Thoughts on Veeva Vault CRM Versus
Salesforce CRM for Biopharma

Jul 28, 2025 | Peter Gassner

I know Veeva Vault CRM versus Salesforce for life sciences CRM is of interest to many and there’s a lot of misinformation and hype out there. So, I wanted to share my view and some key facts in the table below. It’s an important decision and I care about the industry, our customers, and our employees.

I’ve been focused on industry specific technology at Veeva for 18 years now, having spent many years in horizontal technology at IBM, PeopleSoft, and Salesforce. I’ve seen how things work out over time and feel I can give a well-considered opinion on this subject.

Commercial models in life sciences are changing and this will accelerate over the next 5 and 10 years. CRM, or more specifically the SFA part of CRM, is an important part, especially to increase field productivity with AI. Mistakes in this area are not good and can be a major distraction that takes away focus from other innovative areas such as orchestration, digital engagement and new field operating models.

Veeva is the best choice for life sciences CRM because it is a deep application that is proven today with live customers from a trusted company committed to the industry. It also is the fastest path to AI that is useful and practical for field teams.

Salesforce is too risky and too expensive. Salesforce does not have a deep application, live customers, or track record of commitment to the industry. So, Salesforce customers will have to customize too much and recreate too many essential capabilities that already exist in Vault CRM. That leads to long, expensive, poor quality, and risky projects and a redo some years down the road when business models change.

The Veeva path is straightforward. We can migrate customers with our tooling. We have the focus, application, people, and global support to do this. New applications and innovation (Veeva AI, Campaign Manager, Service Center, Patient CRM) are ready when customers want to adopt them.

How do I think this will play out? Life sciences CRM, specifically global biopharma CRM, is a very deep application with many business rules around commercial models, compliance, and regulations. Because it is a very defined market of a relatively small size, it will have one main leading player as there isn’t economic room for multiple providers to thrive and achieve product excellence. That will be Veeva, provided we execute well, because we have a huge head start in terms of live customers and a deep application and a sustained focus on the industry and customer success.

Salesforce is just starting out and will likely exit the market some years from now, maybe 2030 or so when their company priorities change and they realize that leadership in deep industry specific life sciences applications is not going to happen and it’s not worth it economically to be a distant second. We saw this with Oracle many years ago and it will likely play out with Salesforce.

So, why don’t all customers, especially large biopharma, choose Veeva? There are many factors involved in decisions like these including who is making the decision and their background, approach and motivations, personal dynamics, and the level of information or misinformation they are exposed to.

To help provide clarity, I’ve included some important information in the table below. It represents the facts as I know them and I will likely update the table every few months or so over the coming year.