Astellas: Improving Organizational Agility with Veeva

This video provides an in-depth case study on how Astellas Europe leveraged Veeva Align to fundamentally improve organizational agility within its commercial operations. The primary motivation for Astellas was to overcome a legacy process for territory alignment that was characterized by being excessively long, involving too many stakeholders, and relying heavily on outdated, prone-to-error Excel-based technology. This cumbersome process severely limited the organization’s ability to rapidly implement data-driven decisions necessary to effectively serve customers and, ultimately, patients. The core challenge was the inability to quickly restructure the sales force or adjust resource allocation in response to market changes, which is critical for maintaining commercial effectiveness.

The implementation of Veeva Align served as the solution to this structural inefficiency. Astellas reports a dramatic increase in speed, estimating the new process to be approximately ten times faster than the previous manual methods. Beyond speed, the solution introduced reliability, ensuring that the desired outcome—the correct assignment of customers to the right territories—happens reliably on the first attempt. This operational efficiency translates directly into strategic agility, allowing small realignments to be executed in a matter of hours, rather than weeks. Furthermore, the new system enables sophisticated functionality, such as performing alignments based on advanced segmentation and targeting capabilities that were previously unavailable.

Looking toward the future, the speakers emphasized that this foundational shift in alignment capabilities is essential for accelerating their journey into digital and multi-channel engagement. As Astellas expands its use of digital channels, the need for agility in multi-channel alignment becomes paramount. The goal is to dynamically assign the right resources to the right channels based on real-time response data and performance metrics. This systemic trust and efficiency—where the end-user (like the CRM expert) can immediately adjust assignments based on market intelligence and push them to the field force quickly—is cited as the biggest gain. The overall transformation shifts the organization from a slow, reactive structure to one that can make structural changes, reassign product priorities, and operate in a multi-channel environment with speed and confidence.

Key Takeaways: • Agility is a Commercial Imperative: The central focus of modern commercial operations is achieving organizational agility to rapidly implement data-driven decisions that enhance customer service and ultimately benefit patients. • Legacy Systems are a Bottleneck: Traditional territory alignment processes relying on manual, Excel-based technology are inherently slow, unreliable, and involve excessive stakeholder involvement, preventing rapid response to market dynamics. • Quantifiable Efficiency Gains: Astellas achieved a tenfold increase in speed for territory alignments using Veeva Align, transforming a process that previously took weeks into one executable in hours, or even minutes for minor adjustments. • Enabling Advanced Targeting: The new system provides essential functionality for executing alignments based on sophisticated segmentation and targeting criteria, moving beyond basic geographic or historical data constraints. • The Importance of System Trust: A reliable, fast system instills trust in the end-users (e.g., CRM experts and field force), making them more efficient and confident in the data they are utilizing for resource allocation. • Empowering the CRM Expert: The CRM expert’s role is significantly enhanced, allowing them to adjust assignments immediately based on real-time market knowledge and push those changes to the field force database quickly, maximizing responsiveness. • Foundation for Multi-Channel Strategy: Improved territory alignment capabilities are a prerequisite for accelerating the shift toward digital and multi-channel engagement, requiring the agility to assign resources based on digital channel performance and response data. • Shifting from Hours to Minutes: Operational tasks related to preparing and delivering alignment changes, which previously consumed hours, now take only minutes, significantly freeing up operational staff for more strategic work. • Strategic Resource Allocation: The core value proposition is the ability to strategically restructure the sales force and reallocate resources and product priorities quickly, ensuring that commercial efforts are always aligned with current business needs.

Tools/Resources Mentioned:

• Veeva Align (A specific module within the Veeva Commercial Cloud suite)
• Excel (Mentioned as the outdated, inefficient legacy technology being replaced)

Key Concepts:

• Organizational Agility: The ability of a pharmaceutical organization to rapidly adapt its structure, processes, and resource allocation in response to changing market conditions, competitive pressures, or internal strategic shifts.
• Territory Alignment: The process of defining and adjusting the geographic, customer, or account assignments for a sales force to ensure optimal coverage, workload balance, and resource deployment based on commercial strategy.
• Multi-Channel Alignment: The strategic allocation of commercial resources (sales reps, digital content, medical affairs outreach) across various engagement channels (in-person, email, virtual meetings, chatbots) based on customer preference and response data.

Examples/Case Studies:

• Astellas Europe: The video features Astellas, a major pharmaceutical company, detailing their successful implementation of Veeva Align to streamline their commercial operations and enhance organizational agility, particularly in territory management.