Veeva Systems Inc. (VEEV) Citi’s 2024 Global TMT Conference (Transcript)

Veeva Systems Inc. (NYSE:VEEV) Citi’s 2024 Global TMT Conference September 4, 2024 3:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Paul Shawah – Executive Vice President, Commercial Strategy

Conference Call Participants

Tyler Radke – Citi

Tyler Radke

Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. I was — we were talking about what session this is, it’s Session 9. So thanks, everyone, for joining us in this big room. My name is Tyler Radke. I co-head the U.S. software sector here at Citi. And we’re happy to have Veeva.

Joining us today, we have Paul Shawah, the EVP of Commercial Strategy. Paul, thanks for making it to our conference, especially post Labor Day and post earnings last week.

Question-and-Answer Session

Q – Tyler Radke

I thought to kick things off, it would be great just — we’re mostly tech investors here in the room, but you obviously service a very important part of the market being the life sciences industry. So can you just high level just speak to the industry trends that you’re seeing across life sciences, what are kind of the key priorities of your customer base? Is there heading into the back half of the year?

Paul Shawah

Yes, sure. First, good to be back. I guess, just a couple of years in a row now, we are doing this. So yes, I’ll give you a little overview of what’s going on in the industry. First of all, we serve the life science primarily serve life sciences. The way I think about the industry, you all know life sciences, we’re all customers at some level of the industry, pharma medicines, it’s an industry that’s built on discovering new medicines, launching new medicines into the marketplace. It’s — we know that the industry is only a very small portion of the way of finding cures and treatments for all of the diseases.

So this industry is going to be around for a very long time. A key measure that we look at to measure kind of the health of the industry over the long term is are they investing in R&D? And over the long term, it’s 5% or 6% growth in R&D budgets as we look out over the next five or 10 years. So it’s a healthy industry, investing to discover and develop new medicines the industry is focused on doing that more efficiently.

And what Veeva provides are basically software and technology and data to help the industry develop medicines more efficiently and also commercialize, bring those medicines to market more efficiently. In terms of big trends, it’s all of the things that you hear in other industries, plus some unique things to pharma. So the industry is not entirely immune to things like interest rates and some of the political landscape that’s changing.

But there are some things that are specific. Things like you might have heard of the IRA, which is the Inflation Reduction Act, when you went into account about two years ago, this is something that’s weighing on the industry’s mind like what’s going to happen with that thing. They’ve been contemplating that for some time now and generally have a pretty good hold on what’s playing out there. Biotech funding is another thing that the industry thinks about.

So there are some unique things, but it’s also kind of a general macro environment. We’ve said that the industry has been in a little bit of pressure over the last let’s say, 12 months or so. And that fundamentally hasn’t changed. But what I would say is over the long-term, the outlook is quite positive for where the industry is headed.

Tyler Radke

Great. And to sort of provide some more context on there, you reported results last week, results and guidance came in above expectations. I think it was a reassuring quarter for a lot of investors. As you think about where we are in the life sciences kind of macroeconomic cycle, there have been some pressures around certainly funding for biotech to the interest rate environment. You’ve seen some lower trial volumes impact a lot of your life science and tools customer base.

It seems like maybe there’s some signs of some of that pressure easing. Take us through what happened last quarter. Did you see any improvement in the overall environment? And if you didn’t, what would it sort of take for you to call an overall improvement in sort of the underlying life sciences environment?

Paul Shawah

Yes. So, some of the indicators have trended a little bit more positive, some of which you’ve mentioned, like biotech funding as one example, has trended more positive over the past couple of months, particularly relative to what it looked like last year at the same time. So that’s an example. Clinical trial activity appears to be strong or continuing to grow at a nice pace.

What I would say is these are — they generally have somewhat of a muted impact on our business, right? These take time to play through the system. So a change in the biotech funding may not impact us on a direct quarter-by-quarter basis. That may play out over many months or if not a year or longer.

What I would say kind of going back to my opening comments, this is an industry that’s kind of fundamentally built on innovation, discovering new medicines, R&D spend is continuing to grow. It’s the lifeblood of the industry. You don’t have an industry unless you’re able to discover and launch new medicines on the market, and that continues to happen. So over the long term, very healthy industry and we’re set up for a good opportunity in an industry that’s going to continue to invest in technology and modernization and moving forward.

Tyler Radke

Okay. Okay. Great. So thinking more about the business, obviously, you got the commercial side, the R&D. Starting off on commercial, I thought what was interesting was sort of the increased momentum that you saw on Vault CRM, I think, 14 new customer wins in the quarter. Can you just talk about the type of customers that signed up or these migrations from a — to Vault from Veeva CRM, I think, is the appropriate terminology. Just help us understand the momentum that you’re seeing there?

Paul Shawah

Yes. So the way I’d think about the new customers, so we did announce 14 new Vault CRM customers in the quarter. In general, I would think about them as companies that are buying their first CRM system. So they didn’t have anything, but they’re buying their first CRM system and Vault CRM is — we’re virtually winning every deal out in the marketplace. So we have the very best product. We have a market share leading product. We just made Vault CRM generally available in April and 14 is an indicator of kind of essentially every deal in the market is kind of going in our favor.

In terms of kind of execution and for migrating customers, the vast majority of our customer base is already on Veeva CRM and what lies ahead for us is moving that customer base over to Vault CRM. That’s playing out as planned, but our first migrations for that won’t happen until the end of this year, and then we’ll start to have some larger migrations. In fact, we just announced that we’ll have our first top 20 biopharma customer fully live on Vault CRM, migrated by the end of next year.

So it’s — these are pretty significant milestones for us. Our products available. It’s in the market. We have over 15 live customers on it. We’re winning virtually every deal and then we’re on track to have migrations this year and certainly some significant ones next year. So we’re executing well in CRM.

Tyler Radke

Yes. I’m sure we’ll all be paying close attention to that first customer and the ones that follow. I guess as we think about the broader top 20 pharma customers, what’s sort of been the reaction to your announcement of not renewing the sales force agreement? And how do you sort of see the response from Salesforce in terms of announcing their own product here?

Paul Shawah

Yes. So I’ll take you back to the announcement. Since we initially made the announcement that we were going to transition to Vault CRM. At the time, it was a surprise for customers. Customers did not know, we weren’t able to talk about it is obviously a significant shift. So we communicated to the financial community at roughly the same time we communicated to our customers. It wasn’t necessarily something they asked for. But — so it took some time for them to understand why, why were we making this decision? What additional benefit would we get when we move them from Veeva CRM over to Vault CRM?

So the last roughly two years was focused on that education. What does it take to move? What benefits do I get? What new products are you delivering as a result of that? So as we’ve been able to go through that education process, the reaction gets better and better. They’re excited about how the new product will be better. They’re excited about some of the new products that we’ve announced. We’ve announced products in areas of service and marketing, and in patient CRM.

These are areas that we were not able to markets that we weren’t able to invest in previously that have now opened up opportunities for us, but have also opened up the potential to solve problems at our customers that these are painful areas for them. They weren’t able to do them very efficiently. And now we’re creating the opportunity to solve them in a much different way.

But then also to make Vault CRM better than Veeva CRM where our promise to them is we’re going to give them something better than they have today. So the short answer to your question is, as they learn more, the reaction becomes more and more positive to what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

Tyler Radke

Yes. On the Salesforce side, they’ve made some interesting announcements in terms of partnering with IQVIA. What have you observed, obviously, I’m sure you have your own views of Salesforce’s strategy. But just in terms of the day-to-day interactions with customers, what’s sort of the customer response been by some of the sales force announcements that you’ve seen?

Paul Shawah

Yes. I mean you’re right, Salesforce made the announcement, I guess, it was about the April time frame. It happened to be a couple of weeks before our big customer event. We have a big customer event in May, our Customer Summit. And they announced that they were acquiring rights of the IQVIA IP for OCE to base their product on top of, and they’re going to have a version 1 of their products by roughly the end of next year.

We got the chance to talk to a lot of customers in a very condensed period of time. And I would say, by and large, the industry was surprised they made that decision because they announced some future generation of our product, and they were basing it on something that had already existed in the market, and that they’d already seen and then they already knew the outcome of that product in the market. They saw that it hadn’t gained much traction and that IQVIA was sunsetting it.

So I think there was some surprise, I would say, it was neutral to net negative. I guess as I think about our strategy versus them, we’re less focused on what they’re doing. They’re kind of in the very early stages of their path. We have — I would say, our competitive advantage continues to increase over time. We have a structural advantage in the space where, one, we have a product in the market today.

And we’re winning customers, and we have commitments from large customers that are going to move and will be live by the end of next year. I would not underestimate how important it is to have a product that is fully functional and that works. We have that today. We have deep customer relationships. We’ve been serving this industry and very happy customers for a very long period of time, where we have deep relationships.

And then I would say we’re just doing something fundamentally different than any competitor, Salesforce, in particular, which is we’re building the industry cloud. We’re building many different software pieces that all work together, software and data and business consulting. That’s what the industry needs over the long term. We’re not just delivering a single CRM system. We’re delivering an integrated suite of applications that work together.

So I think we have — with that structural advantage, we’re set up to be the long-term leader. We’re also set up to put that foundation in place for more innovation and even for future growth with some of those new products that I referenced earlier.

Tyler Radke

Right. Right. It will be interesting to see what announcements, if any, come out of Dreamforce in — I think, in a couple of weeks’ time. As we think about — you mentioned the top 20 pharma customer is going to be doing the migration and going live next year, which is pretty impressive considering the recency of when this product was released, how should we think about like the shape of those decisions by additional top 20 pharma’s, like are you expecting this to the majority to sort of announce their decision in the next year or two? What does that adoption curve look like?

Paul Shawah

Yes. So the way I would think about it is I do expect within the next 12 months or so that we’ll have additional top 20 commitments. So I — we’re in conversation with all of top 20. And actually, I would say, the vast majority of our customer base, even the long tail of small and midsized customers, we’re in conversations with about the benefits of Vault CRM and why and what it’s going to take to move to it. So I do expect we’ll have additional announcements within the next 12 months or so.

Beyond that, we — here the way to think about the timing is most customers will migrate in the 2026 to 2028 time frame. So the decision will obviously happen in advance of that. So I wouldn’t expect everybody to make a decision in the next 12 months, but I would certainly expect some to make a decision and then others to — as they plan their timeframe to make a decision over time.

Tyler Radke

Okay. Great. So staying on the commercial side, I wanted to hit on the data side of the business. And I think recently, there’s been a lot of positive discussion around Veeva Compass. Can you just frame for investors sort of the strategy with Compass and kind of getting more into that patient and prescriber data. How are you sort of positioning those to both your large top 20 pharma customers as well as some of the emerging biotech’s in the space.

Paul Shawah

Yes. The data in the commercial side of life sciences, it’s an important asset, virtually every pharma company buys data. They buy data to do understand what the market looks like, find out where their customers are, who are the prescribers that are writing specific medicines for specific diseases. So it’s a critically important set of data, and it’s been dominated by a couple and in fact, one primary data vendor for a very, very long time, and there hasn’t been a whole lot of innovation.

So that’s, to us, build opportunity to be able to create a better data set. We’re taking a very different approach than the incumbent. We’re using technology to source data, match data from a variety of different sources. Bring that data together and then deliver it to our customers more efficiently. So we’re able to create a better data set and then deliver it with speed faster than what’s available in the market today. So that’s creating an advantage for us. And we’re in the early stage of the market, but we’re starting to see the reference selling motion kick in.

And what I mean by that is we’re winning some early brands. The data decisions are generally made at a brand level in a pharma company, not at a pharma company level. They start one brand, you establish success and then you expand to an additional brand. And we’re seeing that reference selling motion happen already. In fact, we talked about a couple of customers who started with one, and they’ve expanded and we just had last quarter, we announced our first large customer who went with an enterprise ELA for a patient. So that was a significant milestone.

And it’s a good indicator that we have a better product in the marketplace. So I’m excited about the innovation that we’re bringing, the fact that we have a better data set. Yes, it’s a hard market to replace because it’s very sticky. And these are kind of core and critical processes that they run. So there’s change management associated with it. But in the early stage of the market, we’re executing well.

Tyler Radke

Got it. Okay. On the topic of AI, I think we’ve asked every company here some flavor of the AI question. But for Veeva, I think it’s been interesting that I would describe your approach to AI is a bit more reserve and potentially a bit more cautious, not having a ton of announcements and obviously, you’re dealing with an industry that is very conservative and conscious of the decisions they’re making. Can you sort of just frame for the audience what Veeva’s AI strategy is? And what would it take for you to sort of go out and try to package something or monetize something more significantly than you are today?

Paul Shawah

Yes. So our strategy is pretty simple. It’s enable the industry to enable our customers, enable the partner ecosystem. There’s a lot of experimentation happening in many, many different areas. We don’t want to be a blocker. We want to be an enabler and we’re continuing to watch the market very, very closely. And if we see an opportunity to build a product where we can create sustainable value, we’ll take advantage of that opportunity.

But I would say at this point, at this stage of the market, I would say it’s more experimentation than it is sustainable value and opportunities to monetize a product. So what this does is it enables our customers to experiment in many, many different ways. And we’re deploying some technology to allow them to get access to our data faster and very efficiently in a very AI friendly way. We’re enabling a partner ecosystem, so they have choice. We’re enabling them to use any top-tier AI that they choose to use. They want to use Microsoft CoPilot, we’re supporters of that. We want to enable them.

And — or if they want to choose any other large language model, it’s totally fine. It’s part of our strategy to make that very easy and frictionless for our customers. But again, it certainly gives us the opportunity over time, if we see something where we can create value, then we’ll launch a product. We just — we haven’t seen that yet. We’re watching very closely.

Tyler Radke

Yes. And I know there’s been some updates and enhancements to your APIs, allowing for faster access and everything. As you think about the partner ecosystem and combining with the fact that you have a lot of cash sitting on the balance sheet, is M&A sort of part of the strategy here? In other words, it’s say, hey, we’re providing these API access partners go out and build something and we see something compelling. Is it maybe makes sense to buy versus build? Or how do you sort of think about that?

Paul Shawah

Yes. I mean we’re always evaluating new market opportunities, new technologies. There’s always a question of build versus buy. I wouldn’t say the AI market is uniquely geared towards an opportunity. We don’t have a strategy that’s uniquely geared towards finding and buying an AI vendor.

Now it may turn out that that’s an answer or a viable answer and a path that we take. But I would not say that’s a dedicated strategy. We’re always — we’re looking at the market, and it’s got to be the right use case and the right opportunity before we, one, would build a product or two, would acquire technology.

Tyler Radke

Yes. Got it. Okay. So moving over to the R&D side of the business, I think last quarter, you talked about how seven of the top 20 pharma’s are using both your clinical database as well as Vault EDC for data collection and cleaning the clinical side of R&D is very significant. I think it’s the biggest TAM within sort of that R&D umbrella, but it’s very complex, right? There’s some large incumbents in the space. So can you just talk about where we are in terms of that adoption cycle and how much share of the wallet do you feel that you have specifically within the clinical side?

Paul Shawah

Yes. So I guess I would think of — I’m going to break clinical down a little bit. I would say there’s clinical operations and there’s clinical data management, and they are two separate parts of the company, but they need to interoperate with each other. And then within those two big categories, we have a suite of applications. And those suites of applications are — there’s some commonality in that. Some of the applications — the earliest applications that we built have the highest maturity and adoption and penetration in the market and the most recent ones that we’ve announced have the most room to grow. So that’s, in general, how to think about it.

If I look at the overall penetration, we’re — as a company, we’re about 15% penetrated into our total market opportunity in the R&D and clinical space, it’s even less than that. So most of the opportunity is ahead of us. Now what we are doing differently in clinical is we talk about it as a unified clinical suite. Most of the competitors, most of the companies that have a product in clinical today compete in one, maybe two areas.

What we’re doing is we’re competing — we’re creating — using the Vault platform as a way to build many applications in clinical operations, many applications in clinical data management that work for the sponsor, the clinical research sites and for patients, all on a unified platform.

So we’re creating connectivity across these really important stakeholders. The result of that is we can have a significant impact on how fast the cost and the time of a customer to run and operate a clinical trial. So there’s a very significant potential to reduce that cost, to reduce that time and we’re uniquely positioned to do it because of the Vault platform. So we’re excited about where we are in clinical. We’re still early days, but there’s a lot of opportunity ahead of us there.

Tyler Radke

Got it. And as you think about the less than 15% penetration, I mean, what are some of the biggest products or categories within clinical that are sort of hitting that inflection curve or mass market adoption part?

Paul Shawah

Yes, I’ll call out a couple. So first is the EDC space. So we have eight of top 10 who selected Veeva as EDC, we’re set up to be the market share leader in that space over time. It will take us time, but we’re well positioned because EDC is the very best product in the marketplace.

We’ve innovated. It’s modern cloud-based technology. We’ve solved a lot of the problems, that legacy technology in the space have been unable to solve. So we have a very strong advantage there. That’s going well.

The one other I’ll call out, which we just — we called out this last quarter a couple of days ago on the earnings call, was Site Connect. It may be one of those ones that you may not be as familiar with but it’s a tool for the sponsors to collaborate with the clinical research sites. These are the sites that are actually running and operating the trial on behalf of the sponsor, they share a lot of documentation, as you can imagine, with the sponsors and they do it with e-mail and file shares and all kinds of ad hoc ways, and we’re going to do that via an application where they’re able to log in to a simple web browser-based interface and collaborate with the sponsor, the pharma company.

This is a significant advantage for us, a significant opportunity. The size of the opportunity is nice, but also the ability to impact the speed of the trial, the collaboration is quite significant there. So those are just two examples. There are more everything from trial supplies to patient-reported outcomes. There’s a lot of opportunity on the clinical side, but the two I called out are kind of near term starting to hit that nice trajectory.

Tyler Radke

Got it. Vault Basics is also another recent area of focus for you kind of going after the emerging biotech space. How significant of a driver has that been? And what is that sort of — is those emerging biotech’s ultimately mature? Do you — have you seen any examples of those turning into seven, eight-figure type commitments as those companies scale?

Paul Shawah

Yes. Vault Basics is exciting. It’s relatively new. We started it about a year ago. We just announced, I think it was 14-ish customers on Vault Basics after about one year in the marketplace. That’s for very small customers, under 200 employees. So what we’re doing is we’re making Vault software, the very best enterprise class software accessible to small companies, most of which would not have been able to afford the capability because of the services work, the implementation around it.

So what we’re doing with Vault Basics is we’re providing them the software with zero implementation. They literally turn it on. So it’s very easy for them to get access to world-class software. And then when they get to a point where they’re ready to scale or they want to be able to customize or do things that are unique to their business, they can graduate to full Vault. So it opens up a market opportunity. We sized it at roughly $100 million opportunity that we wouldn’t have had access to before.

Now, we didn’t do it because — fully because of the size of the opportunity. Yes, we want that size, that part of the market to have access to great software, but there’s also, it’s forcing us to get better with our products, to create products that need less and less services work and implementation. We want to drive the cost of implementations down. So we’re getting smarter as a company, certainly in Vault Basics, but it’s also impacting other areas.

Tyler Radke

Got it. Okay. One area that was a bigger topic of discussion, I think, years ago was sort of the R&D suite for outside of life sciences. You targeted some CPG companies and cosmetics and things that could leverage sort of similar quality and safety offerings that you had. How is the progress in the non-life sciences customers going there. Is that still an area of focus? Or do you sort of feel like you’ve penetrated some of those easy use cases?

Paul Shawah

Yes. It’s an area where we’re still focused. We have dedicated teams focused on that. So it’s very separate people inside of the company that focus on our consumer goods business as an example, and we sell very specific products to those markets. So we’re doing something different there.

And in Life Sciences, I would say our strategy is to build the industry cloud. It’s lots of software, data, consulting, all on a common platform in — it’s selling very specific products. So we’re solving very specific needs for areas like quality and regulatory as examples. But it’s a different approach, right? One is we’re building the industry cloud. The other is we’re selling some great software in a way where it’s a nice growth market for us, in a way to get exposure to a slightly different market. But I would say the big opportunity is where we’re focused on in life sciences.

Tyler Radke

Right, right. And if you think broadly within R&D, we talked a lot about clinical. If you look at quality and safety and some of the regulatory stuff, where do you sort of see the biggest momentum? And how much more runway is it still — are all those kind of less than 15% penetrated or I know safety is probably less than 15% penetrated. But give us an update just sort of where we are in the adoption curve?

Paul Shawah

Yes. So the — when you think about Veeva, you should think about Veeva as being a multiproduct company, and I think you just kind of articulated that with all of these different areas, clinical data, clinical operations, regulatory quality, safety. And then commercial, there’s roughly 5 big areas on the commercial side. So kind of 10 major product areas, on average with less than 15% penetration, but certainly in the R&D side, it’s generally 15% or less.

So there’s a significant opportunity that lies ahead in areas like certainly — clinical we talked about already. Quality is just as significant. It’s a very large area. We’re doing something very unique. We’re the only company that’s creating a unified quality suite, many applications, all in the same platform. Same thing with safety, same thing with regulatory. So the story is very much the same. And I think the — in R&D, the opportunity is the same as well. It’s very low penetration.

Tyler Radke

Right. And as we think about the sort of near-term business and execution, I know coming out of Q1, you talked about maybe a more second-half weighted bookings cadence, seeing a lot of these deals or several deals flip out and close in Q4. This quarter, it sounded like you had a combination of better visibility, maybe some things now closing in Q3. What — just give investors an update, what are you seeing out there?

What’s sort of driving folks at this point to maybe pull forward decisions a little bit into Q3 versus Q4? And how are you just giving, I guess, what’s sort of the message to your sales team as you go into the second-half of the year?

Paul Shawah

Yes. I mean it’s continued execution, right? It’s — a lot of this is — we’ve talked about some of the factors that are creating a little bit of a distraction and creating pressures around conserving cash or higher scrutiny. What our job is to do is these are projects that generally are going to happen. It’s not discretionary spend. So then it just comes to an issue of what’s the timing? Is it timing Q3 or is it Q4? Or is it something else?

And our sales team is just focused on execution. It’s helping remind customers of the importance of some of these initiatives and the value that they can create. These are oftentimes value-based sales. They do these modernization projects, and they get a return from it, they are tangible returns. It’s different based on the product. There may be cost savings.

On the commercial side, it may be top line. But there’s a reason they’re making these investments. And our job is to drive that execution and make sure they understand it and make it as frictionless as possible for them to get started.

And you’re right, we have better visibility today than we did 90-days ago. Obviously, we’re further down that path. But we’re executing well. Our focus is to just continue executing. And we don’t do anything unnatural to try to accelerate specific deals, right? We try to do it in a very, very customer-friendly way, but it’s all about execution. We have the right product strategy. We have the right products in the market. We focus on execution.

Tyler Radke

Yes. I was going to ask you some nitty gritty questions about billings, but I know we don’t — and with the CFO in transition, we won’t go there. But I did want to ask you about the price increases that were announced on the core CRM side, I think about a year ago, but what’s sort of been the customer response? And have you — is that a factor at all when you’re thinking about having these migration customers to Vault CRM?

Paul Shawah

Yes. So just the way to think about pricing is about one year ago, April of last year, we had an inflationary adjustment that hit all — really all of our products across the board, CRM, but certainly, all of our products. And it was kind of a mechanical thing. It was basically the lower of CPI or 4%. That was the way we thought about it, and it was based on really inflation. So that started to go into effect on all deals that were new or renewed after April of last year. So that’s still playing out through the system because some deals are ELAs and they may not hit until after they hit that steady state.

But I think our customers appreciated the transparency. They appreciated the — because we were very clear on what it was. It was not a, hey, let’s ask for 18% and negotiate it down to a 9% increase. That was not our strategy. Our strategy was tell them exactly what we’re doing and give a cap and do it in a customer-friendly way and give them a lot of time, and base it on inflation, right?

So this is really about an inflationary adjustment. So for all of those reasons, it generally it’s been perceived as well as an increase or an adjustment can be received. Because they — as much as they — nobody wants a price increase, they want clarity and consistency, and that’s what we provided.

Tyler Radke

Great. That’s a good summary. So I also wanted to ask you about some of the executive changes at Veeva. So obviously, there’s been a change in the CFO role with Brent leaving earlier this year and kind of hiring a former Veeva employee as replacement. There’s also been some other changes, I think at the Chief Marketing Officer role and some other titles.

I guess before we get into the specifics, just as you’ve been with the company for a very long time. And as you kind of are having these conversations with Peter about his vision for the next 10-years, like how do you sort of frame the changes that were made in the context of where this business is going to be? And do you sort of feel like you’re now at the — you got the A team assembled to get to that next level?

Paul Shawah

Yes. Peter talks a lot about building the industry cloud and what we’re aiming for is building industry cloud for life sciences, which is something that has never been done before. Software, data, consulting services, all working together, building something very significant and meaningful and durable for the life sciences industry.

So never been attempted before that’s not really a path that you follow. It’s a path that you are creating. So to that end, what Peter looks for, not only in some of the roles that you talked about, but with the broader leadership team are people that can be very thoughtful, can be very deliberate, can think and create what that path will look like. And they also have to deeply understand our operating model.

How does Veeva operate? There is a commonality. I talked about being a multiproduct company but there are some common threads. We have a common vision. We have shared values across all of those business areas and do the right thing, customer success, employee success speed, we operate with a shared set of values. So Peter looks for people that can operate and understand within that environment, but also do the right things for their business. And the CFO is looking for somebody who deeply understands our how we run, how we operate all of our business areas.

And yes, Brian was not a CFO before, but he’s a great partner to the business. I partnered with him when he was at Veeva, he was here for about six years. I was one of the business owners that was partnering with him, and I can — I know that he appreciates and collaborates really well, not only with the leadership team, but also with Peter and that understands and appreciates that longer-term vision.

So I think more broadly, as we think about adding leaders to the company, that’s what we’re optimizing for. Understanding our operating model, understanding and appreciating our vision and being able to drive execution, very consistent with that.

Tyler Radke

Great. Maybe in the last couple of minutes, I just wanted to open it up to you, Paul, and see if there was anything that you wanted to hit on that we didn’t cover and maybe just leave investors with sort of your view of the story and anything that you want to hammer home?

Paul Shawah

Yes, sure. So I guess I’ll keep it high level. We are doing — and I started to talk about this. So we’re building the industry cloud for life sciences. We’re doing something that is — has never been done. It’s very different and very unique. We’re creating a very broad set of applications, software, data and consulting products for an industry in many different areas, we’re a multiproduct company with many different applications.

We have a very significant and large opportunity ahead of us, and we’re very well positioned to address that market opportunity because nobody else is doing what we’re doing. We’re doing it in a very different way. We’re building the industry cloud. So I would classify it as a durable growth business that we’re growing into.

In many cases, we have a very unique structural advantage and that ties to our deep customer relationships, our unique ability to be that strategic and trusted partner to the industry. But also the technology platforms like the Vault platform. The Vault platform was built very specifically for life sciences, which gives us an advantage and gives us leverage to create new applications that are all unified. They’re designed to work together because they’re all built from the ground up on a common platform.

So the more applications that our customers buy, the more value they get, the more sticky, the more durable that becomes in our customer base. So I’m excited about the overall long-term opportunity where we’re headed. We’re in the early days of it, and we’re executing well against the plan.

Tyler Radke

Great. Paul, thank you very much for joining, and thanks, everyone, for participating, and we’ll see you at the rest of the conference.

Paul Shawah

All right. Thanks, Tyler.

Tyler Radke

Thank you.