Over the last decade, the number of physicians willing to meet with pharmaceutical reps has declined drastically: 56% of physicians now restrict access to sales reps. According to Blue Novius, one of the most common complaints from physicians is that sales reps don’t deliver any new, relevant data. They feel their presentation lacks personalization. With less and less face time given to reps, several CRM companies have seen an opportunity to help and have emerged as heavy-hitting innovators by bringing cloud-based solutions to the life science industry. Let’s examine two of these, Veeva CRM and Salesforce Health Cloud, to see which packs the most punch. 

 

What is Salesforce Health Cloud?

Salesforce began operations in 1999 and has become the leader in the CRM space. Some of their most prominent clients include Time Warner Cable, Dell, Comcast, Wells Fargo, and American Red Cross. Salesforce Health Cloud is an industry-specific platform that builds on top of the world’s leading CRM. It focuses on connecting patients, providers, administrators and specialists using social and mobile technology. 

According to Salesforce, Salesforce Health Cloud offers the following in customer engagement, sales and marketing alignment, order and contract management, and channel management:

– Spot buying patterns across groups and facilities, then use built-in lead scoring, contact management tools, and intelligent next actions to close deals

– Guide reps through sales stages and teach best practices with a single engagement tool

– Accelerate sales cycles by engaging prospects with the right message, at the right time, on their preferred channels

– Maximize rep productivity with efficiency-driven workspaces that cut time from every task

– Empower sales with the ability to run its​ ​​own targeted campaigns leveraging in-compliant and ​preapproved​ ​email templates and nurture programs​ that are​ ​developed by marketing

– Know when prospects are ready to buy with​ AI-based behavior scoring ​that ​predict​s buyer intent

– Understand when your prospects are on your website or opening emails in real-time

– Personalize your outreach by understanding specifically what content your prospects have interacted with through advanced engagement tracking

– Manage trunk stock and overall inventory more effectively

– Meet the increasing demand for health systems or physicians/surgeons to purchase devices online

– Connect and manage your payer relationships; compare product utilization data with claims and outcome data to bolster value claims

– Gain visibility into revenue for each channel

– Deliver vital purchasing information in real-time, to align sales and service and create a cohesive customer experience

 

What is Veeva CRM?

Built on the Salesforce platform, Veeva CRM is the first multichannel CRM solution for the life science industry. Founded in 2007, Veeva CRM is targeted at drug companies, medical institutions and healthcare organizations. Matt Wallach, co-founder and president of Veeva, stated that Veeva’s focus is on getting drugs to market and marketing and selling those drugs more efficiently while maintaining compliance with government regulations. Veeva CRM allows salespeople to have information about doctors and products at their fingertips.

According to Veeva, sales reps often have wrong addresses, don’t know which HCPs to contact or have outdated data about a physician’s specialty and license status. Because of this, it is estimated that as many as one in 25 sales calls is unsuccessful. Veeva CRM aims to make sales reps more effective by offering the following benefits:

– Orchestrated multichannel engagement

– Insights directly at the point of execution

– Available on any device at any time

– Data-driven suggestions powered by data science

– Team-based selling

– Closed-loop marketing

– Consumer and animal health support

– Built-in compliance for regulations such as The Prescription Drug Marketing Act (PDMA) and the Ohio Terminal Distribution of Dangerous Drugs (TDDD)

– Integrated with Veeva Commercial Cloud

 

Head-to-head comparison

Who is the winner?

In a head to head comparison on G2, Salesforce Health Cloud and Veeva CRM were evenly matched. Of the four categories with enough available data to compare, Health Cloud beat Veeva CRM in two (quality of support and product direction) and tied in the other (meets requirements). But because Health Cloud belongs to the Salesforce powerhouse, it has the edge: Salesforce security, data centers, longstanding reliability, and knowledge base give Health Cloud its winning features.

 

Salesforce security

As a health or life science organization, security is crucial and always top of mind. Salesforce and its underlying clouds—Health Cloud in particular—are carefully designed to take care of that vital need for security.  Salesforce leverages secure collaboration features, monitoring, automatic blocking on unauthorized actions, seamless auditing, encryption, and more. You can read more about how Salesforce is secure and compliant with HLS regulations here.

 

Salesforce data centers

Salesforce has nine data centers around the world, all designed to securely house your Salesforce instance and its data. They’re built to scale for more customers, more data, and more complex needs. So joining up with Salesforce means sharing that same space and corporate trust among some of the world’s biggest brands: American Express, Western Union, GE and many, many more.

 

Longstanding reliability

Salesforce has been the proven CRM leader for years, and it’s not going anywhere. This is a major advantage in comparison to other industry platforms like Veeva that tend to come and go. With Salesforce, you’re partnering with a longstanding leader in the CRM space that knows what it’s doing and will grow with your business.

 

Knowledge base and support

Among the biggest selling points for any Salesforce cloud is the wealth of knowledge and support you have as a Salesforce user. Between Trailhead, the Trailblazer community, countless videos and demonstrations, and support articles that run for miles, you will never be without direction when you need a little extra help.

 

With all those features at play, Salesforce Health Cloud definitely wins this round.