Managing Veeva, both during implementation and after go-live, is a complicated task. There are plenty of pitfalls to prevent you from staying on time, on budget and on the right course. Unless you want to try and find the optimal route through painful trial and error, teaming up with an experienced professional partner is usually the best option.
For most pharma companies, implementing Veeva’s Vault suites provides tremendous value to many aspects of the business, from regulatory to clinical and quality. But to gain those advantages, your company must be able to handle the complex task of continually managing a multi-tenant cloud solution like Veeva Vault.
While Veeva provides a set of remarkable tools and a wealth of documentation and guidance for configuration, you need more to succeed. Each Veeva customer is responsible for mapping Veeva Vault to their currents systems, setting up integrations, performing validations and adapting their processes. It is essential that the project manager is able to maintain a complete overview of all these tasks.
As a Veeva Preferred Partner, NNIT has assisted numerous clients with Veeva projects and programs, and we have seen firsthand how even organizations with well-managed IT departments staffed by highly talented individuals can struggle to keep their Veeva projects running smoothly. This is because managing Veeva Vault requires a specialized skillset and experience which is hard for most companies to acquire.
The hybrid nature of Veeva projects
Part of the challenge is that handling Veeva’s frequent feature updates in heavily regulated GxP setting calls for a hybrid approach, which requires a substantial amount of experience to master. With every release cycle, your company is responsible for selecting the right new features to implement and configure from a vast backlog of available updates. This is best done using agile sprints, where both the IT and business side work closely together.
However, once the selection and implementation of the new features is completed, many of the supporting processes, such as validation and integration require a waterfall approach. In addition, separate business units may have different requirements. Instead of trying to configure everything at once, some companies may choose to go division by division, which means that they are essentially running several different Veeva projects at any given time.
In this situation, an experienced partner can provide advisory on which features are the best match for your strategic roadmap, guide you through all the phases and let you know when to switch gears from agile to waterfall.
Who is in the driver’s seat?
Teaming up with an experienced professional partner ensures that you are able to properly initiate and kick off your Veeva projects. Your partner will help you secure the appropriate resources, plan your execution phase and manage processes – in other words, act as the driving force throughout the project or program.
In some cases, it may even be relevant to engage your partner to run a full project management office (PMO), bolstering your own organization with all the resources you need to bridge the gap between Veeva and your company. A PMO will enable your transition to Veeva, migrate data, handle communication and everything else you need. It is usually staffed by a team of project managers, some working on-site at your location while others remain in your partner’s office.
Depending on the scope of your Veeva engagement, your own resources and your business priorities, a PMO can be either weak or strong. A weak PMO mainly provides administrative assistance and provides extra manpower, while a strong PMO takes on a more active guiding role, serving as an overseeing body for your own project management. In both cases, your company is in charge and have the final word. After all, you are the expert when it comes to your own business.
Let NNIT be your professional services partner on Veeva
With NNIT as your partner on Veeva, you have access to all the professional services you need to handle the running support and advisory. We are experts within the life sciences industry and our experience with both Veeva Vault and GxP makes us the ideal partner for all your Veeva needs.
