10 min read

Veeva vs Salesforce: choosing an optimal CRM for healthcare & life sciences businesses

Healthcare

When healthcare and life sciences companies look for the right CRM, two software products tend to catch an eye: Veeva Vault CRM and Salesforce Health Cloud. At first glance, they may seem rather similar, offering solid customer relationship management and analytics functionality. But if you dig deeper, platforms’ differences become more apparent — from unique features to pricing specifics and other aspects.Drawing on our comprehensive healthcare IT expertise, we’ve weighed the strengths and weaknesses of Veeva and Salesforce to help you choose the best match. Let’s dive in!

Veeva vs Salesforce: companies overview

Veeva Systems

Veeva Systems is a US cloud software provider with 17+ years on the market. Veeva Systems is trusted by over 1,100 clients, including Moderna, Alcon, Bayer, and Merck. According to Gartner, 94% of Veeva Systems’ clients would recommend working with them.

The company offers 25+ cloud solutions for quality management, clinical data aggregation, and trial management. Recently, the company transformed its flagship product, Veeva CRM, into a next-generation feature-rich solution, Veeva Vault CRM.

Salesforce

With 25+ years of history, Salesforce is one of the major software vendors offering cloud solutions that range from sales automation tools to analytics and AI platforms. Its core product, Salesforce CRM, has been among the leaders of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for 18+ years.

To cater to healthcare businesses, the company built Salesforce Health Cloud based on its market-leading CRM. Now, the software is used by many US healthcare providers, including Humana, Nebraska Medicine, Northwell Health, etc.

Target industries of Veeva Vault CRM and Salesforce Health Cloud

Veeva Vault CRM

Veeva Vault CRM’s primary focus is on the needs of pharmaceutical, life sciences, and animal health companies. By employing Veeva Vault CRM, these companies can tackle industry-specific business challenges: facilitate regulatory compliance, better cooperate with healthcare professionals, and track the efficiency of their marketing efforts.

Salesforce Health Cloud

Compared to Salesforce CRM, Health Cloud is designed specifically for healthcare institutions, like hospitals, outpatient clinics, and home care providers. With Salesforce Health Cloud, medical organizations can build stronger relationships with patients, improve coordination, ensure continuity of care, and even reduce patient no-shows.

Need a CRM for your healthcare or life sciences business?

Core features and capabilities comparison

Veeva Vault CRM

Multichannel client engagement

Veeva Vault CRM helps sales teams engage healthcare professionals across multiple communication channels — email, online meetings, phone calls, and in-person visits. It makes cooperation between life sciences companies and healthcare professionals more transparent and efficient.

Key account management

The platform lets sales, marketing, and customer service teams work together when managing strategic accounts. Teams can create shared sales plans tailored to the business specifics of healthcare providers they target, set sales goals, and track progress — say, client meetings, product demos, or new sales contracts.

Event management

Veeva Vault CRM helps organize, manage, and assess the efficiency of medical events — both live and virtual. By gaining insights into the most effective formats, topics, and speakers, life sciences companies can optimize future events and improve healthcare professionals’ engagement.

Content management

With Veeva Vault CRM, life sciences companies get insights into the interests of the healthcare professionals they work with. Then, they can personalize mailings of educational, marketing, and compliance materials to improve providers’ engagement and, eventually, make sales.

Medical inquiry management

By employing Veeva Vault CRM, life sciences companies streamline the management of medical information requests from healthcare professionals regarding medications, their side effects, and drug interactions.

Smart suggestions

The CRM offers targeted recommendations powered by data science to help sales teams of life sciences companies identify the best action and right communication channel for each client.

Compliance

Veeva Vault CRM is built around the requirements for the distribution of prescription drugs like 21 CFR Part 11, the Prescription Drug Marketing Act (PDMA), and the Ohio Terminal Distribution of Dangerous Drugs (TDDD). Using Veeva Vault CRM, life sciences companies can be certain their engagements with healthcare professionals are ethical and compliant.

Analytics and reporting

Veeva Vault CRM helps life sciences companies monitor the efficiency and progress of marketing campaigns, sales strategies, and track the engagement level of partnering healthcare professionals.

Salesforce Health Cloud

360-degree patient data view

The platform aggregates patient contact information, appointment history and summaries, treatment plans, and feedback surveys into a comprehensive profile, saving time on manual information searches.

Comprehensive data analytics

The platform offers valuable insights into patient interactions — appointment attendance, satisfaction rates, care plan adherence, etc. — as comprehensive dashboards and reports.

Referral management

With Salesforce Health Cloud, healthcare providers can automate the receival and processing of physician or lab referrals, ensuring a streamlined workflow and reducing administrative burden.

Integration and interoperability

Salesforce Health Cloud provides out-of-the-box industry-compliant FHIR APIs, making it easy to transfer clinical data securely and integrate the CRM with existing healthcare organizations’ IT systems.

Patient engagement

Salesforce Health Cloud allows healthcare providers to aggregate patient communication history, synchronize and personalize it across multiple channels, including email, phone, mobile apps, and support chatbots. Common examples are notifying of upcoming appointments or sending links to post-visit patient satisfaction surveys.

Appointment management

Salesforce Health Cloud helps healthcare providers streamline appointment scheduling and management. The platform offers features like time slot recommendations, patient waitlisting, guided bookings, and multi-participant appointments.

CRM pricing and licensing

Veeva Vault CRM

Veeva Vault CRM offers custom subscription pricing designed to accommodate the needs of larger and smaller life sciences companies. Generally, the costs depend on factors like the number of users, the deployment scale, etc.

The pricing for Veeva Vault CRM starts at $200 per user/month.
Detailed pricing is typically provided by Veeva upon request to best match the companies’ unique requirements.
The basic Veeva Vault CRM license provides access to essential features, while additional capabilities — like engagement features or event management — can be unlocked after purchasing add-on application licenses.

Salesforce Health Cloud

Salesforce Health Cloud’s license plans are split into three tiers, catering to different clients’ needs.

Free Health Cloud trial for 30 days.
Health Cloud Enterprise costs $325 per user/month and includes care management functionality and out-of-the-box clinical and insurance data analytics models.
Health Cloud Unlimited costs $500 per user/month. Besides Enterprise functionality, it offers more storage space, additional automation features, predictive and generative AI.
Health Cloud Einstein 1 for Sales or Service costs $700 per user/month and brings in additional AI capabilities and Slack integration.

Customer support and training

Veeva Vault CRM

For smooth CRM implementation into the business processes, Veeva provides tailored support and training options that may include:

Customer success teams. Veeva’s CRM experts guide companies through system setup and customization for their business needs.
Training programs. Veeva Vault CRM offers various training options, including online courses and webinars.
Knowledge base. Veeva provides access to comprehensive CRM documentation and implementation best practices for healthcare and life sciences companies.
24/7 support. Veeva’s support team is available around the clock to help resolve critical issues promptly.

Salesforce Health Cloud

Salesforce offers comprehensive learning resources and has several levels of support to match your needs:

Basic support and training. The vendor provides access to online resources where business users can better understand Salesforce Health Cloud, learning at their own pace. The basic plan also includes access to community forums for quick help.
Premier support and training. For those looking for faster response times and guidance, Premier Support offers 24/7 Salesforce Health Cloud technical assistance and training sessions.
Signature support and training. This option offers proactive, personalized services to healthcare businesses, including a dedicated customer success manager and advanced technical support.

Drop us a line, and we'll help you find the best-fitting CRM

Strengths and weaknesses analysis

Veeva Vault CRM

Strengths

Industry-specific functionality. Everything in Veeva Vault CRM — from the user interface to reporting and analytics — is developed to help life sciences companies achieve their business goals.

Seamless integration with Veeva Vault Suite. Veeva Vault CRM is part of the broader Veeva Vault suite, which includes solutions for clinical data management, regulatory compliance, etc. This integration between systems helps life sciences companies streamline their operations and ensure consistent data flow.

Rich data analytics insights. By providing advanced data analytics, Veeva Vault CRM enables life sciences companies to make more informed decisions and improve client interactions.

Weaknesses

Limited flexibility. Unlike Salesforce Health Cloud, Veeva Vault CRM is not so flexible and customizable. While the software is a perfect fit for the life sciences industry, companies outside this sector can hardly adapt it to their needs.

Obscure pricing. Veeva Vault CRM doesn’t have a clear pricing system, in contrast with straightforward Salesforce Health Cloud license costs. The final price of Veeva Vault CRM licenses depends on specific system configurations and the number of purchased add-ons.

Complexity for small companies. Although the platform is an excellent choice for large organizations, smaller companies might find Veeva Vault CRM’s functionality excessive, especially if they don’t need the full suite of compliance tools.

Salesforce Health Cloud

Strengths

Highly customizable and scalable. Salesforce Health Cloud is flexible — whether the client is a small outpatient clinic or a large hospital network, CRM can be customized to reflect the company’s specific business processes. Its modular design and cloud infrastructure allow companies to start small and expand as the business needs grow, which makes it a solid long-term investment.

Seamless integrations. Salesforce’s AppExchange offers a vast library of third-party healthcare applications, which allows healthcare providers to enhance the platform’s functionality with minimal effort. Also, Health Cloud can integrate effortlessly with a wide range of existing healthcare IT systems, such as electronic health records, billing platforms, and lab management systems.

AI capabilities. Salesforce Health Cloud can be easily integrated with Salesforce’s AI tool, Einstein AI. It unlocks a variety of AI-powered features, such as predictive analytics, process automation, smart recommendations and suggestions.

Weaknesses

System complexity. While its customization options are a strength, Salesforce Health Cloud can become complex and challenging to manage, especially for smaller businesses without dedicated Salesforce administrators. Providers may find the initial setup and customization process time-consuming, especially if they lack prior experience with Salesforce Health Cloud.

Cost. Salesforce can be expensive, particularly if your organization needs more advanced features and integrations, like Einstein AI and Data Cloud, or requires advanced CRM support plans. When the healthcare provider requires additional customizations, the costs can pile up.

Limited focus on specialized healthcare. The platform’s main focus is on general healthcare providers, so it can’t always address the unique needs of specialized medical organizations, like home care facilities or mental health organizations.

With years of experience in the healthcare sector, we know from practice that the CRM should reflect business specifics to a T — otherwise, adoption will be a fruitless venture. For example, Veeva Vault CRM is a top choice for life sciences companies, as it offers tailored sales features and fully complies with relevant regulations. On the other hand, Salesforce Health Cloud provides solid functionality when it comes to interoperability, patient engagement, and appointment management. If you are not sure that the CRM solution will fit your business, Innowise’s team can suggest and implement CRM customizations to help you make the most of the system.

Anastasia Ilkevich

Portfolio manager in Healthcare and Medical Technologies at Innowise

Conclusion: Veeva Vault CRM vs Salesforce Health Cloud

The choice between Veeva Vault CRM and Salesforce Health Cloud will depend on your organization’s domain-specific needs. For life sciences companies, Veeva provides robust compliance tools and specialized solutions to manage the regulatory environment, streamline processes, and enhance healthcare professionals’ engagement.

For healthcare providers, Salesforce Health Cloud offers flexibility, scalability, and strong data interoperability. With AI-powered insights, extensive customization options, and a broad app ecosystem, it is well-suited for those focused on improving patient satisfaction, care coordination, and operational efficiency.

Both platforms bring unique strengths to the table, so feel free to reach out to us if you have any doubts about CRM choice and implementation.