This year’s Veeva R&D and Quality Summit in Madrid, accentuated the current trends and needs of the pharma and life sciences industries.

Achieving the highest possible speed in innovation to meet patients’ unmet needs. That was the palpable goal all the pharmaceutical and life sciences companies that gathered at the Marriot Auditorium & Conference Centre in Madrid from June 5^th–7^th, for the Veeva R&D and Quality Summit, were striving for. With almost 900 life sciences representatives from 28 countries attending, this marked Veeva’s largest R&D and Quality Summit in Europe yet. Veeva specialises in the development of cloud-based business solutions to provide their customers end-to-end processes like clinical data management and operations applications in tandem with regulatory and quality. The seamless sharing of information ensures speedier delivery of innovative therapies and is thus of crucial importance for the global life science industry – from the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies to emerging biotechs. On the summit they showcased how following the industry’s trends of embracing a more collaborative way of working, practical automation, while retaining an elasticity of supply and focus on patient simplicity, has fully changed the possibilities posed in modern pharmaceutical and life science companies.

Opening the summit under music and cheers was a line-up of Veeva’s leaders: president Chris Moore, Jim Reilly, Vice President of Vault R&D, Rick Van Mol, Vice President of R&D Strategy in Europe, and Avril England, general manager of Veeva Vault. Backed by long term costumers like Jasmin Ong from the Roche Holding AG, Pilar Carrero from LEO Pharma A/S (who promised she was not paid to rave about Veeva), and Edwin Ericksen from ucb S.A. they presented the new developments and advances of each of the company’s functions and demoed the development clouds and validation management systems to share the new features and point out their simple design and intuitive handling. From the suites, their connection to the Development cloud, from the integration of sales, marketing and medical in the commercial cloud. Veeva’s overall incentive to build a connection between sites, sponsors, CROs and scientists, is designed to accelerate processes and connect the players, which will in turn make the delivery for patients faster and more productive in the entire sector.

Veeva was turned into a public benefits corporation two years ago, to ensure its ability to be a trusted, appreciated partner in the long run. Moore explained how being a public benefits corporation allows the company to not just focus on the needs of the industry and the shareholders, but rather concentrate on the speedy delivering for individual patients and society in general. This summit, together with the motivation of attending companies to showcase their accomplishments and sing Veeva’s praise, highlighted the inspiring relationships Veeva seems to have with its users, even long after the contracts are signed. The level of trust Veeva has generated in their customers was apparent all through the summit. More than one used the phrase “Veeva walks the talk” when asked how they felt confident enough to spend so much collective effort, time, and money on the implementation of products.

The move from fragmented operations and outsourced services to a centralized, operationally effective centre that oversees submissions and other regulatory processes was presented by Emma Forrest for example, head of worldwide R&D operations at Recordati S.p.A. Recordati sped up the release of acquired items to market and saved more than a million dollars a year by standardizing regulatory processes. Forrest emphasized the importance of KPIs in fostering acceptance and the accomplishment of their Vault RIM implementation. “Their products make sense! It’s not cheap, but it’s of high quality” she explained.

Boehringer Ingelheim went a step further and selected Veevas Development Cloud worldwide to accelerate the development of novel medicines and speed up the therapy-delivery. “Veeva Development Cloud will enable cross-functional teams to work more collaboratively and leverage data insights, enhancing their ways of working,” said Uli Brödl, senior Vice president, global clinical development, and operations at Boehringer Ingelheim. Veeva’s systems are evidently developed based on the technical possibilities as well as the needs of the industry, which are identified by talking with their partners and reacting to their ideas and impulses. That is what companies like Boeringer Ingelheim, Leo Pharma or Recordati seem to appreciate and rely on. As Michael Kühnapfel, Senior Manager of Group Functions Communications at Boehringer Ingelheim, explained later: “There is fierce competition in pharma, but we do share a common goal.”

Overall, the need of pharmaceutical and life science companies to not be held back by faulty management and regulations, the digitalization which enable change and quality management is understood by Veeva and implemented in their several ever-growing platforms. The summit showed as much. The possibility for companies to harness the power of data and thus create stronger development programs, competitive pricing, and decrease handovers leads to a huge save in time with a click of a button, which is universally appreciated but to date monopolized by Veeva.