Accelerating Digital-First Engagement: Epikast’s Two-Week Service Center Activation

Epikast, a digital engagement service partner for life sciences companies, identified fragmented systems as the primary barrier to high-value scientific dialogue with healthcare professionals (HCPs). While large biopharmas typically handle 200,000 customer service cases annually, less than 50% of HCPs perceive these interactions as valuable.1 For Epikast, this represents a missed opportunity for sales teams to follow up and build relationships with HCPs who proactively reach out and demonstrate interest.

To unify commercial teams and gain deeper context for enhanced customer experiences, Epikast adopted Veeva Vault CRM and Service Center. Service Center is an industry-specific application that enables inbound and outbound engagement across channels with a single customer view. With this foundation, Epikast scaled its digital-first inside sales and remote medical science liaison (MSL) services. The result has been increased operational efficiency and highly personalized customer engagement.

¹Veeva Periscope Survey of 2,000+ HCPs in Europe, 2025

Disconnected commercial teams undermine HCP engagement

With 87% of HCPs preferring virtual or hybrid interactions, biopharmas are scaling inside sales capabilities. However, 65% of HCPs say they have been digitally spammed. For companies like Epikast, a key challenge to more customer-centric engagement is transitioning from a disjointed commercial model to a unified approach where inside sales, field, customer service, market access, marketing, and medical teams coordinate efforts.

Vangelis Vergetis, Epikast’s CEO, explains how fragmented engagement models undermine inside sales efficiency, effectiveness, and impact: “Traditional methods require juggling a spreadsheet target list, a desk phone, and manually capturing details in a call report. This process is slow and disconnected from the rest of the commercial organization, resulting in inefficient sales operations and poor HCP experiences.”

To deliver relevant, personalized, and timely interactions, Epikast needed to connect field engagement and inside sales workflows on a unified platform with a single customer record.

Unified, industry-specific technology to scale inside sales

Epikast built a successful digital-first engagement model by first establishing a specialized, cost-effective operating structure. Recognizing that high-value scientific dialogue requires deep expertise, the company recruits highly qualified professionals — including pharmacists, doctors, and nurses — for its sales and MSL roles. “Getting people with these qualifications in the countries we sell, like the U.S. or Western Europe, is hard and expensive,” says Vergetis. “A key advantage of the remote engagement model is that we can access a global pool of PhD-level talent at a lower operating cost.”

Epikast seeks to provide its talented inside sales professionals with the right technology to deliver effective HCP engagement. Epikast adopted Vault CRM and Service Center to consolidate tools into a single, industry-specific application and drive operational efficiencies. There were three main drivers for this commitment:

• Industry standard: “Veeva has become the technology standard in many organizations we serve, both smaller biotech and big pharma. Using Veeva applications makes it easier to collaborate with them,” says Vergetis. “Veeva is truly dedicated to the industry. They are incredibly aware of the needs in the life sciences space and develop solutions that are specific for that ecosystem,” he adds.
• Unified platform: The core benefit Epikast saw in Vault CRM Service Center was the single customer view connecting commercial teams: “It all comes together in one compliant platform rather than a hundred different systems. This eliminates the system fragmentation that hinders speed and visibility,” explains Vergetis. Vault CRM Service Center is part of Vault CRM Suite, which means all customer-facing teams work from the same customer data, content, and key processes to deliver a customer-centric experience.
• Purpose-built capabilities: Vault CRM Service Center is the first industry-specific inside sales solution that powers outbound HCP engagement with all data and channels shared in Vault CRM. The application enables efficient and effective operations of Epikast’s inside sales teams, such as robust target list management, omnichannel functionality, click-to-dial for faster execution, automated attempt tracking, and full visibility.

With the technology foundation in place, Epikast is looking ahead to a strategic integration of AI that automates administrative tasks, such as summarizing call recordings, and provides real-time insights. “I envision AI monitoring engagement levels during video calls and triggering an on-the-spot alert to the rep to ask a question to re-engage the customer, and we can use these insights at the corporate level to adjust our messaging or our HCP engagement approach” says Vergetis. In addition, the company seeks to leverage AI to drive efficiencies. He explains how “AI purposely used in areas that matter can accelerate the team’s productivity and provide critical insights informing the overall strategy.”

Faster, deeper customer engagement

Within a rapid 2.5-month rollout of Vault CRM, Epikast was able to activate Service Center in less than two weeks and get its inside sales teams up and running. “Implementation was relatively straightforward and faster than I would have thought,” says Vergetis, adding, “The project was on schedule and on budget.”

Beyond unified technology and data, achieving efficient commercial operations requires redefining processes and creating new ways of working. Vergetis emphasizes the importance of a cohesive people approach: “Technology is the enabler, but aligning organizational leadership and commercial teams around a single vision is what delivers the real business benefit. The ultimate goal is that all functions act as one team.”

The successful Vault CRM and Service Center go-live translated into these strategic gains for Epikast:

• Industry-standard alignment: Adopting the industry technology standard simplifies Epikast’s collaboration with its biopharma clients.
• Accelerated execution: Consolidating tools into a single application led to efficient click-to-dial execution and effortless record keeping.
• Deeper customer context: Unifying commercial teams on a single platform with the same underlying data enabled a true 360-degree customer view for customer-centric, coordinated engagement.

“With Service Center, life is easy. We’ve got all teams on the same platform with a complete, transparent view of the customer. Everything and everyone is in one place, which means faster sales execution and highly personalized HCP engagement.” — Vangelis Vergetis, CEO, Epikast

Contact us to learn more about empowering effective inside sales with Vault CRM Service Center.