Otsuka Europe and Bayer AG: Transforming the Content Supply Chain with Veeva PromoMats and Vault CRM
The foundation for AI-powered content personalization
To drive meaningful customer engagement, biopharmas are adopting a joint commercial vision that unites content strategy with field execution so every interaction is powered by the right asset at the right time. Leaders from Bayer AG and Otsuka Europe demonstrate how upgrading to Veeva Vault CRM is a foundational step toward this strategic alignment for increased efficiency and innovation. By connecting Vault CRM and Veeva PromoMats, these organizations will achieve a unified, simplified content supply chain — seamlessly bridging the gap between initial content creation and the delivery of materials to healthcare professionals (HCPs).
This shared infrastructure is critical for the next era of commercial, where customer engagement is digital- and agentic-first. To personalize and scale interactions at speed, biopharmas will move beyond manual processes to AI-generated dynamic content distributed through push and pull channels in real time. This new content supply chain relies on PromoMats and Vault CRM being on the same Veeva Vault Platform, creating the frictionless, end-to-end lifecycle necessary for content and metadata to flow effortlessly across the organization without disrupting teams’ workflows.
It begins by making it easier to populate metadata during the create phase, which flows into an approve stage where the elimination of content duplication leads to faster medical, legal, and regulatory (MLR) reviews. Once approved, the publish phase closes legacy gaps by making source documents immediately available in Vault CRM. Teams can find materials easily using the Vault Platform search and an organized online library. To maximize approved content usage by field teams, AI in Vault CRM makes it more easily accessible through AI-powered media search capabilities, which locates, summarizes, and launches content for proactive planning and real-time support during customer interactions. Finally, in the share phase, teams seamlessly manage source documents and viewable renditions. To close the loop, leaders leverage content engagement metrics to refine and inform future content creation strategies.
Metadata sync in the Vault platform
The new content supply chain Bayer AG and Otsuka Europe achieved is only possible in a connected ecosystem. This shared infrastructure aligns content and product catalog, ensuring that product, indication, and CRM metadata are automatically synchronized in Vault. By establishing a single source of truth for product information — where a Veeva RIM or PromoMats serves as the master repository — organizations significantly improve cross-functional visibility and eliminate manual tracking.
While migrations are often viewed through a technical lens, they provide a unique opportunity to resolve legacy data issues. For Apolonia Sabal, content operations manager at Bayer AG, the migration surfaced discrepancies that had “piled up throughout the years.” She observed that “everything custom that you manually maintain will resurface,” which allowed her team to identify and fix inaccurate product catalogs and defunct distribution groups.
Sarah Feck, EU digital content and CRM business partner at Otsuka Europe, noted that her expectations for a straightforward process without “metadata crashing” were proven true during their rollout. This efficiency occurs because both applications share the same underlying architecture — there is no longer a need for special transformations or complex mapping of custom fields that often cause synchronization errors in legacy environments. By adopting Veeva best practices for metadata and taxonomy across PromoMats and Vault CRM, organizations move towards standardization for long-term speed and interoperability.
Beyond the technical synchronization, maintaining content quality requires cross-functional transparency and collaboration. Apolonia Sabal’s advice to content owners: “Know your CRM team and align on communication channels by working within shared ticketing systems to manage metadata corrections in real time.” Sarah Feck further emphasizes the importance of involving system users, including brand and field teams, in user acceptance testing. “Having key teams play in sandbox helps verify that metadata and critical components, such as email tokens and clickstream data, are pulling through correctly and meeting the high quality standards required for field readiness,” she says.
Optimizing the content supply chain with unified technology and innovations
The new content supply chain uses the Vault Platform to clear up long-standing friction points in the content lifecycle. By solving legacy challenges using unified technology, biopharmas can move from content approval to field execution with speed and precision. The connection between PromoMats and Vault CRM introduces four key innovations that streamline operations:
- Near real-time synchronization: By moving away from the rigid synchronization schedules of legacy systems, Vault CRM introduces event-driven, real-time synchronization. This shift means that once a piece of content is approved or withdrawn in PromoMats, the change reflects in the field almost instantly. “For marketing teams, this speedy synchronization is saving them hours in a day because they can crash test content and see results without waiting for the next scheduled sync cycle,” says Apolonia Sabal.
- Document mirroring: To ensure full traceability across this faster ecosystem, Veeva uses document mirroring via crosslinks. This technology creates a copy of the content in Vault CRM while maintaining a permanent, bi-directional link to the original in PromoMats. PromoMats remains the owner of the content, but users can see exactly which CRM environments have received the file and confirm that it is active and available to field teams.
- Creation of slides and binders: The system initially supports the manual creation of slides and binders for closed loop marketing (CLM), treating them as documents within Vault CRM. This allows for a structured approach to syncing content even before automated publishing is fully available, ensuring that binders and slides remain linked to their source metadata in PromoMats.
- Unified UI: The transition provides a harmonized user interface across the organization. Apolonia Sabal explains, “Because both applications exist on the same infrastructure, the user experience is harmonized, eliminating the shocker that users often faced when moving between PromoMats and legacy CRM environments.” This consistency not only simplifies training but also ensures that collaboration between the home office and the field is more intuitive.
Looking ahead, Veeva continues to advance CLM capabilities to further accelerate the content supply chain. Future enhancements include:
- Regional and country-based routing: Ensuring Vault CRM only receives content relevant to specific countries to improve local relevance.
- Custom presentation support: Ensuring field-created decks are auto-updated with the latest approved content so reps never present outdated information.
- Slide standardization: Moving to a single, simplified method for slide creation to eliminate user guesswork and streamline the publishing process.
- Automated up-versioning: Automation addresses the cumbersome administration burden of managing slide decks. New automated up-versioning capabilities will replace the manual effort previously required to update binders and presentations. When a team uploads a new deck, the system identifies which slides are new, which require an update, and which should be removed.
- Content metrics: By tracking HCP reactions, time-on-slide, and the frequency of slide use in sales presentations, content teams can identify the true reach and impact of digital assets.
“The automated up-versioning is a significant advancement that will reduce workload, particularly through the side-by-side comparison of different slides. Combined with near real-time synchronization, we can not only push content out faster but also withdraw it quickly when necessary. This ensures field teams always have access to the latest, most accurate content.” – Sarah Feck, EU Digital Content and CRM Business Partner, Otsuka Europe
Accelerating personalized, compliant content with AI
To accelerate compliant content delivery, Veeva is integrating AI directly into the supply chain. AI for PromoMats speeds the MLR process through Quick Check Agent, which performs automated content quality checks, and Content Agent, a conversational AI that assists teams throughout the review process.
Beyond speed, AI will be key to content personalization. We foresee a future where MLR-validated AI agents dynamically generate personalized assets and messages from a small amount of core content. This AI-generated content is compliant by default, allowing for real-time tailored responses in both push and pull channels like chatbots on brand sites.
Data-driven, connected content supply chain
An integrated ecosystem strengthens data continuity, ensuring every team works with a single source of truth for product and metadata. By connecting PromoMats and Vault CRM, information synchronizes automatically, improving cross-functional visibility and accuracy. This unified infrastructure also lays the groundwork for better alignment across commercial teams, as they enter an era defined by digital-first and AI-powered engagement.
Through unified technology biopharmas solve legacy friction points and accelerate the content supply chain from creation to sharing. Bringing field engagement metrics directly back into PromoMats will help brand teams move beyond “gut feelings” to data-driven strategies. This visibility empowers creators to decide whether to retire, reinforce, or change content based on its resonance with HCPs, ensuring every asset is optimized for commercial excellence.
Ensure your content and field teams align, with support from Veeva Business Consulting.
Contact your Veeva Account Partner to learn how connecting PromoMats and Vault CRM can accelerate your content supply chain and improve field engagement.
