Better Customer Data Means… Effective Compliance Activities

The video, produced by Veeva Systems, provides a focused analysis of the challenges life sciences companies face in managing aggregate spend data and ensuring compliance with global transparency guidelines. It establishes the context by highlighting the increasing complexity of operations in a global marketplace, which forces compliance officers, such as the fictional Sanjay at Vero bof farer, to reconcile expenditures for individual practitioners across multiple countries and disparate internal systems. The central problem is the difficulty in pulling together and harmonizing these multiple data sources, which introduces a high risk of delivering inaccurate information to health authorities, potentially resulting in regulatory penalties, fines, and significant damage to the company’s reputation.

The core issue detailed in the video is the lack of a unified, accurate source for customer master data. When spend data—which includes payments, transfers of value, and other interactions that must be tracked for transparency reporting—is not tied to a uniquely identified professional profile, the reconciliation process becomes highly manual and prone to error. This fragmentation makes it nearly impossible for compliance teams to confidently track and report aggregate spend accurately, thereby failing to meet national and regional transparency requirements.

The solution presented is the adoption of Veeva OpenData. The video positions OpenData as a foundational service that provides complete, accurate, and real-time customer data, including uniquely identified profiles for Healthcare Professionals (HCPs), organizations, and stewardship services across all major countries. By leveraging this centralized, verified data source, compliance officers can efficiently and accurately reconcile all spend data to a single, consistent customer identifier, regardless of the system or geography where the spend originated.

Ultimately, the video argues that the switch to Veeva OpenData is essential for reducing the operational burden associated with managing compliant data. By ensuring data accuracy and unique identification, the solution allows life sciences companies to confidently comply with diverse national and regional transparency requirements, transforming a high-risk, fragmented process into a streamlined, reliable compliance activity.

Key Takeaways:

• Global Compliance Challenge: The complexity of tracking aggregate spend is amplified by the global nature of the life sciences marketplace, necessitating reconciliation of expenditures across diverse regulatory environments and multiple internal data systems.
• High Risk of Data Inaccuracy: The primary risk in aggregate spend reporting stems from pulling data from non-harmonized sources, which often results in the submission of inaccurate information to health authorities, leading to potential regulatory action and reputational harm.
• The Necessity of Unique Customer Identification: Effective and accurate transparency reporting relies fundamentally on the ability to uniquely identify and link spend data to specific Healthcare Professionals (HCPs) and organizations across all systems and geographic locations.
• Veeva OpenData as the Master Data Solution: Veeva OpenData is presented as the critical tool for establishing a single source of truth, offering real-time, accurate profiles of customers and stewardship services necessary for reliable spend reconciliation.
• Harmonizing Transparency Reporting: Utilizing a unified data foundation like OpenData enables life sciences companies to harmonize their transparency reporting processes, ensuring consistency and adherence to various national and regional guidelines simultaneously.
• Reducing Operational Burden: Implementing a centralized data solution significantly reduces the manual effort required for data cleansing, verification, and reconciliation, thereby lowering the operational cost and time spent on compliance activities.
• Confidence in Regulatory Adherence: The availability of complete and accurate customer data instills confidence in compliance officers that their reports meet regulatory standards, mitigating the risk of non-compliance penalties.
• Data Stewardship Services: The mention of "stewardship services" indicates the importance of ongoing data maintenance and quality control, ensuring that customer profiles remain accurate and up-to-date in a dynamic global environment.

Tools/Resources Mentioned:

• Veeva OpenData

Key Concepts:

• Aggregate Spend: The total value of payments, transfers of value, and other expenditures made by pharmaceutical companies to or on behalf of healthcare professionals (HCPs) and healthcare organizations (HCOs).
• Transparency Guidelines/Regulations: Regulatory mandates (e.g., the U.S. Sunshine Act, or similar global requirements) that require life sciences companies to publicly disclose aggregate spend data to ensure ethical interactions and prevent undue influence.
• HCP Profile Reconciliation: The process of matching and consolidating spend data from various internal systems (e.g., ERP, CRM, expense systems) to a single, verified, and uniquely identified profile for a healthcare professional.

Examples/Case Studies:

• Sanjay, Compliance Officer at Vero bof farer: A fictionalized case study illustrating the common pain point of compliance officers struggling to reconcile global practitioner spend due to fragmented data sources, highlighting the need for a unified solution.