaction. As Boehringer Ingelheim’s users enter voice or typed notes, Free Text Agent in Vault CRM auto-checks for compliance in real time and flags statements or phrases that require follow-up.
Next, Boehringer Ingelheim seeks to expand on its existing Veeva Commercial Cloud solutions and One Medicine and Amplify platforms, which connect development processes and data on Veeva Development Cloud.
"The project focused on ensuring our technology would facilitate teaming and sharing of insights, as well as speed adoption of the tools and data."
Watch the chat: Discover Boehringer Ingelheim’s strategy for connected customer engagement.
GSK migrates to Vault CRM to innovate: Early-mover advantage with AI
GSK’s plans to migrate to Vault CRM began almost immediately after Veeva’s announcement. “At GSK, we put data and technology at the core in achieving our goal to positively impact 2.5 billion lives by 2030. Based on Veeva’s deep life science expertise, we voiced our intent to be the first large pharma company to migrate to Vault CRM. It represents a strategic next step for us,” says Sujatha Chinnappa, global vice president, commercial technology, engineering, and data at GSK.
GSK has an ambitious agenda to move forward on its AI journey. As a result, the team views the migration not just as a platform upgrade, but as the best way to unlock the next generation of AI-driven engagements and decisions. “Being an early adopter of Vault CRM migration enables us to use Veeva AI, such as Pre-call Agent, Content Agent, and Voice Agent sooner — and bring our own agents,” Chinnappa says. This migration sets the foundation by deeply embedding AI in their enterprise system, rather than treating it as an afterthought.
Chinnappa thinks of the CRM as a nervous system linking other business critical applications and data lakes, so she says it’s never too early to start thinking about integrations. It took time upfront for GSK and Veeva to consider architecture and design, determining the best way to migrate and performing tech remediation and data cleanup as prework. “With the great partnership between GSK and Veeva, we were able to work through any issues and are on track to deliver on the ambitious migration schedule we set at the beginning,” she says.
Last but not least are change management considerations. GSK conducts change impact assessments by persona and creates user training as part of the core migration plan for success. For example, field representatives are in the company’s ‘no change impact’ category, while administrator roles such as key account managers are grouped in a ‘medium to high impact’ category that receives upskilling and training.
With the company’s migration process on schedule, more than 18,000 users in 50+ countries are expected to be live by the year’s end. GSK’s early migration is allowing the company to concentrate on its strategic priorities. “My team has spent zero hours running CRM beauty parades in the last year,” says Kieron Scrutton, senior vice president of global medical affairs digital and technology, and tech governance risk and compliance. “The broader team has been entirely focused on the digital data and AI transformation that we’re making in GSK.”
"We wanted to move fast and be in a position to leverage the innovations and new capabilities in Vault CRM to achieve our business goals."
Watch now: Learn how GSK is building its future of digital and AI with Veeva Vault CRM.
Bayer: Achieving zero field downtime in U.S. Vault CRM migration
The Bayer U.S. team is preparing for multiple launches through 2027, each representing an opportunity to deliver a transformative therapy or new indication for patients. This critical period might not seem ideal for a technology migration. But as a steadfast industry leader, the company was ready to move from a system of records to one of insights. As a result, Bayer is among the first top 20 large life sciences companies to migrate to Vault CRM in the U.S.
“Our idea was to create a customer insights platform, and Vault CRM is the foundation for that. Obviously now is the time to enrich it with more powerful information, with more powerful tools like AI agents,” says Alexander Alex, head of Veeva Platform, Bayer. And with better integration of data in Vault CRM, and by connecting commercial with clinical teams, he says it will be easier to identify new business opportunities and create more consistent customer experiences.
The goal was to migrate to Vault CRM quickly, without immediately introducing all new capabilities, to minimize disruption to the field force and fast-track access to AI and CRM advancements. “We've seen the innovation and capabilities with Vault CRM and want to make sure we have early access,” says Patrick Salonis, senior director, business systems and operations, Bayer.
Bayer’s global, U.S., and local teams, along with Veeva partners, collaborated to stay focused on the common objectives. Rounding out their strategy: a robust communication, change management, and training program for end users to make the migration as seamless an experience as possible.
“From the start, you need transparency and buy-in from the markets so they clearly understand the innovation to come, which will help the field force in their interactions with the physicians,” says Isabela Pimenta, PM - Veeva CRM to Vault CRM Migration, Bayer. Otherwise, they may see the migration as just another project. “The entire team understood this as a priority and that we had to get it right the first time,” she adds. This mindset helped drive the migration forward and remain on time.
“I had confidence in the team behind it, both on the Bayer side and on the Veeva side, that we were going to do this right and it wasn't going to disrupt any of our critical launches,” says Paul Bedard, senior vice president of customer engagement at Bayer. Looking ahead, Bayer will seek to replicate their U.S. migration success and hone the process for migrations in all other countries where Bayer has a presence.
"We were able to deliver on time without delay on the migration and without taking our U.S. team off the field for even one day. This stood out because it was a big project with a big impact for our field force."
Watch the highlights: See how Bayer's U.S. teams achieved a seamless Vault CRM migration with zero business disruption.
Drive productivity with Veeva AI and intelligence-driven engagement
Veeva AI’s value is in tackling industry-specific tasks and activities — which requires the deepest understanding of life sciences. The featured companies and many others have chosen to focus their efforts on customers and patients.
With Veeva Vault CRM and Veeva AI, these leaders will increase productivity and achieve orchestrated, customer-centric engagement across data, content, and teams. Their investment is secure with a proven partner, safeguarding their mission to benefit patients long into the future.
Explore Veeva AI: Fast-track personalized engagement and elevate your commercial execution.
1 Veeva Pulse data, Q2 2024
2 Veeva Pulse data, Q2 2025