Last week, a number of Clarkston’s life sciences experts attended the 2025 Veeva R&D and Quality Summit in Boston, Massachusetts. This event brought together professionals across Clinical, Quality, Manufacturing, Regulatory, and Safety functions to explore new product capabilities and create opportunities for learning and inspiration. Considering the overall theme of moving the life sciences industry forward with powerful community and fresh ideas, we highlight our key insights from the summit below.  

2025 Veeva R&D and Quality Summit Takeaways 

1. Veeva Agentic AI is Coming 

There’s a great deal of buzz around Veeva’s AI offering and how to best leverage it to enable an organization. Veeva will be rolling out agentic AI in Vault platform and all Veeva applications. An example use case could be Narrative Summary generation for investigations or APQR drafting within the Quality Vault. These life sciences industry-specific agents will be created by Veeva but configured by customers, providing a platform designed so customers can build their own AI.  

Those selected as part of the early adopter program will have the opportunity to experience the platform beginning in December with CRM and Commercial content, with additional Vault releases planned for 2026.  While the initial offering will be a collaborative learning effort and at no cost, pricing has yet to be determined for the general release, which is targeted for 2027. As with all AI, the cleanliness and validity of the data that is used as an input will be key to the effectiveness of this tool. 

2. A Continued Focus on Productivity and Automation 

With an increased emphasis on user productivity, connected ecosystems, and advanced automation, there will be a continued focus on building out connectors to increase interaction between vaults and to other systems. The new Audit Room feature, released in 24R3, was a highlight. This allows users in the physical Audit room to communicate via Veeva with the users providing support – and then to have the results of those requests documented in Vault. The Document Control Homepage, the My Team homepage, and the planned Process Homepage show Veeva’s investment in visibility and organization, allowing end users to see tasks and workflows in which they participate.  And of particular interest to this author is the further enhancement of Veeva LIMS, and how additional functionality, including the long-anticipated release of environmental monitoring and more options for instrumentation integration, will make Veeva a contender in vendor selections for QC labs already running the Veeva platform. 

3. Lessons Learned From Lived Experiences 

Clarkston’s very own Irene Birbeck and co-presenter Larissa Maddox Whitten of Biogen were two of the many presenters that offered real-world advice from implementation initiatives of various Veeva platforms. A few similar themes from these lessons emerged: 

• Rolling out a standard, out-of-the-box template across an organization has tangible benefits, from swifter alignment to the to-be system and a lower total cost of ownership, but this also requires a hyper focus on organizational change management and a formal, well-planned transition strategy. 
• A thorough design phase should capture not only standard processes and requirements but also uncover unique needs as well, such as reporting and analytics, unique user populations, or uncommon workflows. Consider not only what is currently in the system, but what will be coming in the near-term releases to address atypical scenarios.  
• A cross-functional, committed leadership team is essential for success. Veeva applications can impact processes across many parts of the organization. Effective partnership, transparent communications, and confidence in approach take these initiatives to the next level.    

4. Confidence in Veeva’s Roadmap 

Several presentations touched on how organizations are successfully adopting Veeva with little to no configuration, with a focus on how to streamline operations and align people and process to the delivered technology. Of note, for the first time at Summit, there were sessions dedicated to Vault Basics, a solution specifically designed to deliver a cloud-native, pre-configured, pre-validated suite of applications to support critical GxP functions at emerging biotech companies. Vault Basics’s presence at Summit shows the increased interest in this offering. These trends demonstrate how solid Veeva processes are as delivered and the confidence of the industry in accepting them – and the Veeva roadmap ahead.    

The Future is Now 

Attending the Summit is valuable not only to learn new things but to make connections with Veeva and also with other companies in similar positions. The Innovation Hub provides attendees with a chance to demo new functionality and ask direct questions that impact them. Veeva is continuing to innovate, with new offerings that are expected to be added to their already impressive portfolio of Vaults, making them a true end-to-end vendor for our clients.  

As one of Veeva’s certified partners in the implementation and management of their platform, Clarkston can be confident that Veeva’s vision and product roadmap are aligned with our clients’ needs. To chat more about the 2025 Veeva R&D and Quality Summit or emerging trends in the Veeva space, reach out to one of our experts today.