Life sciences organizations are facing both intense pressure and extraordinary opportunity, according to Mark Sullivan, president of regulated industries at Salesforce. In a conversation with The Top Line’s Chris Hayden, Sullivan said companies too often operate in “survival mode,” focused on defending margins rather than leading innovation. But with the rise of AI and agentic technologies, he said, the industry is poised for a transformation that could reshape how drugs are developed, trials conducted and patient data used — all at greater speed and lower cost. In fact, a recent Salesforce study found that 94% of life sciences leaders expect AI agents to be critical for scaling organizational capacity and strengthening operations.
Sullivan emphasized that this new era requires rethinking how companies engage with stakeholders. Instead of distant, one-way interactions, he said, agentic AI enables dynamic, conversational relationships that improve satisfaction and generate actionable insights. Salesforce, he noted, is expanding beyond its CRM roots to help life science enterprises become “agentic” organizations — integrating secure, compliant AI systems across finance, HR and supply chains. With data security and trust at the core, Sullivan called on leaders to look beyond software replacement and pursue true digital transformation for the good of patients and the industry alike
Recording:
You are listening to a sponsored episode of the Top Line.
Chris Hayden:
Welcome everyone. You're listening to the Top Line, brought to you by Fierce Pharma and Fierce Biotech, and I'm your host today, Chris Hayden. Today's episode is sponsored by Salesforce, and today we're lucky enough to be joined by Mark Sullivan, President of Regulated Industries down at Salesforce. Mark, it would be great if you could just introduce yourself to the audience.
Mark Sullivan:
Yeah, Chris, thanks for having me here today. I'm Mark Sullivan, President at Salesforce, responsible for healthcare, life sciences, financial services, and I also have the responsibility over Canada. So we call that Collectively Regulated industries and Canada.
Chris Hayden:
We'll jump right into the questions. Mark, the life science industry is facing a significant headwinds like rising costs and regulatory scrutiny, and at the same time we're seeing incredible opportunities with new technologies like AI. So from your perspective, what is the most important transformation a life science company must undertake to not just survive, but also to thrive in this environment?
Mark Sullivan:
I think we are often approached in what I would call survival mode, life science companies under some form of duress around their margins or whatever issues they're trying to get to. And we think it's such a unique opportunity because of how technology has evolved to genuinely transform not any individual company, but honestly the entire industry. How drugs are found, how they're manufactured, how they're distributed, the pace with which you can conduct trials, the insight, the data that can be shared. It's going to be meaningfully disruptive I think, to this industry and these agentic capabilities, conversational agent capabilities where you can add digital labor into your workforce in a way that profoundly changes how fast you can go, the things that you can do, and you can do that at a fraction of the cost of what it once costs. If you want to enter new markets or develop new drawings. There's things that we can do now that just simply could never have been done before.
So I think those that are defensive might be looking at it the wrong way. It's definitely a moment, in my opinion, to be playing offense in this industry, and really aggressively leading out with some of the transformational opportunities that the industry has to offer.
Chris Hayden:
So this transformation seems to be driven by a radical shift in how companies engage with their stakeholders. So what does this modern effective engagement look like? And how is AI, particularly Agentic AI, changing the game for life science professionals?
Mark Sullivan:
In the simplest way, you now have a conversational model with your stakeholders. We've all worked hard in most industries, including this one, to avoid our customers. That sounds bizarre, but it's quite true. It's awfully hard to get through and have a conversation with any provider anywhere, or any company that you're trying to engage with. I think those days are ending, and creating a much more conversational inter-relationship between customers, or members and companies. And that offers a distinct opportunity not only to have a much higher level of satisfaction for all those stakeholders, but also to learn from them. There's so much that can be learned and harvested to be better, to serve them more effectively and more intelligently at a pace that perhaps has never been seen before.
I think it's just essential to reset. We've been in the customer business our entire lives here at Salesforce. Reset. What does it mean to have a relationship with your customer and how do you conduct having that relationship? That is transforming in a very meaningful way because the technology that exists today simply did not exist yesterday. We think that is a tremendous opportunity for differentiation and impact in the industry that just didn't exist before.
Chris Hayden:
The pharmaceutical industry is at a critical juncture regarding its CRM systems. So how should life science organizations be approaching this? And what should they be considering when making this choice?
Mark Sullivan:
Look, we're in the CRM business and we have been forever, and I'd argue we've set the standard. We're a great CRM company. Our stock symbol is CRM, for goodness sakes. And so we often, it starts there. As these pharmaceutical companies think about CRM, they certainly reach out to us and we want to have that conversation. I think it's challenging at times for me, but we want to pivot not away, but to have a broader aperture on how we conduct that conversation. CRM is very important, but there are other things that need to be done in order to make sure that you're operating as an Agentic enterprise, if you're working towards being a comprehensive Agentic enterprise where agents are involved in all things that you do. It doesn't necessarily have to only be your CRM. It can be your finance organization, it can be your HR organization, it can be all the aspects of your supply chain business if you're a med tech organization.
There's so many different ways that we can have an impact from our platform using our capabilities. So the reach for Salesforce has extended, I think materially so, and the customers that have understood how to leverage that reach and become more impactful are our best customers. I think they often start with, "Why would I ask my CRM company to work with me on other enterprise opportunities?" And then when they understand what we're capable of doing now with respect to our platform, our data cloud, the agent force capabilities where they can build their own agents and have them operate anywhere they like, that impact is profound. And we think there's a unique advantage for what we do simply because we did start with CRM. I have that customer data, I have that insight today of all the different types of data that are useful in an agentic world. That customer data is certainly a wonderful place to start because it creates insights like no other area.
So usually it becomes a starting ground, not a finishing ground as we move forward, but it's a very smart place to start that extends into other capabilities within the enterprise.
Chris Hayden:
Yeah, the CRM is the foundation of the house and everything else is built around that, right?
Mark Sullivan:
There are people that might argue differently. We disagree. I think you see a lot of other companies, hyperscalers, people can build agents. Everybody knows how to build an agent, and they can build an agent. There will be multi-branded agents that will work with Salesforce agents at the end of the day. Some of that activity will happen outside of the CRM space, and some of it of course is happening inside of the CRM space. All customers continue to want to have better CRM capabilities, which is very important. But what we're seeing is whether it starts outside of CRM or within CRM, changing that experience entirely for your customer. And it's not just about having insights anymore about your customer, it's about engaging and having conversations with those customers, in a way that's vastly more intelligent and serviceable.
And so no matter where that starts, it comes back to that at the end of the day. And so we often, because we are the CRM company, sometimes it starts with CRM then radiates elsewhere, but it doesn't have to. There are other companies that offer agents that we're fine to work with them, but in the future you'll see many enterprises that have multi-branded agents that are operating together. But we think the differentiation of our platform and how we manage data allows for that capability, frankly better than any other provider in the technology world.
Chris Hayden:
So trust is paramount in a highly regulated industry like life sciences, A major concern for leaders is security and the compliance of their data, especially with the increased use of connected data and AI. So how does Salesforce ensure a trusted, secure and compliant environment for its customers?
Mark Sullivan:
Well, first of all, your data is always your data. It's never our data. We don't have to see it, touch it, none of that. Just because you're operating on Salesforce platform it is still your data. You drive all the access and manage that, and we work tirelessly to make sure that that is secure and done in a way that is very intelligent. Two key points. I think as the world has evolved, and there are different LLMs, and there are different ways to do agentic work, that creates new security threats and new challenges. Sharing data or patient data or something as critical as that with random LLMs and leaving those footprints behind, is a very dangerous thing for those patients. It's untenable. And so we've worked very hard to make sure that we have what we refer to as a trust layer for all interactions, regardless of what LLM you're working with.
So nothing's left behind, everything's encrypted, everything's auditable, everything is screened for toxicity or hallucinations, and things like that that are very, very important. So I just don't think it's possible for any enterprise company to operate without those types of safety standards. And we do operate in some very aggressive, regulated industries. I lead that work here at Salesforce. And so we have to win there. We have to understand the dynamics of those environments and make sure that we're doing this to the satisfaction of our patients and our customers, to make sure that they're always in compliance. That if there are questionable things that are happening, that those are call-outs that an agent will actually go get the attention of the appropriate human, whether that's a chief officer, whoever that might be, to make sure that the right decisions are made and you're not creating a threatening circumstance for that.
That's number one on just how things come together. Number two is just we've got to be resilient. We've got to be available at all times, and we've got to make sure that we're not penetrable, or bad actors can't get into this model in the future. And so we put a lot of energy into that to make sure that as our capabilities expand beyond just CRM, and we get more deeply involved in back office activities or other things, we've got to make sure that our resiliency capabilities meet that requirement and are always available and accessible to our customers. So we put a lot of energy into being secure, and accessible and not being able to get gamed in an ever-changing environment. The security threats today are unlike anything we have ever seen. There's not a day that goes by where we don't discover something new, but where a lot of our energy is invested right now.
Chris Hayden:
Technology's being rolled out so quickly. So you're trying to stay ahead of that security wise, it's got to be a challenge for you, Mark. It's got to keep you awake at night.
Mark Sullivan:
It is a challenge. It's a unique time in history in that often the engineers may have lagged behind the dreamy marketers who they had a promise. I don't think that's true right now. I think ironically, the capabilities in the AI world and the engineering advancements are out ahead of customers, are out ahead of patients, are out ahead of companies. And everyone is trying to learn what is now possible. But what's possible today will be enhanced greatly even two weeks from today. The pace of this change is unlike anything we've ever seen before. And that creates a different dynamic in that what's arriving at your doorstep, and the technical capabilities that arrive at your doorstep are so sophisticated, and so new that it's hard to even understand how to keep those capabilities secure, and trusted and managed in a way that is intelligent.
And so we're putting a lot of energy into that. It's a huge time to be curious, and we spend a lot of time with our customers, educating them about what's possible, and where the threats are and where they aren't, and how we think about that, but making sure that we meet their needs and their standards along the way.
Chris Hayden:
As we close out, for any life science leaders who are evaluating their technology partners, what is your key message for them? Why should they choose Salesforce as their number one trusted partner to help them build for their future?
Mark Sullivan:
I think sometimes our customers think about, "Hey, I'm on application X and I'd love to come to application Y." And I think that's a myopic way to think about this. If a customers on Veeva and where they used to be a great partner, and they often think, should we come to Salesforce Life Sciences Cloud? And of course we would love to welcome you on Salesforce Life Sciences Cloud, but that's not exclusively how we think about it. We would like to engage with customers that truly want to transform this industry, not just replace an application. And we want to make sure that we're deeply embedded, and committed, and invested in this industry so that we can transform it so drugs are available faster. So the impact on these companies financially is more acceptable, and measurable and manageable. So we're thinking bigger than just, "Hey, you've got application X and come on over to application Y. That's not how we think about it.
Are you interested in transforming your company and the industry? That's what we want to do. And of course, we have applications and a broader set of capabilities that we believe genuinely will do that. And the passion and commitment at Salesforce to do that is higher than I've ever seen it, because we think the impact of this goes beyond just the financial metrics of a pharmaceutical company, but it goes to the betterment of the world, the accessibility of healthcare, the advancements in correcting diseases and putting ourselves in a better place. So it's a very purposeful moment in time where we think this technology will have an unbelievable impact, and we couldn't be more excited about that.
Chris Hayden:
That was great. Thank you so much, Mark. And thank you for joining us on this episode of the Top Line. I'm your host, Chris Hayden. For more information. You can learn more in our show notes at Fierce Biotech or Fierce Pharma, and that's the bottom line from the top line.