The decoupling¹ of Veeva and Salesforce is the most significant disruption in life sciences customer relations since the iPad eliminated the need to print reams of marketing collateral for doctors.

This shift, which will see the companies launching new and independent offerings, will prompt life sciences organizations to choose one CRM vendor or the other. Given the scale of customer-facing organizations in this sector and the enormity of enterprise transformation, the runway for decision-making is short.

Artificial intelligence is a wildcard in the selection process, most profoundly in its agentic form. AI agents² will help drive interconnected business processes, reduce repetitive tasks, learn as they work, and (everyone hopes) turbo charge organizational business performance.

With only 35% of health care providers getting their needs met³ by pharma’s customer-facing resources, agents’ ability to scale and personalize engagement will be a key lever for improving provider satisfaction. As the autonomous technology matures, agents will adopt human-like personas, expanding the capabilities (if not necessarily the headcount) of the existing workforce.

What agents will do

Deloitte’s recent “Agentic AI for CRM”⁴ opens the aperture on what agents will do, and how they will impact this next wave of customer engagement.

The timeline for agentic AI maturity aligns closely with the end of the Veeva-Salesforce partnership. In the next one to two years, AI agents will begin independently predicting customer behavior, triggering personalized service interactions, sharing on-demand educational content, and supporting sophisticated territory design and coverage. Three to five years from now, agents will likely play critical roles in areas such as interaction scheduling, pricing and contracting decisions, and campaign personalization.

Imagine a pharmaceutical salesperson paired with an agent that schedules sales calls, meetings, personal appointments, family time, and community commitments – interacting seamlessly with prospects’ schedules to reduce hours of manual work. Imagine AI agents quietly capturing sales calls, reflecting on provider pain points, and generating tailored answers, offers, and solutions. Imagine executives using voice-driven agents to create real-time dashboards displaying sales and marketing performance across any region, product, demographic, or channel, pinpointing hidden opportunities for high-potential growth.

Managing both CRM and agentic AI transitions may seem overwhelming, it’s a unique opportunity to streamline processes, future-ready your organization, and outpace competitors. Organizations able to integrate agentic AI capabilities soonest will likely reap the benefits.

Next steps

Several actions, derived from our Life Sciences and Health Care practice, can help chart a successful future with agentic AI:

Settle on a vision

Life sciences organizations should start by clearly articulating their objectives – whether reducing manual workload, deepening engagement with healthcare professionals (HCPs), improving compliance, or driving new lines of business. Early definition of a business-driven vision provides guardrails for agentic technology planning and selection.

Assess your scope

Determine whether your aim is seizing efficiencies through incremental, low-risk changes or pursuing large-scale organizational transformation that may entail more risk change-management resources.

Prepare your systems

Review how your systems like EHRs, regulatory platforms, and marketing tools integrate with your CRM systems today and how agents will supplant, complement, or reinvent them in the future. Also, rigorously assess, clean, and refine your data to avoid hallucinations or workflow breakdowns. Data hygiene is particularly critical with agentic AI orchestrating multiple complex processes.

Prepare your teams

Start educating and rallying your workforce now, emphasizing how agentic AI can empower employees. For example, a representative may be able to double the number of customers they can call on every month. Managers will need training to guide not only humans but perhaps fleets of agents in newly configured roles. And since agentic CRM will affect all stakeholders in life sciences organizations, establish cross-functional teams to guide change management.

Prioritize trust

Trustworthy AI⁵ is critical, and the life sciences sector has high regulatory expectations in HCP interactions, patient data management, promotional activities, and policies. Robust governance frameworks should include automated content validation, monitoring agent output, and archiving audit trails.

Keep your eye on the vendors

As leaders explore their options, they should consider the transformative impact of integrating AI agents into their operations and ensure that their platform of choice includes the specific AI-driven tools that will best support their individualized goals.

These steps will enable organizations to prepare for the coming transformation, ensuring readiness as CRM and agentic AI converge in the next half-decade. The change is seismic, the timing is fortuitous, and the challenge is huge. So is the opportunity. Do the right things today to ensure it’s a win.

Sources

1. Navigating the CRM evolution in life sciences. Deloitte. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/Industries/life-sciences-health-care/articles/future-of-life-sciences-crm.html
2. How AI agents are reshaping the future of work. Deloitte. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/what-we-do/capabilities/applied-artificial-intelligence/articles/ai-agents-multiagent-systems.html
3. Modernizing pharma’s customer engagement strategies. Deloitte. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/Industries/life-sciences-health-care/articles/customer-engagement-strategies-pharmaceutical-industry.html
4. Agentic AI for CRM. Deloitte. https://www.deloittedigital.com/content/dam/digital/global/documents/insights-20250821-agentic-ai-for-crm-the-next-evolution-of-consumer-engagement-pov.pdf
5. Delivering Trustworthy AI™ for Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Deloitte. https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/products/trustworthy-ai-for-crm.html

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