Bracco is an Italian run private company. It specializes in CT, MRI, and (now) ultrasound contrast. Although they have a plethora of barium products as well.
The Good: Smaller company with about 60-80 reps. A pension. If you do well you will be noticed. Longevity with a lot mature employees in the sales force. Not unusual to see a good percentage over 10 or 20 years of tenure. Nice company car choices. If you have a good manager you have a lot of freedom (although that is changing).
The Bad: Best days are behind them. Continue to struggle with allocations due to iodine shortages and overexpansion of customer base without a plentiful supply of product. Has a Good ole' Boys Club in upper management. If they don't like you or you don't play their game, your chances of moving up the ladder are little to zero. No pipeline. Continue to sign deals that are sketchy to shockingly desperate. Base salary is well below national average for experienced reps
My opinion:
I have been at Bracco many years. I have seen the good times, and now the bad. It was once a very good place to work, even with being underpaid. Lots of freedom and little turnover. The saying inside Bracco was, "you have to try hard to be fired." Good products with solid reputations. The last few years have seen things change. I guess it happens to every company eventually. Bracco continues to struggle with allocations on both CT and MR contrast, but CT is by far the biggest problem. So lets start there.
Isovue: Iodine based CT contrast. If I'm not mistaken, it is the most sold CT contrast in the world. Good product that customer appreciate. Does not make the company any money. Over sold it, even when they knew there were shortages of raw material, putting them in a pickle. Still mismanage it to this day. Reps are no longer paid bonus on Isovue, but this product continues to take 90% of their day. Burnout is occurring company-wide, but upper management has no solutions, nor do they seem to care.
The Isovue allocations have been going on/off almost 10 years now. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. GE is the main competition, which, over years, forced prices down to where neither company makes money off off of their CT contrast. Instead of rising prices years ago, Bracco decided to lose on it to protect MRI business. That is going to end up being a major mistake. Bad communications with customers during the last major shortages (when GE stopped producing product for multiple months) was embarrassing. A perfect time to tell customers that a price increase was coming because, well, you have been losing on it for years, and a thing called Supply and Demand. Too much to get into here. I'll let others debate it. As I mentioned, reps are no longer compensated with Isovue. Don't give me the "you get a base salary, so you are compensated. One, the base pay and merit increases at Bracco are FAR below the norm, and reps went 2 years during Covid with no merit increases. Second, Reps are motivated by bonus. It's that simple!... A $75 Amazon card for months of being yelled at by CT customers isn't going to cut it TS! That was pathetic. Oh wait, it did go towards my hobby though.
Isovue is a nightmare. Now the company has reduced SKU's to 11, or half of what they once had. Communication to customers on this has been poorly executed. Little to no warning, and a mindset that "it's just the way it is." Reps and managers continue to struggle daily and feel more like Customer Service Reps than Sales Reps. Inexcusably poor ways to manage allocations in a little thing we use called the Strategic Account Tool. I keep wondering if Bracco has 8th graders working on IT. If I explained what has to go into increasing or even adjusting a customers allocation you would pull all of your hair out. Again, no innovation in this area. It's like we are working in DOS. No one seems to care about it either, It's a "we've done it this way for years and it worked, so why change now" mentality. I'll say two things, Sears and Kmart.
MRI: MultiHance is a good product, but if you are familiar with the layout of MR, linear contrasts days are about over. Macrocyclic's have taken over. ProHance does okay, but its reputation for nausea still haunts it. This brings us to gadolpiclenol (Vueway, for the Bracco reps). It is the newest of the macrocyclic MR contrasts. Improved imaging with the gadolinium washout of a macrocyclic. Sounds like a winner, right? Well, it's Geurbet's product that we contracted to copromote with them. They will have the same (exact) product, but under a different packaging and price. Their product will be considered a name brand and Bracco's a generic. Their product will (most-likely) be less expensive. I don't have to say much more than, "WHO SIGNED THIS DEAL?!?" I want to stay positive, but there is a "feeling" that (if you've worked in this business long enough, you understand) that this was a desperate attempt for Bracco to have "something/anything" new. Even if it blows up in their face. And I think in 6-9 months I will say, "Told You So!" I actually hope I'm wrong. We are talking about families and their livelihood. Why do I think it will have obstacles???? Well, if you work directly with hospitals or imaging centers, you know that costs are their number one driver. MultiHance is a good product that customers like. ProHance or Gadavist are decent products as well. I'm just not sure these customers are going to jump at a new product that is priced at a premium if other products can give them the same imaging quality, regardless of gadolinium deposition. I believe this copromote was desperation, and nothing good usually comes out of desperation.
Quick check in: Does anyone know of a company that is about to launch a new product and has no intentions of hiring more reps, or fixing issues with other products, that consume the sales reps time, so they can focus on the launch?.... Yeah, I haven't either. Seems like a huge red flag for me. Do we already know Vueway is doomed?....
Lumason: As if the Isovue allocation wasn't enough of a strain on the mental health of the Bracco sales rep, last year the company dissolved their Echo sales team and dumped Lumason on the rest of the sales team. Already spread thin, it was not well received by employees. Now having multiple products, allocation calls all day long, and no clear vision of what to do about the allocation issue, we now have ANOTHER product! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!? Oh, and from what I hear, this product seems to be having a big uptick in AE's in some territories. It also seems that the company has no reason why this is occurring, nor a solution.
Other than that, it's upper management that is the problem. A Boys Club that takes care of their own. Good people, who have more than proven themselves, not getting opportunities because they don't play the game or someone in the Club doesn't like them, Really pathetic and sad. Isn't that right, mate?! I guess the question is why there hasn't been as many people leave as one would think. Is it the pension keeping them. Have we become culture of continuing the norms, instead of trying something new? IDK. I do know that I'm about spent, and I know many others are as well. An exodus now would be a disaster for Bracco. It's coming though.
Anyway, this is my opinion on why Bracco, once an amazing place to work, is now on the slide. Sorry fo any grammatical errors.
The Good: Smaller company with about 60-80 reps. A pension. If you do well you will be noticed. Longevity with a lot mature employees in the sales force. Not unusual to see a good percentage over 10 or 20 years of tenure. Nice company car choices. If you have a good manager you have a lot of freedom (although that is changing).
The Bad: Best days are behind them. Continue to struggle with allocations due to iodine shortages and overexpansion of customer base without a plentiful supply of product. Has a Good ole' Boys Club in upper management. If they don't like you or you don't play their game, your chances of moving up the ladder are little to zero. No pipeline. Continue to sign deals that are sketchy to shockingly desperate. Base salary is well below national average for experienced reps
My opinion:
I have been at Bracco many years. I have seen the good times, and now the bad. It was once a very good place to work, even with being underpaid. Lots of freedom and little turnover. The saying inside Bracco was, "you have to try hard to be fired." Good products with solid reputations. The last few years have seen things change. I guess it happens to every company eventually. Bracco continues to struggle with allocations on both CT and MR contrast, but CT is by far the biggest problem. So lets start there.
Isovue: Iodine based CT contrast. If I'm not mistaken, it is the most sold CT contrast in the world. Good product that customer appreciate. Does not make the company any money. Over sold it, even when they knew there were shortages of raw material, putting them in a pickle. Still mismanage it to this day. Reps are no longer paid bonus on Isovue, but this product continues to take 90% of their day. Burnout is occurring company-wide, but upper management has no solutions, nor do they seem to care.
The Isovue allocations have been going on/off almost 10 years now. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. GE is the main competition, which, over years, forced prices down to where neither company makes money off off of their CT contrast. Instead of rising prices years ago, Bracco decided to lose on it to protect MRI business. That is going to end up being a major mistake. Bad communications with customers during the last major shortages (when GE stopped producing product for multiple months) was embarrassing. A perfect time to tell customers that a price increase was coming because, well, you have been losing on it for years, and a thing called Supply and Demand. Too much to get into here. I'll let others debate it. As I mentioned, reps are no longer compensated with Isovue. Don't give me the "you get a base salary, so you are compensated. One, the base pay and merit increases at Bracco are FAR below the norm, and reps went 2 years during Covid with no merit increases. Second, Reps are motivated by bonus. It's that simple!... A $75 Amazon card for months of being yelled at by CT customers isn't going to cut it TS! That was pathetic. Oh wait, it did go towards my hobby though.
Isovue is a nightmare. Now the company has reduced SKU's to 11, or half of what they once had. Communication to customers on this has been poorly executed. Little to no warning, and a mindset that "it's just the way it is." Reps and managers continue to struggle daily and feel more like Customer Service Reps than Sales Reps. Inexcusably poor ways to manage allocations in a little thing we use called the Strategic Account Tool. I keep wondering if Bracco has 8th graders working on IT. If I explained what has to go into increasing or even adjusting a customers allocation you would pull all of your hair out. Again, no innovation in this area. It's like we are working in DOS. No one seems to care about it either, It's a "we've done it this way for years and it worked, so why change now" mentality. I'll say two things, Sears and Kmart.
MRI: MultiHance is a good product, but if you are familiar with the layout of MR, linear contrasts days are about over. Macrocyclic's have taken over. ProHance does okay, but its reputation for nausea still haunts it. This brings us to gadolpiclenol (Vueway, for the Bracco reps). It is the newest of the macrocyclic MR contrasts. Improved imaging with the gadolinium washout of a macrocyclic. Sounds like a winner, right? Well, it's Geurbet's product that we contracted to copromote with them. They will have the same (exact) product, but under a different packaging and price. Their product will be considered a name brand and Bracco's a generic. Their product will (most-likely) be less expensive. I don't have to say much more than, "WHO SIGNED THIS DEAL?!?" I want to stay positive, but there is a "feeling" that (if you've worked in this business long enough, you understand) that this was a desperate attempt for Bracco to have "something/anything" new. Even if it blows up in their face. And I think in 6-9 months I will say, "Told You So!" I actually hope I'm wrong. We are talking about families and their livelihood. Why do I think it will have obstacles???? Well, if you work directly with hospitals or imaging centers, you know that costs are their number one driver. MultiHance is a good product that customers like. ProHance or Gadavist are decent products as well. I'm just not sure these customers are going to jump at a new product that is priced at a premium if other products can give them the same imaging quality, regardless of gadolinium deposition. I believe this copromote was desperation, and nothing good usually comes out of desperation.
Quick check in: Does anyone know of a company that is about to launch a new product and has no intentions of hiring more reps, or fixing issues with other products, that consume the sales reps time, so they can focus on the launch?.... Yeah, I haven't either. Seems like a huge red flag for me. Do we already know Vueway is doomed?....
Lumason: As if the Isovue allocation wasn't enough of a strain on the mental health of the Bracco sales rep, last year the company dissolved their Echo sales team and dumped Lumason on the rest of the sales team. Already spread thin, it was not well received by employees. Now having multiple products, allocation calls all day long, and no clear vision of what to do about the allocation issue, we now have ANOTHER product! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!? Oh, and from what I hear, this product seems to be having a big uptick in AE's in some territories. It also seems that the company has no reason why this is occurring, nor a solution.
Other than that, it's upper management that is the problem. A Boys Club that takes care of their own. Good people, who have more than proven themselves, not getting opportunities because they don't play the game or someone in the Club doesn't like them, Really pathetic and sad. Isn't that right, mate?! I guess the question is why there hasn't been as many people leave as one would think. Is it the pension keeping them. Have we become culture of continuing the norms, instead of trying something new? IDK. I do know that I'm about spent, and I know many others are as well. An exodus now would be a disaster for Bracco. It's coming though.
Anyway, this is my opinion on why Bracco, once an amazing place to work, is now on the slide. Sorry fo any grammatical errors.