The Impact of a CRM Transition: Q&A with David Rosner

David Rosner, principal and global life sciences customer engagement leader at Deloitte, spoke with Pharmaceutical Executive about the pharma industry’s choice between CRMs: Veeva and Salesforce. According to Rosner, this is more than just a simple upgrade and it could impact go-to market strategies over the next decade.

Pharmaceutical Executive: What brought the Pharma industry to this moment where it must choose between Salesforce and Veeva’s CRM?
David Rosner: For years, many life sciences companies effectively leveraged the gold standard which was the Veeva/Salesforce CRM, with the Veeva platform built on Salesforce technology. Once these organizations announced a split, each vendor launched their own offering thus providing life sciences companies with a choice in CRM as the current offering will cease to exist.

With our deep industry expertise, we’re a part of these conversations with clients who are navigating what will be the best solution for them. At this time, most top 20 Life Sciences companies have made a decision, and we’re seeing generally a 50/50 split in market share. The next wave of about 10-20 companies are starting to evaluate or make decisions, and the signal we’re seeing is that there is strong competition between both software platforms.

PE: Is this an opportunity to rethink commercial models?
Rosner: This is a natural moment and the right opportunity for organizations to pause and ask whether their current commercial model still fits the portfolio, growth trajectory, and customer engagement strategy. For some organizations this will be a straightforward technology move because they’ve recently modernized; for others, it’s a catalyst to revisit how they deploy field roles, channels, and decisioning. What I believe is most important for organizations is to have right-sized ambition to what the business truly needs next, not assume every company needs a full commercial reinvention. This is not a one-size-fits-all opportunity which is why it’s so important to understand and align the decision to meet the business goals and ambition.

PE: How should C-suite executives in Pharma use this opportunity to make field teams more effective?
Rosner: If we define “effective” in operational terms such as less administrative burden, better next-best actions, and more time in value-added customer interactions, then decision-makers need to evaluate and prioritize a CRM program that would be accountable to those outcomes. We also see agentic capabilities that can reason and act to move work forward—supported by intelligent context and enterprise trust—which can materially reduce admin burden when embedded into frontline workflows; however, it’s still early and needs clear use cases, governance/guardrails, and adoption focus to deliver measurable lift.

Deloitte’s Center for Health Solutions recently surveyed sales reps and found that 54% said an AI Follow Up assistant would be very useful, and 69% said that broken processes/administrative burden adds no value and doesn’t help them sell.

As organizations assess their specific needs, it’s important to recognize that they are not just selecting a platform but need to consider how they engineer workflows and decisions support the field actually experiences day to day.

PE: How can companies avoid cementing inefficiencies?
Rosner: The biggest trap is treating this as a “lift-and-shift” where legacy processes, exceptions, and workarounds get rebuilt on a new platform, so you modernize the tool but fossilize the operating model. Leaders should use the transition to identify the “cracks in the cement”: simplify processes, standardize where it matters, and redesign field workflows before automating them. The discipline is to make explicit choices about what you will stop doing, not only what technology you will implement.

PE: Does the industry recognize this decision as more than just a simple back-office IT upgrade?
Rosner: It can be either, and neither is inherently “right” or “wrong.” For companies that have recently modernized commercial engagement and technology and are well positioned for their 5–10-year strategy, it may legitimately be a back-office upgrade. For others, it's a chance to get ahead of the next decade as humans and agents elevate work and reshape what's possible in productivity, decisioning, and execution- so the CRM choice becomes the operating backbone for broader commercial transformation.