Mario Bisceglia is the Chief Executive Officer of Sice Previt France, an appointment he has held since 2017 when he opened the company’s new French headquarters in Paris. An engineering and construction business, Sice Previt has a raft of top-tier clients - among them Louis Vuitton and Apple, whose flagship store on the Champs Elysees the company recently renovated under Bisceglia’s watch.
Opening a new international headquarters and delivering services to some of the best-known brands in the world of retail is a challenge that Bisceglia welcomes. His responsibilities include hiring and managing a new team, building relationships with C-level clients, and defining and executing a business plan to grow Sice Previt’s presence in France.
“There has been a lot to do since 2017,” he laughs. “We have grown our team from one – me – to 50 world-class professionals, and navigated the pandemic in-between. It’s effectively been like starting up a totally new venture on behalf of our parent company in Milan. In a sense, it’s fallen to me and to my growing team to do it all: from project management to relationship-building, to all of the administrative, financial, tax and legal dimensions of the business. It’s required a great deal of flexibility.”
Luckily, flexibility is something that Bisceglia has in plentiful supply. Before joining Sice Previt, he was a tax and legal consultant with Deloitte having started his career as an auditor. During his tenure as a consultant, both with Deloitte and within a smaller practice, he oversaw a slew of major business acquisitions and mergers, as well as deals with major international players including Amazon.
It was this wealth of experience that landed him a first role in financial administration with Sice Previt, and the offer to set up its subsidiary in France within just two years.
“I’ve done a lot and there have been so many new challenges over the last five years,” says Bisceglia. “Overseeing the transfer of workers, carpenters and manufacturing supplies from Milan to Paris and working shoulder to shoulder with CFOs and senior leaders from major organisations like Apple and Louis Vuitton has really meant building an international perspective – a new mindset, in a sense – to get things done smoothly.”
This shift in thinking from local to global was the primary motivation behind Bisceglia’s decision to come to INSEAD, and to the Finance for Executives programme specifically. Though it wasn’t about hard skills, he says.
“I already have two degrees – one of them a Masters in VAT and border tax – so I wasn’t looking for something to boost my technical skills. I really wanted a chance to understand the international mindset; to dig deep into how people from different backgrounds and cultural or business contexts have different ways of applying the numbers and metrics to negotiate."
“INSEAD is the business school for the world, so this felt like the right place to be.”
And Bisceglia was not disappointed. His cohort was comprised of 15 colleagues from 15 different countries – a diversity and richness of perspective, he says, that really gave him a chance to build new, soft skills.
“The programme really throws people together from all kinds of backgrounds. It gives you instant and invaluable exposure to different perspectives in a practical and applied learning dynamic. You get to work on projects, interacting, sharing and learning with international peers from the get-go. It really opens your mind.”
One major highlight, he says, was a simulation exercise with classmates. For Bisceglia, this was an opportunity to roleplay the acquisition of a warehouse in a diverse, multinational context – a learning experience that later played out in the real world, when he deployed much of the learning and the “affirmation” to drive the smooth acquisition of a warehouse for the company near Paris.
“The benefits of the programme have been really concrete in this sense,” says Bisceglia, “because I’ve leveraged the tools in the real-world context. Our new warehouse outside Paris will have a strategic role in developing our market.”
Bisceglia would not hesitate to recommend Finance for Executives to anyone looking to build their skills in international negotiating – and in particular, to those with any “fear of numbers.”
“The programme is fast, it’s intense and it’s incredibly well taught by INSEAD faculty who show you how to apply the concepts and the tools fast. It’s not a programme really aimed at finance experts – it’s more about building the soft skills, the mindset and the communications competencies evaluate opportunities, and to present the numbers strategically, effectively and with confidence – whatever the setting, however multicultural or international it is.”
So taken is Bisceglia with the programme and the INSEAD experience, that he now plans to take a second programme and work towards the Certificate in Global Management. Later this year, he will start the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy programme in Fontainebleau.
“The experience really has been wonderful. To me, there’s no doubt that INSEAD is the best business school in the world.”
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