Transform Your Digital Content to Improve Speed to Market While Maintaining Compliance

This webinar, presented by Veeva Systems and featuring a case study from Roche Diagnostics, explores the critical challenges facing the life sciences industry in managing digital content and outlines a strategy for digital transformation centered on speed, compliance, and insight. The speakers, Terry Howard (Veeva) and Sean Kunto (Roche Diagnostics), establish that the industry faces an explosion of digital content across multiple channels (social media, field sales, conferences), leading to increased costs, resource drain, and high compliance risk. A survey cited by Veeva indicated that over 75% of pharma and 95% of medtech companies report a moderate to enormous increase in content volume, yet a surprisingly low percentage (10-15%) have adequate content strategies. The presentation frames the solution as developing a mature, connected digital content supply chain, moving away from disparate systems like paper, email, or homegrown technology, which currently account for over 50% of systems used by respondents.

The discussion identifies three primary drivers for digital transformation in content management: speed to market, compliant content adherence, and the desire for actionable insights (analytics and metrics). Roche Diagnostics’ journey serves as a detailed case study illustrating how they addressed these drivers by implementing a single source of truth using Veeva Vault PromoMats. Roche, being a highly decentralized organization with siloed decision-making, faced challenges including non-existent review processes, lack of content reuse (less than 1% globally), and difficulty in maintaining audit trails, leading to significant compliance risk. Their vision was to establish a single system for end-to-end content review, approval, and automated distribution/withdrawal, linking promotional claims directly to substantiation documents.

Sean Kunto detailed Roche’s successful strategy for overcoming organizational and technical barriers. Key success factors included securing strong, actively engaged executive sponsorship to align a decentralized global organization and establishing a core project team with global representation (including regulatory, IT, and key affiliates). Technically, Roche implemented a middleware layer connecting the Veeva content approval system (PromoMats) to various integrated digital channels (websites, e-detailing, marketing automation). This integration was crucial for automating the replacement of versioned content (e.g., updating a 1.0 version to a 2.0 major version upon approval) and ensuring the timely, automated withdrawal of expired content based on built-in business rules.

Furthermore, Roche addressed the low content reuse rate by standing up a brand portal integrated with the content approval system. This portal provides a single point of access for all approved promotional content and source files (InDesign, Photoshop, PPTX), enabling local affiliates to easily localize and reuse global or local-to-local content. This reuse strategy is estimated to yield around 40% savings compared to creating content from scratch. The speakers emphasized that achieving this transformation required significant organizational change management, detailed planning, and a commitment to building standard global processes while retaining flexibility to accommodate specific local country laws and regulations.

Detailed Key Takeaways

• Compliance is the Primary Transformation Driver: While speed and insight are crucial, 60% of survey respondents indicated that compliance is the most significant driver for transforming content management, highlighting the industry's focus on mitigating regulatory risk (FDA, EMA, GDPR, ISO 13485).
• The Compliance Gap in Legacy Systems: Over 50% of life science companies rely on basic or homegrown technology (paper, email, spreadsheets) for content management, leading to alarming gaps; nearly 50% of respondents reported not having an adequate audit trail for content approval, making compliance demonstrations difficult.
• The Cost of Content Volume Explosion: The massive increase in digital content volume (reported by 75-95% of companies) means more time and resources are spent on operational management and production rather than strategic marketing use, demanding efficient automation and streamlined workflows.
• The Value of Content Reuse: Roche Diagnostics, which initially had less than 1% global content reuse, enabled significant savings by implementing a single source of truth and a brand portal. Reusing content is estimated to provide approximately 40% cost savings compared to recreating assets, offering a clear ROI case.
• Necessity of Strong Executive Sponsorship: For decentralized organizations like Roche, strong executive sponsorship is vital for achieving global alignment on a single system and process, serving as the key escalation point to overcome internal organizational barriers and resistance across regions and affiliates.
• Automating Content Withdrawal is Critical: A core component of compliance is ensuring expired or withdrawn content is removed from all digital channels promptly. Roche achieved this by integrating the content approval system (Veeva Vault PromoMats) with digital channels via a middleware layer, enforcing expiration dates through automated business rules.
• Middleware is Essential for Integration: Implementing a robust, flexible middleware technology layer is necessary to connect the content approval system (like Veeva Vault PromoMats) via APIs to various downstream digital channels (websites, e-detailing platforms, marketing automation) for automated content distribution and version control.
• Balancing Global Standards and Local Flexibility: Successful global implementation requires establishing a global standard operating procedure (SOP) for content approval while building in flexibility within the system configuration to accommodate non-negotiable local country laws and regulations.
• The Brand Portal as an Enabler of Reuse: Providing a single, integrated brand portal that offers quick access to all approved content, source files (e.g., InDesign, PPTX), and powerful search functionality is essential to facilitate global-to-local and local-to-local content reuse.
• Organizational Change Management is Non-Negotiable: A project of this size requires solid change management strategies to address internal resistance, equip sponsors, and provide the necessary tools for adoption, especially when transitioning users away from familiar, albeit inefficient, legacy processes.
• Linking Claims to Substantiation: A key functional requirement for compliance is the ability to link promotional claims made in marketing materials directly to their substantiation documents or reference materials, ensuring that information can be produced on demand during audits.
• Focus on Post-Launch Governance: Ongoing success requires a dedicated team responsible for knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing, and proactive monitoring of system metrics (like average upload-to-approval time) to identify and address bottlenecks in specific countries or business areas.

Tools/Resources Mentioned

• Veeva Vault PromoMats: The industry-specific end-to-end solution used by Roche Diagnostics for managing the digital content lifecycle, including creation, review, approval, distribution, and withdrawal.
• Middleware Technology: A commercially available, flexible global standard technology layer implemented by Roche's IT organization to connect the content approval system (PromoMats) via APIs to all integrated digital channels.
• Brand Portal: A system connected and integrated with the content approval system, serving as a single point of access for all approved promotional content and source files for reuse and localization.

Key Concepts

• Digital Content Supply Chain: The conceptual framework describing the seamless, efficient lifecycle of digital assets, starting from creation and collaboration, through review and approval, distribution to channels, and ending with expiration and withdrawal.
• Single Source of Truth (SSOT): The strategic goal of aligning all content management processes and systems onto one common platform (e.g., Veeva Vault PromoMats) to ensure consistency, traceability, and compliance across a global organization.
• Version Control Automation: The technical process of automatically replacing older versions of approved content on digital channels with newly approved major versions (e.g., 2.0) upon completion of the medical/legal/regulatory review cycle.

Examples/Case Studies

• Roche Diagnostics Global Digital Transformation: Roche, a decentralized global pioneer in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics, implemented Veeva Vault PromoMats to mitigate high compliance risk and inefficiency (less than 1% content reuse). The project took three cycles to gain final executive approval due to the significant budget and change required.
• ROI of Content Reuse: Roche estimates a 40% savings when reusing a piece of content versus creating it anew. The implementation of the brand portal and standardized processes was instrumental in achieving this efficiency.