Since the news broke that Veeva Systems has canceled its partnership with Salesforce, many Life Sciences CIOs have been left in the dark, wondering what this means for them, as this split presents a significant upheaval to their organizations. With uncertainty over migration, service agreements, or integrations, CIOs have limited time to assess the impact of the breakup to ensure that they are prepared to deal with any changes that may come. Compounding this is the silence and lack of clarity on the matter at hand by both Veeva and Salesforce, given the clock is ticking.
Gartner Raises an Alarm
Further raising the alarm, last week, Gartner’s Life Science’s Industry Analyst, Vice-President, Research, and Advisory, Animesh Gandhi, published a Quick Answer, which raised some hard questions about the impact of the split and how Veeva customers should respond.
What CIOs Need to Consider
Given the significance of CRM as a critical business system, CIOs are now unexpectedly forced to assess how their business operations will be affected by this uncoupling, along with dealing with lost time and revenue in preparing for a new reality whichever way they choose to proceed. They’re now faced with having to:
• evaluate Salesforce’s and Veeva’s promised new product offerings
• pricing models
• licensing fees
• customer service and support levels
• assess how existing contracts with Salesforce or Veeva will be impacted and if they need to honor or renegotiate any agreements
They also need to take stock of their platform customizations and integrations, data storage, additional infrastructure, develop pre-migration and post-migration roadmaps that involve a host of internal teams and departments, and consider any other possible scenarios that could affect their organization.
Confronting the New Reality
As CIOs confront a new reality for CRM in their organizations, it is time to take the opportunity to take stock and choose the best path going forwards, whether from a capability, cost of ownership perspective or by evaluating other CRM vendors with another system. When evaluating systems, the following factors should be considered:
• Requirements: Identify your organization’s specific requirements and needs, and make sure the new system satisfies those requirements.
• Cost: Evaluate the cost of the new system, including both upfront and managed services costs, and compare them to the spending of the existing system.
• Scalability: Ensure the new system can accommodate future growth and changing needs.
• Integration: Verify that the new system integrates well with existing systems, data sources, and tools.
• User Experience: Evaluate the new system’s ease of use and user experience.
• Support and Maintenance: Consider the level of support and maintenance provided by the vendor or partners and whether they have a good reputation for reliability.
• Data Security: Evaluate the security features to protect sensitive data and ensure the new system meets your organization’s security requirements.
• Flexibility: Evaluate the new system’s degree of customization and flexibility to ensure it can be tailored to your organization’s unique needs.
• Reputation: What is the reputation of the solution, its provider, and its partners in the market? What do other users and industry experts have to say about it?
• Return on Investment (ROI): Calculate the new system’s potential return on investment (ROI), considering costs and benefits.
Consider an Alternative
Whether looking at alternative CRM vendors or planning an RFP, you should put Exeevo Omnipresence on your list. Omnipresence has been recognized for the past five years by Gartner, IDC, and Everest as an alternative to Salesforce-based systems. Omnipresence is a next-gen, unified, intelligent CRM platform built specifically for the life sciences industry. It is a modern, productized SaaS solution easily deployed into a client’s existing M365 tenant. Omnipresence replaces legacy systems with a modern, digital ecosystem built on the class-leading Microsoft stack of Dynamics 365, Azure, and Power Platform. Here are some of the value-packed benefits of our solution:
• Unified license framework saves 2-5x in licensing + total cost of operation
• Configuration flexibility with a rich array of life sciences industry functionality
• Common data model removes the need for data integration across disparate systems
• Unified, scalable platform architecture ensures unparalleled time to deploy
• Seamless interoperability with the Microsoft ecosystem – Office 365 that includes Outlook and a native Microsoft Teams integration.
• Brings CRM for Sales, Commercial and Medical Affairs teams, KOL Management, Marketing Automation, Events Management, Content Management, Contact Center, Self-Service, and powerful BI/ML/AI capabilities from the same solution
• Lower TCO from inclusive pricing, simplifying duplicate or overlapping systems, removing unnecessary integration, and device-agnostic UI.
• Globally available cloud infrastructure, industry data model, advanced security, and deep compliance with industry and government requirements
• Innovation is assured through Exeevo’s strategic alliance with Microsoft and their constant investment in new capabilities like Viva and OpenAI
No breakup is ever easy, and the one between Veeva and Salesforce is the same, especially for CIOs who are now scrambling to evaluate their options. Despite the lost time, revenue, and unexpected business disruption, there is a silver lining. This split allows CIOs to rethink their technology options and consider what they need from their next CRM system.
With Exeevo Omnipresence, you’ll have one integrated platform that can grow with your company and provide all the features and functionality you need to stay ahead of the competition.
Contact us today to learn more about how our next-gen technology is the alternative to help.