Increased productivity and efficiency of all customer-facing teams
Improved customer experience with higher-quality interactions
Greater collaboration and channel orchestration across commercial teams
Single, complete view of customers across multifaceted stakeholder landscape

How do you establish a centralized commercial strategy across multiple geographies when you have dozens of systems that don’t connect? Like many multinational life sciences companies, Teva Pharmaceuticals wanted to harmonize its go-to-market approach worldwide. The company had the additional complexity of bringing together new teams and affiliates from years of acquisitions, each coming with its own system. The key was a global customer relationship management system that everyone could easily learn, use, and share best practices. Most importantly, this system needed to provide a complete view of the customer across all channels of interaction for improved engagement. Here is how Teva achieved a unified customer-centric commercial model globally.

The Customer

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, which is headquartered in Israel and founded in 1901, has a long history of supplying the world with critical therapies. The company is the recognized leader in generic products with a rapidly growing pipeline of branded products from a series of acquisitions over the last 10 years. As one of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies in the world, Teva operates in more than 60 countries around the world.

The Challenge

In early 2000, Teva began acquiring various companies to expand its business. As the company grew, it needed to harmonize its commercial go-to-market strategy across regions and divisions, share best practices, and capture a comprehensive view of the customer. However, due to the acquisitions, the company was challenged with disparate customer relationship management (CRM) systems worldwide – more than 35 different, siloed systems in Europe alone – impacting visibility across the enterprise. Teva needed a unified CRM system globally that was configurable to meet local requirements and support all teams across generic and branded drug products.

In addition, a variety of interaction preferences from different customers and the proliferation of handheld technology sparked an increase in the number of communication channels required to market Teva’s drug therapies. This drove Teva to search for a CRM solution that would enable coordinated multichannel execution and provide complete visibility into interactions across all channels for a complete view of the customer.

“Veeva CRM’s usability has increased productivity in the field.” Christian Griffin, Head of Commercial Excellence, Teva UK

The Solution

An advanced cloud-based architecture was a prerequisite, so Teva conducted an extensive analysis of the leading cloud CRM providers. The company determined that multichannel Veeva CRM, part of Veeva Commercial Cloud, was the best solution. With the decision to standardize on Veeva CRM, Teva embarked on a global initiative to redefine its commercial strategy, putting the customer in the center.

Veeva CRM, easily accessible in the cloud and interoperable with critical applications, delivers the holistic view of customers that Teva needed to coordinate interactions across channels. It also offers functionality to manage key accounts and build relationships with stakeholders. Further, Veeva CRM’s integrated order management feature proved critical to support the transactional selling element of the account management approach for the company’s vital generic business.

The Implementation

Veeva CRM was first deployed in the U.S. and Canada and then rolled out to all other markets. Globally, Teva turned to Veeva CRM for the following benefits:

  • Complete view of customers for better insights and improved engagement
  • Increased efficiencies by moving to a single system worldwide
  • Coordinated multichannel execution across all customer-facing teams
  • Seamless sharing of best practices across regions and teams

“Veeva CRM provides us the foundation for long-term success by allowing us to capture valuable customer insights about channel preferences and content needs globally,” said Guy Hadari, global CIO at Teva. “It also increases efficiency by connecting commercial teams and regions in the cloud that had been highly fragmented.”

Teva UK Transforms Customer Engagement

Teva UK was the first of 37 European markets to go live with Veeva CRM to enable the company’s global customer-centric commercial strategy. Like many other Teva affiliates around the world, Teva UK struggled to effectively coordinate customer interactions across its customer facing teams. Veeva CRM supported this challenge by uniting all customer-facing teams, including field sales, call center agents, marketing, wholesale and pharmacy sales, and medical science liaisons, for a more comprehensive view of the customer and preferred channels. The switch to Veeva revealed many valuable insights that would transform customer engagement.

“Veeva CRM has empowered Teva UK to meet the organization’s overarching objectives to centralize sales and marketing strategies and focus wholly on the customer,” explained Christian Griffin, head of commercial excellence at Teva UK. “With Veeva CRM, we have rich insight about customer preferences and past interactions so we can deliver a more personalized experience with each future communication, whether that is through a sales call, marketing campaign, or digital detail.”

Griffin added, “With Veeva CRM’s multitenant** architecture, Teva can leverage economies of scale to build the global system once and then tailor it for each individual country’s unique requirements.”

The Results

Teva UK conducted a pre-implementation assessment, surveying users about their experiences working in their previous systems. After Veeva CRM went live, the company re-assessed users to determine the impact of the switch. Respondents overwhelmingly reported improvements across multiple areas, including:

  • Increased productivity and efficiency of all customer-facing teams
  • Improved customer experience with higher-quality interactions
  • Greater collaboration and channel orchestration across commercial teams
  • Single, complete view of customers across the multifaceted stakeholder landscape

Increased Productivity and Efficiency

Teva UK respondents reported that Veeva CRM improved all aspects of their daily activities, from call planning and customer interactions to tracking and reporting. In fact, nearly 80% of respondents reported that they were satisfied with Veeva CRM for effective execution of their duties. The survey also showed a more than three-fold increase in the percentage of respondents who now find it easy to plan their calls in Veeva CRM compared to their previous system. And, 67% reported that it was ‘easy’ or ‘very easy’ to see all customer activity with Veeva CRM versus only 33% reporting the same with their previous systems. Overall, 74% of respondents reported Veeva CRM as ‘very easy’ or ‘easy’ to use – less than one-third could say the same about their previous system.

“Veeva CRM’s usability has increased productivity in the field, with nearly two-thirds of respondents indicating they are more productive with Veeva CRM compared to their prior system,” said Griffin. Now, with an easier-to-use and always accessible CRM system, customer-facing teams are motivated to complete call tasks and draft reports immediately following their calls when memory recall is most reliable. “Not only does this improve the accuracy and completeness of call reports,” continued Griffin, “but it also promotes a healthier work-life balance. I’ve noticed our team spending less time after hours completing reports from home.”

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Improved Customer Experience

Ninety-five percent of Teva UK respondents reported greater confidence in Veeva CRM’s ability to help them manage customer relationships, compared to 56% who reported the same on the previous systems. Further, 65% of respondents agreed that Veeva CRM enables them to more effectively engage with customers, compared to only 10% reporting the same in the past. Customer engagement also improved since gaining a holistic view of the customer. “A single customer view through Veeva CRM means that we are all on the same page – building on each conversation to further develop the relationship over time,” said Griffin.

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Looking Forward

Teva plans to continue leveraging additional Veeva Commercial Cloud applications to expand its cross-channel customer engagement to give customers the information they want, when they want it, and through the channels they prefer. In fact, Teva UK is leveraging Veeva CRM Approved Email for compliant email communications, and exploring Veeva CRM CoBrowse for sharing rich content with customers online. The corporate goal for Teva’s commercial organization is to continue incorporating key digital channels into its marketing mix for richer customer interactions through all preferred channels.

“With Veeva CRM, Teva is pushing forward on its journey towards total customer centricity. We can now capture and share rich information about all of our customers to provide a personalized experience where each subsequent interaction is better than the last,” commented Griffin. “The evidence is plain to see not only in the UK but in many of our major markets as we learn more and more about what our customers need and want in order to take excellent care of their patients.”


* Based on IMS data.
** Veeva’s multitenant cloud applications use a single, shared infrastructure and base code that is centrally maintained, without having to purchase, scale, or maintain any hardware or software. Life sciences companies are therefore always current and automatically benefit from new innovation delivered three times per year.

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