Maximize Your Resources with Integrated Roster Management

The video, produced by Veeva Systems, focuses on the critical role of integrated Roster Management within Veeva Align to optimize pharmaceutical commercial operations and ensure continuous field coverage. The presentation begins by quantifying the significant operational challenge posed by field force turnover, noting that approximately 37,000 territories globally are left vacant annually due to resignations, transfers, or sick leaves. This lack of coverage directly translates into lost revenue, customer disengagement, and inefficient resource utilization. Veeva Align’s built-in Roster Management capability is presented as the solution designed to manage these changes dynamically and substantially reduce the ramp-up time required for new or transferred representatives.

The core functionality revolves around a centralized dashboard tailored for commercial operations teams. This dashboard provides an immediate, comprehensive overview of the field force status, displaying both assigned and vacant territories within a region, alongside a list of unassigned field users (such as new hires). This centralization eliminates the need for commercial operations to reconcile data across multiple systems. From this single dashboard, teams can access detailed reports and representative profiles, enabling swift administrative action. The system is designed to facilitate the rapid setup of new hires or the transfer of permissions from existing representatives, thereby maintaining maximum coverage and reach.

A key differentiator highlighted is the system’s ability to integrate seamlessly with existing HR systems, allowing commercial operations teams to easily import and update necessary profile information, including start and end dates. Crucially, Veeva Align leverages a robust rules engine to automate the complex process of provisioning. This engine automatically assigns territory roles, system permissions, and product access at both the individual user and team levels. By automating these assignments, the system avoids manual input errors in the CRM, ensuring consistency and compliance. The final step in the process is the ability to push all these automated updates to Veeva CRM in a single click, ensuring that field representatives are fully provisioned and ready to engage with customers from their very first day, enabling agile management of both the field force and digital channels.

Key Takeaways:

• Mitigation of Vacancy Risks: The video emphasizes that integrated roster management is essential for mitigating the risks associated with territory vacancies, which globally affect an estimated 37,000 territories annually, leading to significant revenue loss and customer disengagement.
• Accelerated Representative Readiness: The primary operational benefit is the drastic reduction in representative ramp-up time, ensuring that new hires or transferred reps are provisioned and ready to engage customers immediately upon joining their territory.
• Centralized Operational Visibility: Commercial operations teams gain a unified dashboard view showing the status of all territories (assigned vs. vacant) and the availability of unassigned field users, simplifying resource allocation decisions.
• Data Integration with HR Systems: Veeva Align facilitates easy import and updating of representative data from existing HR systems, which ensures data accuracy and consistency across the enterprise and the CRM platform.
• Automation via Rules Engine: The platform utilizes a powerful rules engine to automate the assignment of complex, multi-layered attributes, including territory roles, system permissions, and product assignments, eliminating manual configuration errors.
• Compliance and Consistency: By automating assignments through predefined rules, the solution helps ensure that all representatives adhere to the correct operational parameters and regulatory requirements (like access controls) without manual oversight.
• Single-Click Deployment to CRM: The system allows for the immediate deployment of all roster and alignment updates to Veeva CRM in a single action, which is crucial for maintaining operational speed and agility in a dynamic commercial environment.
• Focus on Commercial Agility: The overall framework supports an agile approach to field force management, allowing pharmaceutical companies to respond rapidly to organizational changes, market shifts, and personnel movements.

Tools/Resources Mentioned:

• Veeva Align: The platform providing the integrated Roster Management and rules engine capabilities.
• Veeva CRM: The core system receiving the automated field force updates, ensuring representatives are operational in the field.
• HR System: The source system for representative profile data used for initial setup and updates.

Key Concepts:

• Roster Management: The systematic process of managing the assignment, transfer, and termination of field personnel to ensure optimal territory coverage and resource deployment.
• Ramp-Up Time: The period required for a new employee to reach full productivity; minimizing this time is a core goal of the integrated roster management solution.
• Rules Engine: An automated component that processes business logic (rules) to determine and apply appropriate territory assignments, permissions, and roles based on input data, ensuring consistency and reducing manual effort.