After handling a series of massive Veeva Vault implementations internally, LEO Pharma needed a more flexible and scalable setup for ongoing operations and support. Through NNIT’s Veeva Center of Excellence, LEO Pharma has reduced operating costs significantly and freed time to support the core business.
At LEO Pharma, the Veeva Vault platform is an essential part of most business processes. To ensure the optimal use of internal resources and subject matter experts (SMEs), LEO Pharma has partnered with NNIT’s Veeva Center of Excellence to handle Veeva Vault operations and support.
– With NNIT’s Veeva Center of Excellence, we have a flexible and scalable setup with an experienced partner, and this enables our own SMEs to create more value for the business. NNIT understands the world we live in as a pharma company, and that makes everything a lot easier. In the end, it helps ensure that LEO Pharma gets the most out of our Veeva Vault platform, says Charlotte Gerlach Sylvest, Head of Digital Solution Management for R&D systems, Data and Analytics at LEO Pharma.
From massive internal projects to a well-balanced partnership
Over the years, LEO Pharma has implemented the Veeva Vault Suites for Clinical Operations, Regulatory Information Management (RIM), Clinical Data Management (CDMS), MedComms, Quality, and are in the process of implementing Safety.
– At LEO Pharma, we have handled major implementation projects with mostly internally SMEs. This naturally placed a lot of strain on our SMEs. During this type of project, they had to both participate in the implementation and handle the subsequent operation, so we needed to hire additional resources. As we were wrapping up the last big implementation, we needed to find a model more suitable for stable operations with the flexibility to handle the occasional ad-hoc projects, says Charlotte Gerlach Sylvest.
Based on these requirements, NNIT’s Veeva Center of Excellence concept was a perfect match. NNIT has assisted LEO Pharma on multiple occasions, so their Veeva competences were well known to Charlotte Gerlach Sylvest and her colleagues.
Rapid onboarding
Once the decision to partner with NNIT had been made, the entire onboarding process was completed in only a few months.
– The most impressive thing is how rapidly we were able to go from a signed contract to having a full team, with all the right competencies, ready to work. Due to a major organizational realignment at LEO Pharma, we had to set an extremely ambitious timeframe, where it would not have been unreasonable for NNIT to put an interim team in place due to the short deadline. But everything went according to plan and with almost no need for adjustments afterwards, says Charlotte Gerlach Sylvest.
A key part of the onboarding process was setting the right scope and identifying the optimal division of responsibilities between LEO Pharma and NNIT. For example, while NNIT offers business advisory as part of the Veeva Center of Excellence, LEO Pharma has its own Digital Portfolio Managers who are responsible for identifying relevant solutions and producing digital roadmaps for the different Global Development business units in LEO Pharma.
– Our Veeva Center of Excellence is designed around a holistic collection of services, which makes it fast and easy to identify the needs of a given customer and put together the right solution. In this case, we provide our core services of validation and support from our delivery centers in the Czech Republic, Poland and the Philippines, while LEO Pharma handled business life cycle management and continuous improvement of their Veeva Vault platform internally, says Jakob Sassersen Hill, Associate Vice President at NNIT.
More time to support the business
Now that the partnership is in place, NNIT’s team of Veeva specialists handle many of the tasks involved with keeping the life sciences parts of LEO Pharma’s Veeva platform fully operational and compliant at all times, including testing. In addition, NNIT provides support for selected parts of the business. This means that Charlotte Gerlach Sylvest’s team of SMEs can devote more of their time to requests from the rest of Global Development.
– My team have been used to handle everything from assessments and workshops to running regression tests and updating documentation. Now they can focus on what they do best, which is utilizing their insights into LEO’s business process landscape and internal relationships to advise and support the business and deliver value-driven input, says Charlotte Gerlach Sylvest.
While some of the LEO Pharma SMEs have had to adjust to their new roles, which require more detailed planning and sharper handover of tasks, the two teams are already beginning to feel like one.
– We share as much as possible with the NNIT team and recently had our first “joint” team meeting. My team has been very positively surprised by the attitude and mindset of their NNIT counterparts. Sometimes it is seemingly minor things, like always having the camera on during video meetings and volunteering relevant input during discussions, but overall, this feels like a true partnership, says Charlotte Gerlach Sylvest.
