Data Quality is the Key to Veeva Success: Learn Why at Veeva Summit

Data Quality is the Key to Veeva Success: Learn Why at Veeva Summit

by | Sep 9, 2026 | Events, Life Sciences, Veeva

Organizations continue to expand their use of the Veeva Vault platform across Quality, Regulatory, Clinical, and Safety functions to streamline operations, strengthen compliance, and accelerate business outcomes. It has become a central component of broader digital transformation initiatives, supported by strong governance, validated migration approaches, and long-term optimization services.

And each year, industry leaders gather at the Veeva Summit: R&D and Quality in Boston to explore new strategies, technologies, and best practices for maximizing the value of their Veeva investments. As a trusted Veeva migration partner with decades of experience supporting life sciences organizations, fme looks forward to sponsoring the Summit to share lessons learned from some of the industry’s most complex transformation programs.

The question we hear most often remains remarkably consistent: “What is the key to a successful migration to the Veeva platform?” While modern cloud technology, thoughtful configuration, and strong implementation practices are all important, the most successful programs begin long before go-live. They start with a clear understanding of the source landscape, strong governance, and a commitment to data quality.

Data Readiness and Quality Drive Long-Term Success

Organizations that achieve the greatest value from Veeva understand that migration is not simply a technical exercise that can be thrown in at the end of your Veeva program. Whether you’re implementing your first Vault application, consolidating legacy repositories, or expanding into additional Veeva modules, your business outcomes depend on the quality of the information being migrated. Accurate, complete, and well-governed data provides the foundation for compliant processes, trusted reporting, and sustainable growth.

Successful programs require a balance of strategy, governance, validation, and automation to ensure data arrives in its new environment accurately, compliantly, and ready to support the future state. fme’s migration methodology places distinctive emphasis on these efforts to ensure our clients’ long-term success.

fme Delivers More Than Migration

Every migration program comes with unique challenges. Legacy platforms contain years of accumulated content, inconsistent metadata, disconnected processes, and regulatory requirements that cannot be compromised. fme’s experience has proven that success depends on establishing scope early, validating assumptions, and applying a disciplined methodology that reduces risk throughout the migration lifecycle.

At this year’s Summit, we’ll be sharing how our proven methodologies, classification accelerators, and validation-first strategy modernizes regulated content environments with confidence. From data assessment and enrichment to migration execution, verification, and post-go-live support, our focus remains the same: helping global life sciences firms achieve predictable outcomes while maintaining compliance and business continuity.

Proven Expertise + Validated Frameworks = Predictable Outcomes

fme is much more than a migration vendor. We are a strategic partner supporting the world’s largest life sciences organizations before, during, and after transformation initiatives. Our approach spans data readiness, migration execution, validation, stabilization, and optimization, ensuring clients receive support across the end-to-end migration lifecycle.

With more than 25 years of life sciences experience, over 200 migration projects delivered globally, and technology used by the industry’s leading pharmaceutical companies, fme brings the expertise, accelerators, and governance required for enterprise-scale Veeva programs. Whether migrating hundreds of thousands or millions of records, our goal is the same: delivering compliant, high-quality migrations that position organizations for lasting success in Veeva Vault.

To deliver at the scale and speed today’s life sciences leaders require, fme pairs expert consulting with AI-powered tools and certified accelerators that de-risk, streamline, and future-proof your migration. Here are two of our powerful tools: 

AI-powered Intelligent Classification Accelerator – fme’s AI-powered intelligent classification accelerator uses automation and AI to streamline metadata analysis, enrichment, and mapping, significantly reducing manual effort and accelerating the preparation of high-quality metadata ahead of migration. This ensures that your Veeva environment is not only populated with the right data, but with data that’s clean, consistent, and aligned with your business logic.

migration-center® – Complementing this is migration-center, fme’s Veeva-product-certified migration accelerator, purpose-built to simplify even the most complex, large-scale content migrations. Supporting over 250 source-to-target combinations, migration-center handles the extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) of data from legacy systems, databases, file shares, and cloud platforms. The result is accurate, structured, and compliant data that supports your teams immediately upon deployment into Veeva.

migration-center Verify™ – Without automated verification, even small discrepancies can go unnoticed until after go-live. Verify systematically compares migrated data against the source system, identifying inconsistencies in metadata and content integrity. This helps teams detect issues and avoid costly rework or compliance risks.

Let’s Move Forward, Together

Migrating to Veeva is a strategic move that sets the foundation for your future in regulated content and data management. With fme by your side, you’re backed by decades of life sciences experience, a tailored and proven methodology, and powerful accelerators that deliver unparallelled clarity, speed, and confidence.

Download our Veeva capabilities overview below to learn more about our services, tools, and client success stories. Then, we’ll schedule a discovery meeting where we’ll discuss your current environment (or environments) and walk through the next steps for accelerating your Veeva transformation.

Download Our Veeva Capabilities

Not Attending Veeva Summit? Let’s Still Connect.

Can’t make it to Boston this year? We’ll be happy to share our key takeaways from the event, review the latest Veeva updates, and discuss how fme can support your short- and long-term goals: on your timeline, and on your terms.

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Veeva Updates: 26R2 Release Highlights

Veeva Updates: 26R2 Release Highlights

by | Aug 17, 2026 | Life Sciences, Technology Services, Veeva

Veeva continues to deliver enhancements to its platform through three structured releases each year. It is critical for the administrators of Veeva solutions to review each new update to assess new capabilities, align priorities, and prepare their environments for any technical or functional changes.

fme’s specialists review each release in detail to identify changes that may impact our clients’ environments, and highlight new capabilities that can improve efficiency, compliance, and overall system performance. Here are summaries from past releases:

In this installment, we describe key highlights from the 26R2 Update that our experts feel are notable. Keep in mind, this is not a comprehensive list of changes; please visit Veeva’s site for the complete release details and descriptions.

For a deeper analysis or to discuss how fme can support ongoing optimization of your Veeva environment, we invite you to download our service datasheets below and schedule a time to connect with our team.

Key Feature #1: Improved Document Viewer

The document viewing experience has been completely redesigned with an improved user interface. A simplified toolbar surfaces the most common actions such as full screen, zoom, and Find in Document, along with consistent panel management. Plus, users can now easily view multiple documents at once using a side-by-side document view through Fast Search, Relationships, Attachments, and Doc Versions.

For customers with Vault AI enabled, clicking the new Version Comparison button includes a generated AI summary of changes in Vault AI Chat that shows whether there were material changes since the last major version and summarizes important changes to review. These changes are also reflected in the external viewer used with Send as Link to Non-Vault Users and other application-specific areas. If Lifecycle Stages are configured, they will now only be shown on non-steady state versions.

Why This Matters to our Clients

Most Vault users spend a large portion of their day reviewing documents. Even small usability improvements can save time across hundreds or thousands of document reviews. Previous versions often required users to manually switch between document versions or hunt through menus to find common actions. The updated interface streamlines these everyday tasks.

Benefits include:

    • Faster and easier document reviews.
    • Reduced training for new users because the interface is more intuitive.
    • Quickly identify changes with side-by-side comparisons.
    • AI summaries help reviewers understand what changed before diving into the document, especially for lengthy SOPs or regulatory documents.

Key Feature #2: Improved Fast Search

One of the major Platform highlights for 26R2 is Veeva improved Fast Search, the list of suggested documents users see when they click into the search bar on a document tab. Before 26R2, suggested documents were primarily based on the documents a user had most recently viewed. With this update, Veeva expects users to see documents they are likely to need without having to perform a full search. Veeva has also improved the speed at which these suggestions appear, with suggestions loading faster when a user initially clicks into the search box and results updating faster as the user begins typing.

Fast Search also works with the new Improved Document Viewer experience in 26R2, allowing users to quickly reference another document without having to navigate away from the document they are currently working with.

Why This Matters to our Clients

Vaults can contain extremely large document libraries, and users may interact with many documents throughout their day. Finding the right document quickly can become an everyday productivity issue. Fast Search reduces some of that effort by making the documents Vault suggests more relevant to what the user has actually been working on, while also improving how quickly those suggestions appear.

Benefits Include:

    • Faster access to frequently needed content: Users can access relevant documents directly from the search dropdown without always performing a complete search.
    • More relevant document suggestions: Suggestions consider broader document interactions, rather than relying only on which documents were most recently viewed.
    • Less time navigating through Vault: Faster suggestions can reduce the number of steps required to return to documents users are actively working with.
    • Improved multitasking: Users can open a document from Fast Search in a mini-browser or side-by-side view without leaving the document they’re currently reviewing.
    • Better support for document-heavy workflows: Users who regularly review, edit, annotate, or reference many documents can more easily return to relevant content.

Key Feature #3: AI Powered Change Summaries

Customers can now enable and configure Vault AI to automatically generate a summary of the differences between document versions. AI highlights meaningful content updates rather than requiring users to inspect every page themselves.

Why This Matters to our Clients

In regulated industries, documents frequently undergo many revisions before approval (I’ve seen a document with minor versions in the hundreds). Reviewers often spend considerable time simply determining what changed. This feature helps reviewers focus their attention on the changes that actually matter.

Benefits Includes:

    • Quicker document review cycles.
    • Reviewers can focus on business or regulatory impacts rather than formatting changes.
    • More efficient collaboration between authors and reviewers.
    • Particularly valuable for lengthy SOPs, validation documents, quality procedures, and regulatory submissions.

Key Feature #4: Bulk Export Improvements for Submission Archive

Users can now initiate bulk exports from the “All Submissions” object grid or the “All Applications” object grid. This new action replaces the Vault report-based “Export Submissions Archive Applications” action, which will be deprecated in 26R3, so be sure to check if you rely on that action in any processes before the next update.

Veeva has also rebuilt the framework used for exporting large volumes of regulatory submission data, with bulk exports designed to perform more consistently when exporting many submissions at once. 26R2 also has new options that allow companies to automate bulk exports and more easily connect the export process with other systems.

Why This Matters to our Clients

Many regulatory organizations regularly export submission packages for archival purposes, downstream systems, or health authority interactions. As submission volumes grow, export performance and reliability become increasingly important.

Benefits Includes:

    • Faster and more reliable exports.
    • Better support for automated processes.
    • Improved scalability for large regulatory organizations.
    • Reduced manual effort when exporting submission data.

Key Feature #5: Query Profiler

Veeva introduced a new Query Profiler that gives Vault Admins and Developers a way to monitor and investigate how VQL queries are performing. A VQL query is a request for information from Vault. Previously, understanding the performance of these queries could be difficult. Query Profiler gives technical teams a dedicated tool for collecting information about queries running in Vault and identifying ones that may need attention or optimization.

Functionally, Admins or Developers start a profiling session, and Vault collects information about queries that meet specified criteria. This allows teams to narrow the session to the types of queries they are interested in troubleshooting rather than investigating every query running in Vault. Available filters include Origin, which identifies where the VQL query originated from (API, SDK, or ALL); Targets, which filters specific Query Targets, such as queries on user__sys; Result Count and Query Time, which filter queries based on minimum or maximum ranges; and Response Status, which filters queries based on SUCCESS, FAILURE, or WARNING.

Why This Matters to our Clients

Integrations, custom development, and automated processes can generate large numbers of queries against Vault. If one of those queries is inefficient (i.e., it retrieves far more information than necessary) then it can be difficult to determine where the problem is occurring. Query Profiler provides more visibility into what’s happening behind the scenes, giving technical teams information they can use to investigate slow or problematic queries.

This is particularly useful for organizations with complex integrations or significant custom development, where identifying the source of a performance issue can otherwise involve substantial troubleshooting.

Benefits Include:

    • Faster troubleshooting
    • Improved visibility
    • Reduced guess-work
    • Better support for complex vaults

An Example: A company has an integration that regularly retrieves data from Vault. The integration suddenly starts taking much longer to complete. Using Query Profiler, the technical team could investigate the queries coming from that integration and determine:

    • Which queries are taking the longest?
    • How many records are they returning?
    • What Vault data are they querying?
    • Are the queries completing successfully or generating warnings/errors?

The team can then use that information to identify where further investigation or optimization is needed.

Key Feature #6: Improved Localization for Number Fields

Different countries use different conventions for displaying numbers. Before 26R2, Vault could display numbers according to a user’s locale, but data entry did not fully follow those same regional conventions.

As of 26R2, Vault now displays and accepts numbers according to the user’s regional settings, including number, currency, and percentage fields. For example, a U.S. user may write a decimal using a period (1.5), while a French user may write the same value using a comma (1,5). Similarly, the U.S. commonly displays one million as 1,000,000, while Germany commonly displays the same number as 1.000.000.

Why This Matters to our Clients

Vault is used by global organizations, so users in different countries may have very different expectations for how numbers should be entered. Previously, there could be a mismatch between what a user saw and what Vault expected them to type. That creates unnecessary confusion and increases the possibility of data-entry mistakes, particularly for users who don’t regularly work with U.S.-style number formatting.

 Benefits Include:

    • More intuitive data entry for global users
    • Reduced potential for data-entry errors
    • Better experience for multinational organizations: The same Vault can provide appropriate numeric experience to users working in different countries.
    • More consistent localization across Vault: The enhancement applies broadly across documents, objects, workflows, reports, and Process Monitor rather than being limited to one specific feature.

How fme Can Support Your Veeva Updates

Veeva’s innovation-driven release cycles provide continual improvements but also require ongoing operational responsibility. Releases occur on a fixed schedule, regardless of internal IT bandwidth or competing priorities, and certain changes are deployed automatically. Configuration shifts, deprecated settings, and legacy customizations can all affect how new functionality performs within a given environment.

fme provides tailored services to help clients evaluate, manage, and operationalize Veeva’s recurring release cycles. Below are two core offerings our clients rely on to keep their Veeva environments optimized and aligned with evolving business needs.

HealthCheckAssist: Gain Visibility and Control

HealthCheckAssist is a structured, low-burden assessment designed to provide actionable insights into your Veeva RIM environment. We evaluate how the system is configured and used, identify active risks and inefficiencies, and highlight opportunities for optimization.

Beyond diagnostics, we deliver a prioritization remediation roadmap clearly outlining the steps required to stabilize, streamline, and future-proof your environment. This enables your team to proactively prepare for upcoming releases, fully leverage new platform capabilities, and maintain a consistently release-ready experience.

Learn more about HealthCheckAssist now!

Learn More

TechOps Support Services: Cost-effective Platform Management

Efficient and effective IT operations are vital for any company but are notoriously difficult to accurately predict and budget for, especially in multi-platform systems. Our TechOps Support Services provide the experience and resources needed to augment and support the needs of complex IT environments, balancing out the ebb and flow of support tasks, and adding extra knowledge and skill for integrated application management.

Our flexible, customizable model can incorporate administrative support and release management components to allow your organization to focus on your core business activities without the distractions of technical issues and system maintenance.

Our trained experts support many legacy and modern applications to ensure your critical systems remain stable and secure, giving them the attention they need while you focus on accomplishing your business goals.

Learn how fme can simplify your platform management with TechOps Support Services now!

Learn More

About the Author

Matthew Peterson

Matthew Peterson is a highly skilled Veeva business analyst and migration specialist at fme, focused on helping clients understand how each Veeva update will impact their environments. With deep expertise in the intersection of technology, data, and regulated life sciences processes, Matthew ensures that clients not only stay current with platform changes but also align those changes with their strategic goals and operational priorities. His commitment to clarity and practical impact helps organizations maintain optimized, resilient Veeva implementations that support long-term success.

 

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Your Vault RIM Was Optimized at Go-Live. Is It Optimized Today?

Your Vault RIM Was Optimized at Go-Live. Is It Optimized Today?

by | Jul 14, 2026 | Business Consulting, Digital Transformation, Life Sciences, Migration Services, Veeva

When organizations implement Veeva Vault RIM, tremendous effort goes into designing the right solution. Business processes are mapped, security is carefully configured, workflows are established, integrations are built, and governance models are defined. Months of planning culminate in a platform designed to support the organization’s regulatory operations for years to come.

But no organization stands still.

Regulations evolve. The business grows through acquisitions. New products enter development. Organizational structures change. Administrators respond to new requests, implement enhancements, adjust security, and introduce new processes to meet immediate business needs. Meanwhile, Veeva continues to release new capabilities three times each year, providing opportunities to improve efficiency, simplify administration, and enhance regulatory operations.

Each of these decisions is reasonable on its own. Collectively, however, they can gradually move the platform away from the environment that was originally designed.

The Hidden Cost of Platform Drift

Enterprise software doesn’t usually fail because of one poor decision. Instead, it evolves through hundreds of small decisions made over many years.

    • A configurable feature isn’t enabled because it isn’t immediately needed.
    • A custom workflow is built to address a business requirement that existed at the time.
    • Security permissions become increasingly granular as new teams and responsibilities are added.
    • Manual processes remain in place because “that’s how we’ve always done it.”

Each decision solves a legitimate problem. The challenge is that very few organizations periodically step back to ask whether those decisions still make sense today.

The result is what we call platform drift: the gradual accumulation of configuration changes, administrative decisions, and business adaptations that slowly move the platform away from its most efficient and maintainable state.

Yesterday’s Decisions May Limit Tomorrow’s Capabilities

One of the greatest strengths of Veeva Vault RIM is its continuous innovation. Every year, Veeva delivers new functionality designed to improve regulatory operations, automate manual activities, and help organizations respond to changing regulatory requirements. Many of these capabilities build upon configuration options or foundational features that may have been available for years.

Organizations often discover that decisions made during the original implementation now influence their ability to adopt those newer capabilities.

    • A configurable feature was left disabled because there was no immediate business value at the time.
    • A highly customized workflow solved an earlier challenge but now duplicates standard product functionality.
    • An increasingly complex security model makes routine administration more difficult than necessary.

None of these situations indicates a poor implementation. They simply reflect the reality that both the business and the software have evolved. Without periodically reassessing the platform, organizations can unknowingly miss opportunities to simplify operations, improve user adoption, and gain more value from capabilities they already own.

More Features Don’t Always Mean More Value

Many organizations assume they’re getting maximum value simply because they’re running the latest version of Vault RIM. Version currency, however, is only part of the equation.

Real platform maturity depends on questions such as:

    • Are we taking advantage of the capabilities available to us?
    • Have our business processes become unnecessarily complex over time?
    • Is our security model enabling collaboration or creating administrative overhead?
    • Is our regulatory data organized consistently and supporting efficient operations?
    • Are users relying on manual workarounds that newer functionality could eliminate?
    • Does our documentation still reflect how the system actually operates?

These are business questions, not simply technical ones. Answering them requires an objective assessment of how the platform supports today’s organization rather than the organization that existed at go-live.

A Health Check Should Look Beyond Technology

An effective platform assessment should evaluate more than configuration settings. It should examine how people, processes, governance, and technology work together to support regulatory operations.

HealthCheckAssist was developed specifically for that purpose.

Through stakeholder interviews, feature utilization reviews, data and document organization assessments, security evaluations, and training and documentation reviews, HealthCheckAssist provides organizations with an objective understanding of how effectively their Vault RIM environment supports current business needs.

Rather than producing a list of technical observations, the assessment identifies opportunities to improve solution utilization, reduce administrative complexity, strengthen governance, improve data quality, and develop a practical roadmap for future optimization.

Making the Most of Your Investment

Implementing Vault RIM represents a significant investment of time, resources, and organizational effort.

The objective shouldn’t simply be to keep the system running. It should be to ensure the platform continues to evolve alongside the business, enabling users to take advantage of new capabilities, reducing unnecessary complexity, and supporting efficient regulatory operations for years to come.

The best-performing organizations recognize that optimization is not a one-time implementation activity. It is an ongoing process of evaluating whether yesterday’s decisions still support today’s business objectives.

If it has been several years since your Vault RIM environment was assessed, now may be the right time to ask a simple question: Is your platform still optimized? Or has it gradually drifted away from its full potential?

Learn how HealthCheckAssist can help your organization evaluate its Vault RIM environment, identify optimization opportunities, and maximize the value of your investment by downloading the datasheet below.

Download Datasheet
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Learn more about HealthCheckAssist℠ 

You've invested a lot of time and money into your RIM solution; fme's HealthCheckAssist ensures you maximize the value of your investment. Leveraging user interviews and in-depth system analysis, fme's RIM experts provide a clear perspective on what's working well, and what could be improved.

Download this HealthCheckAssist datasheet to learn how fme can help you get the most from your system while decreasing your total cost of ownership.

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Why RIM Modernization Projects Succeed or Fail BEFORE Vendor Selection

Why RIM Modernization Projects Succeed or Fail BEFORE Vendor Selection

by | Jul 7, 2026 | Business Consulting, Digital Transformation, Life Sciences, Migration Services, Regulatory

Selecting a new Regulatory Information Management (RIM) platform is one of the most significant technology decisions a Life Sciences organization will make. The chosen platform will influence regulatory operations, compliance, data governance, and business agility for years to come.

As organizations expand product portfolios, enter new markets, and adapt to evolving regulatory requirements, many begin asking the same question: Does our current RIM environment still support our business, or is it time to modernize?

Organizations quickly discover that selecting a platform is only one part of a much larger challenge..

The Greatest Risks Are Organizational, Not Technical

Most regulatory organizations recognize the challenges limiting operational efficiencies. Regulatory data is spread across multiple systems, reporting requires significant manual effort, and teams follow different processes across regions or business units. The result is inconsistent information, limited visibility, and reduced confidence in regulatory operations.

While these issues often appear to be technology limitations, they are typically the result of years of organizational evolution. As companies expand into new markets, acquire products, adapt to changing regulations, and grow their teams, processes naturally evolve. Local workarounds emerge, governance practices drift, and information is managed differently across functions and regions. Over time, this complexity becomes embedded within the technology landscape itself.

These inconsistencies often remain hidden until requirements gathering or implementation activities begin. At that point, differences between teams, regions, and business units become impossible to ignore. New software alone cannot resolve these underlying challenges. Because regulatory information supports product planning, market expansion, compliance, and strategic decision-making, inconsistent processes and unreliable data quickly become business risks.  

The objective is not simply to replace technology; it is to modernize how people, processes, information, and technology work together. Achieving this requires a different approach.

Change Your Focus: Goals, Not Feature Lists

Successful modernization begins by asking a different question. Instead of asking which platform has the best capabilities, organizations should ask what they are trying to achieve. Without clearly defined future-state objectives, teams become focused on vendor demonstrations, feature comparisons, and technical evaluations rather than business outcomes they need to deliver.

The most successful organizations first understand their current state, identify operational inefficiencies, define future capabilities, and engage stakeholders across Regulatory Affairs, Regulatory Operations, IT, and business leadership. This confirms modernization goals reflect enterprise priorities rather than the needs of a single function.

With this foundation in place, technology is evaluated against business objectives, not feature checklists, resulting in solutions that support long-term regulatory strategy rather than simply replacing existing systems.

SelectAssist℠: Proven Structure for a Complex Decision

Few organizations undertake RIM modernization frequently enough to develop a repeatable approach. Regulatory leaders may oversee one or two major platform transformations during their careers, yet the decisions they make influence operations for years.

SelectAssist was developed by fme to help Life Sciences organizations navigate these decisions through a structured, vendor-neutral methodology. Through executive interviews, stakeholder workshops, process and governance assessments, current-state analysis, and business case development, we establish a clear understanding of your organization’s operating model, future-state objectives, and critical business requirements.

Using this foundation, we objectively evaluate and score RIM platforms against your defined criteria, providing leadership with a clear understanding of each solution’s strengths, tradeoffs, risks, and long-term fit. Rather than selecting technology based on demonstrations or feature lists, organizations make informed decisions aligned with their regulatory strategy, operating model, and future growth.

Because successful modernization depends on more than technology, SelectAssist also evaluates the people, processes, governance, data, and organizational readiness required to support a successful transformation.

If your organization is evaluating a new RIM platform, or simply wants confidence that it is asking the right questions before engaging software vendors, we’d welcome the opportunity to discuss your modernization goals. Download the SelectAssist datasheet to learn how our proven methodology helps Life Sciences organizations make informed, objective platform decisions with confidence.

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fme has clear methodologies to stay ahead of quickly evolving data standards, complex requirements and changing technology options. Learn the first steps and get started today. 

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About the Author

Meghan Carr, PMP

Meghan Carr, PMP, is Vice President of Commercial Operations at fme Life Sciences, leading global commercial strategy for regulated content and data modernization initiatives across the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. With more than 20 years of experience spanning Regulatory, Clinical, and Quality, she has worked with many of the world’s leading life sciences organizations on complex digital transformation programs.

Throughout her career with leading global software vendors, implementation partners, and technology service providers, Meghan has supported hundreds of technology evaluations, proposals, and transformation initiatives. This experience has provided a unique perspective on the platform selection process and the organizational factors that ultimately determine modernization success.

Veeva Updates: 26R1 Release Highlights

Veeva Updates: 26R1 Release Highlights

by | Apr 28, 2026 | Life Sciences, Technology Services, Veeva

Veeva continues to deliver enhancements to its platform through three structured releases each year. It is critical for the administrators of Veeva solutions to review each new update to assess new capabilities, align priorities, and prepare their environments for any technical or functional changes.

fme’s specialists review each release in detail to identify changes that may impact our clients’ environments, and highlight new capabilities that can improve efficiency, compliance, and overall system performance. Here are summaries from past releases:

In this installment, we describe key highlights from the 26R1 Update to help you quickly understand the most relevant changes. Please note that this is not a comprehensive list of changes; please visit Veeva’s site for the complete details and descriptions.

For a deeper analysis or to discuss how fme can support ongoing optimization of your Veeva environment, we invite you to download our service datasheets below and schedule a time to connect with our team.

Key Feature 1: Milestone Object Model

Staring in 26R1, milestones are no longer stored as a single field (milestone__v) but are managed as object records. The new object model is more scalable and aligns with Veeva’s overall data structure approach.

Each milestone (Approved, Effective, Submitted, etc.) is now tracked as its own entry instead of being grouped in one place, allowing users to view all milestones in a dedicated Milestones panel on the document. In addition, the 1,000-record limit within the milestone__v field has been removed.

This change can affect existing reports, integrations, or configurations that reference the milestone field, and administrators may need to make adjustments to reflect the new object.

How this can benefit customers

There are several benefits to these changes:

    • Multiple milestones can be stored and managed more clearly for each document and version within the version tree.
    • The new structure makes it easier to understand the full lifecycle history of a document.
    • Each milestone is now its own record that can be queried and analyzed significantly improving reporting on milestones.
    • Admins can now filter, group, and report on milestones across documents more easily than before.
    • This change also supports more complex use cases, such as tracking multiple milestone types or repeated events over time.

Key Feature 2: Doctype Triggers (Automation)

Prior to 26R1, actions required when a document was created, updated, or deleted were mostly a manual process with minimal automation available. The 26R1 release allows users to attach triggers with logic directly to documents so that when the trigger is fired, Vault instantly runs custom actions behind the scenes.

This feature can significantly reduce the amount of manual work users have to perform, reduce human error, make processes faster, and allow admins more opportunities to customize document behavior.

How this can benefit customers

One possible application of this new feature is to auto-populate specific fields when creating documents. For example, when a user is creating an SOP, triggers can auto-populate the product, region, and department within each unique SOP template ensuring accuracy and consistency.

In Veeva PromoMats (Promotional Materials), a newly created promotional piece can automatically link required objects, like products or specific campaigns, greatly accelerating content creation while also reducing compliance risk. A trigger can also be created to automatically assign a document for training when it becomes approved/effective.

Key Feature 3: Excel Copy/Paste

The reality of modern business ensures we will almost always work with spreadsheets, and prior to 26R1, users had to add each value manually. With the 26R1 release you will be able to copy a list of values from Excel and paste them directly into Vault instead of entering them one by one.

How this can benefit customers

This update eliminates repetitive, manual data entry saving time, minimizing copy/paste errors, and greatly accelerating the input of large lists of values. It is especially useful when working with multi-value fields, such as users, products, or countries. Instead of manually searching and selecting each value, you can paste an entire list in a single action. Vault automatically recognizes and matches the pasted values to existing records or picklist values.

Veeva Vault will automatically ignore duplicate values, preventing accidental double entries. If any values don’t match, Vault provides a summary so you can quickly identify and fix issues.

This makes bulk updates much faster without needing loaders or external scripts, and brings a more familiar, Excel-like experience into Vault to improve usability for everyday users. With this update, expect a significant reduction in manual errors and user frustration caused by repetitive manual data entry.

Key Feature 4: API Endpoint Deprecation

Not all changes are adding features. With the 26R1 update the “Retrieve All Documents” and “Retrieve all Binders” APIs are no longer supported. In the past, this was used to pull large sets of documents in one go causing heavy system load and slowing down Vault performance. Instead, users are now expected to use VQL (Vault Query Language) to retrieve only the data they need.

To prepare for this change, administrators should replace existing “Retrieve All Documents” and “Retrieve All Binders” API endpoints with VQL queries.

How this can benefit customers

Basing their decision on industry best practices for data access, Veeva made this shift to improve system performance and scalability, and to encourage more efficient, targeted data requests based on document type, specific dates, statuses, etc. rather than full data extracts.

fme’s dqMan has a Veeva Vault Edition that can be a great help in this change. It is a professional administration tool based on VQL and MDL, providing users with exclusive capabilities and a broad feature set to help manage Veeva Vault applications efficiently. Contact us to learn more.

How fme Can Support Your Veeva Updates

Veeva’s innovation-driven release cycles provide continual improvements, but also require ongoing operational responsibility. Releases occur on a fixed schedule, regardless of internal IT bandwidth or competing priorities, and certain changes are deployed automatically. Configuration shifts, deprecated settings, and legacy customizations can all affect how new functionality performs within a given environment.

fme provides tailored services to help clients evaluate, manage, and operationalize Veeva’s recurring release cycles. Below are two core offerings our clients rely on to keep their Veeva environments optimized and aligned with evolving business needs.

HealthCheckAssist: Gain Visibility and Control

HealthCheckAssist is a structured, low-burden assessment designed to provide actionable insights into your Veeva RIM environment. We evaluate how the system is configured and used, identify active risks and inefficiencies, and highlight opportunities for optimization.

Beyond diagnostics, we deliver a prioritization remediation roadmap clearly outlining the steps required to stabilize, streamline, and future-proof your environment. This enables your team to proactively prepare for upcoming releases, fully leverage new platform capabilities, and maintain a consistently release-ready experience.

Learn more about HealthCheckAssist now!

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TechOps Support Services: Cost-effective Platform Management

Efficient and effective IT operations are vital for any company but are notoriously difficult to accurately predict and budget for, especially in multi-platform systems. Our TechOps Support Services provide the experience and resources needed to augment and support the needs of complex IT environments, balancing out the ebb and flow of support tasks, and adding extra knowledge and skill for integrated application management.

Our flexible, customizable model can incorporate administrative support and release management components to allow your organization to focus on your core business activities without the distractions of technical issues and system maintenance.

Our trained experts support many legacy and modern applications to ensure your critical systems remain stable and secure, giving them the attention they need while you focus on accomplishing your business goals.

Learn how fme can simplify your platform management with TechOps Support Services now!

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About the Author

Matthew Peterson

Matthew Peterson is a highly skilled Veeva business analyst and migration specialist at fme, focused on helping clients understand how each Veeva update will impact their environments. With deep expertise in the intersection of technology, data, and regulated life sciences processes, Matthew ensures that clients not only stay current with platform changes but also align those changes with their strategic goals and operational priorities. His commitment to clarity and practical impact helps organizations maintain optimized, resilient Veeva implementations that support long-term success.

 

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Master Data and Governance in a New Life Sciences Reality

Master Data and Governance in a New Life Sciences Reality

by | Mar 19, 2026 | Events, Life Sciences, Migration Services

We are excited to share that fme will be joining the 12th Master Data and Data Governance Excellence In Life Sciences Conference, 4-5 June in Zurich, Switzerland. In the Life Sciences industry, data is no longer just an operational asset, it is the foundation for innovation, regulatory compliance, and commercial success. fme’s experts look forward to participating in these discussions to share our experience and strategies to rescue information from disconnected silos and align it with business goals.

Today, data is no longer a by-product of operations. It is a strategic asset that underpins innovation, regulatory compliance, and commercial success.

Across Regulatory, Clinical, Quality domains, organizations are entering a new data reality. Regulatory expectations, such as IDMP, are accelerating the need for structured, standardized, and interoperable data. At the same time, governance is evolving from control to enablement, where data must actively support processes, analytics, and decision-making. In addition, new AI solutions show amazing promise but are only as effective as the data they are built on.

This shift is redefining long-standing concepts. The idea of a single, static source of truth is giving way to dynamic, connected, and context-driven data ecosystems that must work seamlessly across systems and functions.

The Gap Between Ambition and Execution

Many organizations are investing in AI use cases, data governance frameworks, and master data management initiatives. However, execution remains a challenge.

  • Data is often not AI-ready.
  • Quality issues limit trust and reuse.
  • Governance frameworks exist but are not embedded in daily operations.
  • MDM approaches struggle to scale across domains and keep pace with increasing complexity.

This creates a disconnect between strategy and reality. Without trusted and governed data, transformation initiatives slow down, risk increases, and expected value is not fully realized.

How fme Translates Data Strategy into Execution

At fme, we help Life Sciences organizations turn data ambition into execution. Our approach focuses on building trusted data foundations that support transformation across the full lifecycle:

Data readiness and assessment

We help organizations understand their data landscape through system inventory, quality analysis, and risk identification. This creates clarity before transformation begins.

Master data and governance enablement

We support the design and operationalization of governance frameworks, including data ownership, metadata standards, and harmonization across domains. The focus is on making governance actionable in daily work.

Migration and transformation execution

With deep expertise in platforms such as Veeva Vault, Generis CARA, Documentum, and TrackWise, fme delivers controlled and compliant migrations. Our migration-center® technology enables scalable, repeatable, and auditable execution.

Data quality and remediation

We support ongoing data quality improvement, remediation, and post-go-live stabilization to ensure data remains trusted, usable, and aligned with evolving requirements.

A Practical Path Forward

Success in this new data reality requires more than technology. It requires scalable governance, high-quality data, and the ability to operationalize master data across domains.

fme combines domain expertise, proven methodology, and purpose-built technology to help organizations reduce risk, improve efficiency, and unlock the full value of their data.

Meet Us at the Conference

We look forward to connecting at the 12th Master Data and Data Governance Excellence in Life Sciences Conference and discussing how Life Sciences organizations can move from ambition to execution.

If you are navigating data complexity, regulatory pressure, or AI readiness, let’s connect. We’d love to discuss your challenges, and share our proven strategies and solutions to complex information management challenges.

Contact Us