Generation Veeva | Meet Abigail: At Home with Veeva

This video provides an operational deep dive into the daily activities of an Associate Consultant within Veeva Systems, offering valuable insights into the implementation lifecycle and remote work methodologies employed by the company’s consulting arm. The speaker, Abby Armstrong, details a productive day balancing internal development, collaborative peer work, and critical client configuration tasks, demonstrating the rapid integration model used within the Veeva Consultant Development Program (CDP). This perspective is crucial for understanding the operational cadence and technical focus areas of a primary enterprise software vendor in the life sciences space.

A significant portion of the consultant’s day is dedicated to hands-on technical execution, specifically "configuration for some clients." The transcript highlights the use of collaborative remote work strategies, such as "working sessions" conducted via Zoom. In these sessions, consultants work silently alongside each other, allowing for immediate peer support and quick resolution of technical roadblocks without the distraction of constant verbal communication. This methodology suggests a highly efficient and structured approach to remote consulting, emphasizing parallel work streams and immediate technical feedback to maintain momentum during complex system builds.

The consultant’s focus culminates in supporting a client who is on the cusp of a major system deployment. The project involves finalizing configuration steps for Veeva Engaged Meetings, a key component of the Veeva Commercial Cloud used for facilitating remote interactions with healthcare professionals (HCPs). The consultant spends the end of the workday ensuring all final details are in place, confirming that even associate-level consultants are entrusted with critical, late-stage implementation and quality assurance responsibilities. The final step mentioned—preparing the go-live email based on client feedback—emphasizes the importance of structured deployment protocols and clear client communication in ensuring a successful transition to operational use of the Veeva platform.

This detailed look at the implementation process for Veeva Engaged Meetings underscores the ongoing market demand for digital commercial engagement solutions in the pharmaceutical industry. The consultant’s workflow—moving from internal workshops and action planning to detailed configuration and final go-live preparation—provides a clear template for the structured, client-centric approach Veeva takes to system deployment, which is essential intelligence for any firm providing complementary or competitive Veeva consulting services.

Key Takeaways:

• Veeva Implementation Focus Area: The video confirms high implementation activity around Veeva Engaged Meetings, indicating a strong market demand in the life sciences sector for tools that facilitate compliant, remote digital interaction between pharmaceutical sales/medical teams and healthcare professionals.
• Consultant Development Program (CDP) Structure: The CDP integrates internal development (workshops) directly with active client configuration work, suggesting a model designed for rapid skill acquisition and immediate contribution to billable client projects.
• Remote Collaboration Best Practice: Veeva consultants utilize "silent working sessions" via Zoom. This technique is highly effective for technical tasks like configuration, promoting focused individual work while retaining the ability for immediate, low-friction peer consultation and problem-solving.
• Structured Project Management: The consultant prioritizes reviewing a detailed "action plan" early in the morning, highlighting the necessity of rigorous time management and task prioritization to successfully manage simultaneous internal development activities and multiple client configuration streams.
• Late-Stage Configuration Responsibility: Associate Consultants are directly involved in the final configuration steps leading up to a system go-live. This suggests that configuration is often iterative and requires hands-on technical involvement right up until the point of deployment, necessitating deep platform expertise at all consultant levels.
• Go-Live Protocol and Feedback Loop: The final step of the implementation process involves preparing the go-live communication contingent upon receiving and incorporating client feedback. This emphasizes a structured deployment protocol that prioritizes client sign-off and clear communication for successful system adoption.
• Importance of Data Configuration: The heavy focus on configuration work throughout the day confirms that the technical setup and customization of Veeva environments remain a core, time-intensive activity in the implementation lifecycle, requiring meticulous attention to detail.
• Operational Intelligence on Veeva Workflow: Understanding the daily tasks—from internal training to client configuration and go-live preparation—provides critical operational intelligence on the typical workload, structure, and project phases managed by Veeva’s internal consulting teams.

Tools/Resources Mentioned:

• Veeva Engaged Meetings (A component of Veeva Commercial Cloud)
• Zoom (Used for daily workouts and collaborative working sessions)

Key Concepts:

• Configuration: The process of setting up, customizing, and tailoring the Veeva software platform (e.g., fields, workflows, security settings) to meet specific client business requirements, distinct from custom code development.
• Go-Live: The critical project milestone when a new system or system update (like Engaged Meetings) is officially deployed and made available for end-users (e.g., pharmaceutical sales representatives) in a production environment.
• Consultant Development Program (CDP): An internal training and mentorship program designed by Veeva Systems to rapidly onboard and develop new consultants into specialized platform experts.