Content Landscape and the Vault Platform (PromoMats and MedComms)

This video provides an in-depth exploration of Veeva's Vault platform, specifically focusing on PromoMats and MedComms, and their critical role in the medical communications (MedComms) industry. The session begins with Jon Fisher, Senior Program Manager at Veeva Systems, setting the stage by presenting real-world data on the evolving content landscape within life sciences. He highlights the significant shift to digital content and the increasing volume of assets managed, underscoring Veeva's vision to enhance speed to market, scalability, and intelligence in content operations. Following the presentation, a panel of MedComms agency specialists shares practical experiences and challenges in utilizing the Vault platform, offering valuable insights from the agency perspective.

Fisher details Veeva's strategic approach to content management, emphasizing three core pillars: speed, scale, and intelligence. Speed is addressed through initiatives like modular content, aiming to streamline creation and approval processes. Scale focuses on global content leverage, enabling local markets to easily adapt existing materials. Intelligence involves data-driven content, utilizing analytics to track approval times, review cycles, and benchmark performance against industry peers. He presents compelling data, such as an 80% increase in content year-over-year and an average approval time of 21 days for 300,000 assets, demonstrating the platform's impact and the industry's rapid pace. The presentation then delves into the distinct roles of PromoMats for promotional content and MedComms for medical affairs content, explaining how these "sister products" ensure regulatory compliance by creating a "firewall" between different content types while offering tailored configurations and roadmaps.

The video further elaborates on the specific features and benefits of both PromoMats and MedComms. PromoMats is positioned as the single source of truth for promotional materials, facilitating real-time collaboration, integration with Office 365 for collaborative authoring, and advanced features like Auto Claims Linking. This innovative feature automatically annotates content by matching it against an approved claims library, significantly reducing manual referencing efforts. PromoMats also supports content distribution to Veeva CRM and other digital channels via Brand Portal and Digital Publishing, with robust reporting and "Standard Metrics" for performance analysis. MedComms, on the other hand, centralizes scientific content for medical affairs, offering features like Medical Inquiry Management to streamline case handling and content fulfillment. The panel discussion provides a crucial real-world perspective, with agency representatives discussing the nuances of client-specific customizations, the importance of clear Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), the challenges of managing reference libraries across multiple agencies, and the value of Veeva's support channels. They collectively affirm the platform's utility while highlighting areas for improved communication and standardization in implementation.

Key Takeaways:

• Explosive Digital Content Growth: The life sciences industry experienced an 80% increase in content year-over-year, with a 3.5x shift towards digital over print, underscoring the urgent need for efficient digital content management solutions.
• Veeva's Vision for Content Management: Veeva aims to increase speed to market by 75% through modular content for faster creation, global scalability for content reuse, and data-driven intelligence for process optimization and benchmarking.
• PromoMats as a Central Hub: Veeva PromoMats serves as the single source of truth for promotional content, managing review, approval, and distribution to various channels including Veeva CRM, websites, and social media, ensuring regulatory compliance.
• Auto Claims Linking for Efficiency: This feature allows for the creation of a claims library, automatically linking content within documents to approved references, potentially cutting down manual annotation time by 25-50% for agencies.
• Data-Driven Performance Insights: PromoMats' "Standard Metrics" feature tracks key performance indicators like review cycles and approval times, enabling customers to analyze their processes and benchmark against industry peers.
• MedComms for Medical Affairs: Veeva MedComms provides a dedicated platform for scientific and medical content, creating a crucial "firewall" between promotional and medical materials to maintain compliance and tailored workflows for medical affairs teams.
• Streamlined Medical Inquiry Management: MedComms includes a specialized feature for managing medical inquiries, allowing medical affairs teams to handle cases, fulfill requests with existing content, or flag the need for new content creation.
• Extensive Partner Ecosystem: Veeva integrates with a broad network of technology partners (e.g., Adobe Experience Manager, Salesforce Marketing Cloud) to ensure seamless content flow from approval in Vault to various digital channels.
• Customization and SOP Importance: While Veeva platforms are highly customizable, agencies face challenges due to varying client implementations and SOPs, highlighting the need for clear, harmonized procedures across all stakeholders.
• Veeva's Continuous Evolution: Veeva commits to three major product releases annually, incorporating customer feedback and innovation, as evidenced by ongoing UI refreshes and new features like modular content.
• Agency Role and Feedback: Agencies are considered primary users of Veeva platforms, and their feedback is actively sought for future roadmap development, emphasizing the importance of direct communication with Veeva.
• Real-time Collaboration: The platforms facilitate real-time collaboration, allowing reviewers and team members to work on content from anywhere, including collaborative authoring for Office 365 documents within PromoMats.
• Digital Publishing for Dynamic Content: PromoMats' digital publishing feature automatically updates URLs with the latest approved versions of content (e.g., SM PC/PI), ensuring that external channels always display current, compliant information without manual intervention.

Tools/Resources Mentioned:

• Veeva Vault Platform
• Veeva PromoMats
• Veeva MedComms
• Veeva CRM (Commercial CRM and Medical CRM)
• Brand Portal (within PromoMats)
• Medical Portal (within MedComms)
• Office 365 (for collaborative authoring integration)
• Adobe Experience Manager (as an example of a technology partner integration)
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud (as an example of a technology partner integration)

Key Concepts:

• Modular Content: An approach to content creation and management where content is broken down into smaller, reusable modules, designed to increase speed and consistency across various outputs.
• Auto Claims Linking: A feature in PromoMats that automates the annotation of claims in a document by matching them against an approved claims library, linking them to supporting references.
• Standard Metrics: A feature in PromoMats that automatically tracks key metrics for content approval processes, such as review cycles and approval times, allowing for internal analysis and industry benchmarking.
• Medical Inquiry Management: A feature within MedComms that centralizes the process of receiving, managing, and fulfilling medical inquiries from healthcare professionals.
• Single Source of Truth: The concept that all content, especially regulated content, should reside in one authoritative system (like Veeva Vault) to ensure consistency, compliance, and easy access.
• Content Partner Team: Veeva's team dedicated to supporting agencies and freelancers in effectively using Veeva's content and multi-channel platforms.
• Technology Partner Team: Veeva's team that works with other technology providers to create integrations between Veeva products and external systems (e.g., CMS, campaign tools).