Your Veeva Vault was perfectly aligned with the business when you went live. Three years later, something has started to creak. Teams work around the system instead of with it. Reports require manual manipulation. Simple requests turn into small projects.
This is the evolution gap – and it happens more often than most organizations expect.
We recently explored this challenge in our second Unlocking the Vault webinar, digging into why this disconnect emerges and how to bridge it without disrupting operations.
The message was clear: the gap is inevitable, but it's entirely manageable with the right approach.
What became obvious during our discussion is that evolution gaps aren't implementation failures. They're natural consequences of change.
Every business process undergoes evolution driven by five key factors: mature solutions impacted by changing business needs, new opportunities, harmonization drivers, industry shifts, and technology updates. Meanwhile, system configurations stay frozen unless deliberately updated.
As Hannah Greiner put it: "Look into your SOPs, your work instructions, your training materials – if they haven't changed in a year, your system probably hasn't either. But your business certainly has evolved during that time."
The challenge is keeping these two moving parts synchronized.
One thing our experts agreed on: smart organizations don't wait for evolution gaps to become obvious. They watch for early warning signs.
The clearest red flag? When teams start building manual processes to compensate for system limitations.
"When people start extracting data to build reports manually, that's the biggest red flag," Neel Patel warned. "If your team is regularly stitching together information in Excel rather than using Vault's reporting capabilities, your system has stopped serving its core purpose."
Other warning signs include:
What struck me in our conversation was how often teams jump straight to solutions. This reactive approach typically makes things worse by addressing symptoms rather than root causes.
The smarter approach starts with data, not assumptions. Usage reports reveal how teams actually interact with the system versus how they're supposed to. Basic diagnostic tools are often the most revealing.
"Start with usage data. Basic reports show how users truly interact with the system," Neel explained. "Something as basic as a usage report can be a telltale for how your users are experiencing the system."
The critical question isn't "what's broken?" but "does our current configuration still support our business objectives?"
One of the most surprising insights from our discussion was how often evolution gaps require simplification rather than additional features.
Over-configuration turns out to be more common – and more damaging – than under-configuration. What seemed like smart customization during implementation can become an agility killer as business needs evolve.
As Anastasia Wengrowski explained:
"A common gap we observe is related to over-configuration. At that point in time when we were implementing the process, it may have served the business really well. But over-configuration sacrifices flexibility."
Hannah offered a practical test for identifying unnecessary complexity:
"If I have a reporting and a KPI, will I actually do something differently based on that KPI? If that has zero impact on how I'm operating, then you probably have something that is historically grown rather than value-adding."
But the real goal isn't just closing one gap – it's preventing future ones. That requires treating system evolution as an ongoing capability.
What we learned is that successful organizations align their internal improvement cycles with Veeva's predictable release schedule. This creates systematic touchpoints for evaluating alignment rather than reactive fire-fighting.
"Governance is hardest at first, but the predictable release cadence soon builds rigour," Anastasia noted. "As cycles repeat, there begins to develop rigor around evaluating business and system needs."
The key insight: group improvements into meaningful use cases that support broader business objectives, rather than chasing individual feature requests.
Another clear theme emerged around budgeting. Many evolution gaps stem from misunderstanding SaaS economics – budgeting for licenses and maintenance while treating continuous improvement as optional.
Hannah was blunt about this: "If you do not want to adopt any new features, if you don't want to do this evergreen approach, Veeva is the wrong software for you."
The most successful implementations build improvement funding into base budgets rather than treating it as annual add-ons. This enables consistent progress while avoiding the cycle of constantly requesting additional funding.
What came through clearly in our discussion is that the difference between teams that master evolution gaps and those that struggle isn't technical sophistication – it's process maturity.
"Treat it like a project plan," Hannah recommended. "You need a project manager that drives that, pulls everything together, the different initiatives, the tasks that need to be done, a cross-functional team."
We consistently see three organizational patterns:
The advanced teams don't just solve current problems – they build muscle memory that prevents future gaps from becoming operational disruptions.
The evolution gap will happen again. That much is certain. Your business will continue changing, Veeva will continue innovating, and new misalignments will emerge.
But organizations that treat gap management as a core competency maintain continuous alignment between business needs and system capabilities. They don't just fix problems – they build the capability to evolve systematically.
Done right, it keeps your Vault working for your business instead of against it.
Next up in the series: How to sustain institutional knowledge and maintain Vault expertise as teams and priorities change. Join us July 8th to explore strategies that protect your organization's know-how over time.
We enjoy sharing our knowledge. Get in touch to find out how Epista can add value to your Life Science company.
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