Blog
Beyond Semantic Search: Building Intelligent Enterprise Search with Ontology
Problem Statement: The same drug can go by four different names depending on who's talking: a brand name like Tylenol, a generic name like Acetaminophen, an abbreviation like APAP, or an international name like Paracetamol. To a person, these obviously mean the same...
The need for an Enterprise Swiss Knife to automate Data Testing Projects
Over the past decade, one common factor that stood out across all the Digital Transformation Projects we have delivered is the consistent need for a flexible Data Testing Automation Platform that supports multiple scenarios depending on the project’s context. For...
Building an Advanced Intent-Aware RAG Pipeline for Regulated Domains
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has evolved far beyond simple “retrieve and generate” architectures. In regulated domains like life sciences—where data is fragmented across systems like Promomats, medical repositories, and scientific literature—precision,...
Powering AI-Driven Insights from Vault CRM Using Databricks
Problem Statement In life sciences, CRM data is central to driving commercial effectiveness, capturing every interaction between field representatives and healthcare professionals (HCPs). While platforms like Vault CRM manage this data at scale, its true value...
Content Delivery Excellence Using Veeva PromoMats
In the life sciences industry, delivering compliant, high-quality content across global markets is critical for success. Marketing and medical teams face challenges like fragmented workflows, regulatory complexity, and the need for speed in omnichannel campaigns. At...
Chat with PDF — Solution Overview
Problem Statement Users need a feature that enables them to upload PDFs from their local devices, view them directly in the portal (either maximized or in a new tab), and ask questions about the content to receive AI-generated answers. The main challenges involve...
The Ultimate Enterprise OpenSearch Connector Ecosystem
Most enterprise faces the same challenge: valuable knowledge is scattered across disconnected systems. Sales records hide inside Salesforce. Clinical trial data lives in Veeva Vault. Marketing assets pile up in Google Drive and Box. Petabytes of raw data sit untouched...
Salesforce Health Cloud vs Life Sciences Cloud
Salesforce offers powerful solutions tailored to the healthcare and life sciences industries to drive innovation and improve operational efficiency. While Salesforce Health Cloud and Salesforce Life Sciences Cloud are both built on the Salesforce platform and share...
Salesforce Life Sciences Cloud and Veeva CRM: Big Changes Coming
The big news is that starting in September 2025 the partnership between Salesforce and Veeva will officially end. The Veeva Package that runs in salesforce will still be supported, however it's clear that this is a big change and will require planning and execution to...
Salesforce Health Cloud: Transforming Healthcare with Technology
Salesforce Health Cloud is a patient relationship management solution created to address the specific needs of the healthcare Industry. Healthcare is a complex multi-pronged industry. I have worked for some of the leading healthcare companies for over a decade...
Empowering Data-Driven Decisions in Life Sciences with Salesforce Experience Cloud
The life sciences industry is experiencing a paradigm shift. Organizations are no longer just focused on developing life-saving drugs and therapies—they are now harnessing the power of data to enhance efficiency, reduce time to market, and, ultimately, improve patient...
Beyond Supply Chain Shocks: Building Resilient Life Sciences Ecosystems with Salesforce Experience Cloud
Global disruptions, unexpected demand surges, and regulatory complexities have long tested the resilience of supply chains in the life sciences sector. From the challenges posed by manufacturing delays to managing critical inventory shortages, these persistent issues...
Veeva Vault PromoMats: Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
Introduction: Why PromoMats Optimization Matters Veeva Vault PromoMats plays a critical role in pharmaceutical marketing by ensuring compliance and accelerating speed-to-market. However, many companies face PromoMats implementation challenges that hinder the system’s...
5 Ways to Streamline MLR Review with Managed Services
Introduction: The Cost of Slow MLR Cycles In the pharmaceutical industry, time is more than money—it's patient care, competitive advantage, and regulatory standing. One of the biggest bottlenecks in the content supply chain is the Medical-Legal-Regulatory (MLR)...
How to Stay Audit-Ready with Veeva Vault Workflows
Introduction: Why Audit Readiness Matters in Pharma In the pharmaceutical industry, regulatory scrutiny is not just a formality—it's a constant reality. From FDA 2253 submissions to compliance with 21 CFR Part 11, companies must maintain airtight audit trails and...
How to Build Compliance-Ready Content in PromoMats: Meeting Health Authority Requirements
In the highly regulated world of life sciences, marketing teams must walk a fine line between compelling content and compliance. Promotional materials that don’t align with FDA, EMA, or other health authority requirements can lead to costly delays, fines, or...
Best Practices for Standardized Workflow Design in Veeva Vault PromoMats to Minimize Compliance Risk
In the fast-paced world of pharmaceutical and life sciences marketing, getting promotional materials reviewed and approved efficiently while maintaining strict compliance is paramount. Veeva Vault PromoMats offers a powerful platform to manage this critical process....
Why Pharmaceutical Companies Should Choose Veeva Vault PromoMats for Commercial Content Management
The pharmaceutical industry operates within an intricate web of regulations, making the management of commercial content and promotional materials a highly complex endeavor. Companies must navigate stringent guidelines that vary significantly across different geographies.
Advanced Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) Techniques
Introduction to RAG Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is an innovative framework that combines information retrieval with language model capabilities to generate contextually accurate responses. Unlike traditional approaches that require fine-tuning language...
Enhancing Patent Management via Amazon SageMaker and AWS Bedrock
Introduction Organizations faced a daunting challenge—managing and extracting meaningful insights from the vast volumes of patent documents. These documents, often structured & semi-structured , held crucial information but were buried under layers of complexity....
Unlocking Efficiency Through Value Stream Management in an Organization
In few organizations, where most of us work on projects for the same client, collaboration and efficiency are key to delivering value. Despite our size, there’s immense potential to optimize our processes and save time by leveraging shared knowledge and aligning...
Musings on Veeva Vault and Salesforce
The Life Sciences commercial industry (specifically, BioTech/Pharma) is at an exciting juncture with Salesforce and Veeva at the forefront. Both companies bring exceptional value from different perspectives and I deeply respect each of them. Given the recent...
Enhancing Salesforce Experience Cloud with Geolocation-Based Access Control Using Google Maps API
In today’s global digital landscape, organizations must often tailor their online experiences to comply with regional regulations, language preferences, or specific marketing strategies. Implementing country-based access restrictions can be crucial for companies...
Streamlining Security with Google reCAPTCHA v3 in Salesforce Experience Cloud
As online threats become more sophisticated, securing web applications is a top priority. Integrating Google reCAPTCHA v3 into your Salesforce Experience Cloud ensures that your platform can distinguish between real users and bots, enhancing overall security. In this...
Unlocking Customer Engagement: A Primer on Salesforce Experience Cloud – Part 1
What is Experience Cloud ? Intended Audience: Engineering Experience Cloud or most of us oldies know it as Communities, is a social platform which is provided by Salesforce to seamlessly connect the business trio namely Employees, Customers and Partners. But this is...
Leveraging LLMs for extracting Tabular Data through Table Transformers
Leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) for extracting table and text data through table transformers involves using advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to analyze and understand structured and unstructured data in a more nuanced manner. Let's break...
Elevating User Experience: Integrating Salesforce Experience Cloud with Coveo Search
Introduction: In today's digital era, providing a seamless and personalized user experience is paramount for businesses looking to stay ahead of the curve. Salesforce Experience Cloud has emerged as a powerful platform for building immersive digital experiences...
Understanding Coveo Cognitive Insights
Coveo Cognitive Insights is a set of features and capabilities offered by Coveo, a leading provider of intelligent search and relevance solutions for businesses. Coveo Cognitive Insights leverages AI and machine learning to enhance the search and relevance...
Integrating Google Chat with Coveo
Businesses rely on effective and streamlined solutions to improve cooperation and efficiency in the constantly changing world of digital communication. Many businesses have chosen Coveo as their preferred enterprise search platform because of its strength. However,...
Building Enterprise Search Solutions using Knowledge Graphs
Knowledge graphs are becoming increasingly important in the field of information retrieval and search technologies, as they enable more effective organization, representation, and retrieval of data and information. A knowledge graph is a data structure that captures...
Using Data Connectors to Integrate with Veeva Vault
Data connectors in Coveo are components that enable the integration and indexing of data from different sources into the Coveo platform. They extract and ingest data from systems, applications, databases, and repositories, allowing users to search and retrieve...
AI and Machine Learning in Enterprise Search
Machine learning plays a pivotal role in modern business success. With machine learning, businesses can optimize their site's search functionality to deliver more relevant, personalized results, enhancing user experience and driving engagement. At Focalcxm, we have...
Natural Language Processing and Relevancy Tuning in Coveo
Coveo's Relevance Cloud employs Natural Language Processing (NLP) as a critical component of its AI-powered search and recommendation solutions. Utilizing intelligent search algorithms, these solutions understand user intent by analyzing content, context, and user...
Signature capability on Salesforce applications
Overview:- This blog is about integrating Adobe eSign to Salesforce using Apex. Audience: Engineering Often times Contract management, Order management, and many other applications on the Salesforce platform need signature capabilities to adhere to compliances, to...
Gantt Chart for Salesforce
Enterprise platforms such as Salesforce provide great flexibility, UI patterns, reusable components etc that solve most of the use cases. However, oftentimes, due to the way certain personas work, they need special UI elements that may not be part of the core...
The Rise of Insight Engines
Over the last few years, as my team started understanding more of Coveo and the applications within the workspace for Enterprise Search, we did some analysis around the progress in this space. In this blog, we would like to share our findings on the history and a...
Coveo for Pharma
In this blog, we will talk about the challenges faced by various stakeholders in the pharmaceutical industry and how Coveo can help them find RELEVANT content quickly and easily. Pharmaceutical enterprises have scientific content spread across multiple databases,...
Data Reconciliation & Rebates
Across many industries, Rebates are used by Manufacturers as a powerful tactic to improve customer loyalty. In this blog, I would like to walk you through an example with respect to a challenge associated with the rebate related processing. In the Animal Health...
Project Execution: Thoughts from the trenches
In the recent past, we had to deep dive into a few projects and execute them at a fairly rapid pace with very tight budgets; one of the most challenging aspects of this is that the requirements do not exist or they are incomplete and there is not enough time to meet...
Leveraging Coveo Search to index the Drupal website pages
Overview: This blog outlines the Drupal Integration into the Coveo Search. Target Audience: Search Engineers Problem-Statement: Every customer/user should be able to search for the items(pages) in coveo from the drupal website. To index the pages from drupal website...
Rule Driven Assessments & Scoring of Leads, Accounts, Opportunities in Salesforce
In typical CRM platforms, Leads, Opportunities and Accounts have a set of statuses as part of the funnel/pipeline management. As an example, a software company may maintain the following stages for an "Opportunity" object in Salesforce: Prospecting Discovery Demo...
Leveraging OmniStudio Components to deliver a Customer 360 View in Salesforce
Sales Reps expect a 360-degree view of a customer as part of the CRM rollouts. From an IT perspective, this includes retrieving data from multiple systems such as SAP, Salesforce, Business Intelligence Platforms, Rebate Systems, manipulating the data, and then finally...
Extending Salesforce Field Service Mobile App
Overview: In one of the recent projects, we had to extend Salesforce FSL mobile application to launch StoryPulse (http://storypulse.com) to capture few additional data points and signatures in the field. In this blog, I would like to explain a practical example to...
Leveraging Vlocity’s FlexCard to show CX Score
Overview: This blog outlines the implementation of Vlocity FlexCard to show CX Score. Target Audience: Business Analysts, CRM Engineering Problem Statement: Every Customer-Facing Team Member should be able to see a tile/widget that shows the selected account's CX...
Dynamic Lead Assessments with Decision Manager
Overview: This blog outlines implementation details of OpenRules Decision Manager. Target Audience: Engineering Problem Statement: Oftentimes, in CRM systems, the status/stage of Lead, Opportunity or other should drive the assessments to be presented, information to...
Salesforce 2GP and Namespace
Salesforce’s second-generation packaging (2GP) is a new way to develop, distribute, and manage apps and metadata on the AppExchange. The 2GP is considerably different from the first generation packaging (1GP). In this blog, the primary focus is on the role of...
S3—>Athena—>QuickSight
FocalCXM builds enterprise mobile applications with modern cloud architecture and tries to solve many life sciences problems. In this journey, we came across this use case, in one of our Product called Folio. A little intro about Folio: Folio is a Strategic...
CICD Process Setup for a Salesforce Project
Code migration in Salesforce development is not a straightforward process because of the multitude of artifacts that need to gracefully move from one environment to another. Salesforce and several partners in the ecosystem offer several ways for a successful...
FocalCXM announces a new partnership with OpenRules Inc.
FocalCXM is pleased to partner with OpenRules, Inc. Over the last few years, we have been able to solve complex Decision Modeling problems by using Rule and Decision Engines developed by OpenRules, Inc. By integrating Enterprise CRM platforms such as Salesforce, Veeva...
FocalCXM is pulling the AutoRABIT out of the hat in 2020
FocalCXM is excited to announce a new partnership with AutoRABIT, a leader in metadata-aware Automated Release Management and Backup & Recovery for Salesforce. Together, we aim to improve the user experience for our customers across the globe by enhancing our...
Thinking Better in 2020 & Beyond
Almost 15 years ago, when I was in Engineering, my boss at that time, Ameet Nayak, had introduced me to a concept called "Parallel Thinking." I am forever indebted to Ameet for the introduction and, of course, Edward De Bono for his work in the "Thinking" field. This...
LabPulse WhitePaper
Managing laboratory experiments seamlessly and efficiently isn’t always easy. There are increased demands for more testing, higher standards for quality & data compliance, the need to minimize overhead and the emphasis on proper tracking and data management....
Salesforce Partnership
FocalCXM is delighted to announce our exciting new partnership with Salesforce. We have been training tirelessly to build our Salesforce capabilities to continue delivering Remarkable Experiences. Congratulations to all our Trailblazers. #focalcxm #salesforce...
Alexa Skill Development Using Python & AWS Lambda
At Focal, we are excited about Alexa. We are confident that voice will truly disrupt experiences across the CRM spectrum of Marketing, Sales and Service. With that fervor, we recently did a small experiment to see how Alexa can improve our support experience. So, we...
Leveraging xAPI to deliver Customer 360 Applications & Insights
Two years back, we accidentally stumbled upon Experience API (xAPI), an e-learning specification developed by Advanced Distributed Learning (https://www.adlnet.gov/xapi/). The standard allows learning content and learning systems to speak to each other and track all...
Programming Alexa: Initial Hurdles
This time around, Voice is real. Google Home andAmaon'sAlexa have started pervading our lives with meaningful experiences. As most of you are aware, Alexa is an intelligent personal assistance device developed by Amazon. Alexa does many useful things such as playing...
Python Rest Services on CSV Data
Web service dependencies are very common in client server application development. In many cases client application development may get completed before server, in such case client application cannot be tested fully as real services and data is not ready. Many tools...
Business Process Management Using Oracle Process Cloud: Drag it. Drop It. Deploy it. Forget it.
The current buzz word these days seems to be cloud and AWS for cloud services. We seem to be going toward the Everything as a Service (EaaS). I even read recently in LinkedIn about a company offering Employee as a Service (EaaS), a very novice way of providing Staff...
Using Oracle Integration Cloud
Gone are the days when one has to write lines and lines of code to integrate multiple seemingly completely disparate applications to solve business functions!! Thanks to Enterprise Solution Bus like the Oracle Integration Cloud Services (ICS), along with its plethora...
Bulk Uploads to CRMOD
Often client applications need to insert/update millions of records such as leads, orders etc into CRMOD. CRMOD regular web services allow max 20 records per request, so if you want to push 1M activities, you have to make 50,000 calls, which can be painful! As an...
Database Testing Tools for Agile Practioners
We are obsessed with continuous improvement @ Focal. Every day, we work hard to come up with fresh ideas to deliver stuff faster, better and cheaper to our customers. We are extremely passionate about building great software and as a Product Development Services firm,...
flyDEL: 1 Month. 1 “A” Team. 1 Mission.
We recently got the opportunity to work with GMR Group and launch “flyDEL”, the official airport application for New Delhi Airport. It was one of the most challenging rides we had in delivering apps on Android and iOS platforms within a month. In this process, we...
Core Value # 1: LOVE 🙂
LOVE is one of the core values for FocalCXM. The concept may sound warm and fuzzy but I personally feel that it is critical and will have a deep impact on my team, our customers,the products and services we deliver. The inspiration behind this is a spiritual education...
CRM & Small Businesses
At Focal, we are blessed to be working not only with large organizations but also smaller ones that offer services in specific verticals; financial, education, construction etc. I am passionate about CRM/CX, enjoy working with smaller companies and helping them...
Modification Tracking in Oracle CRM On Demand
Often, there is a need for applications that integrate with CRM Platforms to know when objects get modified/created/deleted in the CRM systems. A simple use case is let's say there is a minor territory re-alignment and the accounts get redistributed. How would the...
Inspiration behind FocalCXM
In my first blog on Focal, I thought I'd take a moment and write down the inspiration behind founding FocalCXM. 1.Gaps: There are excellent CRM platforms out there in the market today. However, as an Engineer and a Product Strategist in the CRM space for over a...