Veeva has acquired speakers bureau management company, Physicians World.

The deal adds Physicians World speakers bureau services, from nomination and training to payment and venue logistics, to Veeva’s events division. 

The two companies have partnered for four years. Physicians World will operate as an independent business unit focused on the U.S., and it will continue to be led by CEO Mark Fleischer. Veeva will add 170 staffers via the deal.

“Over the years, our customers asked for tighter coupling of the two product offerings to make it easier to plan and execute live and virtual events in complaint way,” said Andy Fuchs, VP of commercials solutions at Veeva. “We listened to them and this acquisition is a natural extension of that collaboration.”

Fleischer said that becoming part of Veeva will give Physicians World access to clients. It will also become part of a company that is continuing to invest in the services Physicians World offers.

The deal will also provide clients with an events management platform that includes services for logistics, speaker management and compliance.

Fuchs said Veeva has about 70 customers that use its events management platform and the company puts on more than 750,000 meetings annually through that platform. A goal of the acquisition form Veeva’s side is to make that platform even simpler and easy to use for its customers. 

“Events have always been around, since my father was a doctor,” Fuchs said. “As the marketplace changed and access rates [to physicians] have gone down, the importance of having this channel [of events] has only increased. That’s one of the reasons why we see this as a natural extension.”

The pharma industry’s focus on developing specialty drugs, like rare disease and new oncology treatments, makes these peer-to-peer events even more important to pharma companies, doctors and their patients, Fleicher explained.

“Because of the continued growth of specialty pharma and biologics, which have much more significant education need around them, especially peer to peer, we’ve seen growth in our business because of that,” Fleischer said.

Veeva works with pharma companies and biotechs, providing cloud software and consulting to support the clinical, regulatory, medical and commercial parts of businesses. Its clients include Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, as well as research nonprofits and consumer health companies. 

In September, Veeva also acquired marketing analytics company Crossix for $430 million. 

This story was updated on November 7 with additional information.