From Execution to Strategic Enablement

What would be the impact to your organization if you could reduce territory sizes by 90%? Would your CRM field users’ experience change if they were armed with the exact data they need to call on the right targets? At Veeva’s European Commercial and Medical Summit in Madrid, two Veeva Align customers discussed how they are helping their reps be more effective by focusing on their territories.

Astellas cuts alignment times by 83% and reduces territory sizes by over 90%

Astellas moved to Veeva Align in an effort to become more sophisticated about their customer interactions, reduce alignment complexity, and prepare the organization for intelligent multichannel engagement.

While the team understood the inherent value of the Veeva Align-to-Veeva CRM integration, it demanded real-world proof of business outcomes. One of the key requirements was to shorten the time required to conduct territory alignments. At the Madrid summit, the Astellas team presented measurable results that showed how the business became more agile and efficient with Align:

* Shortened alignment times from 12 weeks to less than two weeks, an 83% improvement.
* Created more agility with change requests moving from a quarterly to on-demand basis.
* Reduced process steps nine-fold, consolidating 90+ steps down to ten.
* Lowered dependence on spreadsheets by 60%, decreasing the risk of data errors.

Astellas achieved these results while undergoing the largest in-country territory restructuring in a decade. Align helped Astellas’ reps become more effective as it reduced territories from an average of 15,000 accounts down to 1,500 for key account managers, and a mere 500 accounts for individual sales reps. These are quite remarkable results which will help Astellas’ reps focus on the most important customers.

Although the Align implementation coincided with a large restructuring, it was deemed to be one of the fastest and easiest alignments Astellas has conducted. Unlike their experience prior to Align, there were no errors or issues reported from the field. One presenter, Svenja Buerger, CRM Expert, Germany, said, “We can now perform more sophisticated alignments and, as an alignment administrator, I feel more effective in my role.”

Download Astellas’ presentation to learn more about their alignment challenges, results with Align, and future vision.

AbbVie eliminates 500,000 unnecessary accounts

AbbVie was looking to better support commercial goals by setting up the right alignments. It was forced to rely on a mix of different alignment solutions, with no local control and many technical challenges. Reps were often forced to scroll through dozens or more customers in their territory who were not important sales targets, making their jobs inefficient and frustrating.

AbbVie implemented Veeva Align to create a more sustainable and efficient process. Align yielded impressive results, reducing territory sizes by 90% and eliminating 500,000 unnecessary accounts in the UK alone. By removing accounts that were not important to the sales process, AbbVie allowed its reps to focus on their priority customers.

David Andrew, Project Lead, Veeva CRM, discussed AbbVie’s implementation of Align, their configuration, and the rationale for their alignment rules. During test phase, the team quickly realized that Veeva Align operates as expected, and transitioned their focus to quality of the alignment output rather than system functionality.

Download the Abbvie’s presentation Download the Abbvie’s presentation to learn more about AbbVie’s expectations, results, and lessons learned.

From organizational agility to strategic enablement

Six of the top 25 pharma companies now use Align, in addition to numerous small and midsized companies. Many of them were initially looking to employ it as an execution tool in order to become a more agile and market-responsive organization. After using Align regularly, they have realized that it also allows them to evolve their focus from execution to strategic enablement.

The next year is going to be exciting for Veeva Align customers and our first release of 2018 is coming up soon.