About
A network of experienced professionals in the areas of business strategy, data-driven marketing, international marketing, and digital communication
Our unique approach helps you at defining and addressing specific problems and opportunities, identifying alternative solutions and moves, making and implementing the most promising decisions.
Services
The heart of our approach is combining models with our clients’ (and our own) intuition, experience, and judgment, in order to maximize the results of strategic
and operational decisions, within the context of internal and external constraints.
MODEL BASED CONSULTING
Our consulting projects are always built around a model based approach that optimizes the effectiveness and efficiency of your decisions.
MoreMANAGEMENT EDUCATION
We design, develop, and deliver custom-made programs and courses, frequently built around advanced models and learning tools.
MoreCOACHING
We can help you at identifying and overcoming specific problems and obstacles, finding and implementing solutions.
MoreIn what can you mostly excel with our help
We provide you with the most effective contents, insights, methods, and tools in the following areas.
STRATEGY AND BUSINESS PLANNING
As individual consultants and teachers, we have been working in the areas of strategic management and business planning since the early eighties of last century, in several countries. We pioneered the use of integrated spreadsheets as tools for supporting the development of business plans and assessing the market and financial viability of innovative ventures, and designed original strategic simulations that have been used for many years in different educational and managerial contexts.
DIGITAL MARKETING
Complementing marketing and business strategies with digital and innovative tools has always been at the heart of our approach. We have been among the first to implement a CRM system for an Italian company well before the CRM acronim was coined, our first website back in 2001 was a corporate blog well before the application of the blog concept to the corporate world. We are patners with Warp 7, a digital marketing and communication agency, to effectively tackle the digital side of our projects.
GLOBAL MARKETING AND BRANDING
Having worked in more than 30 countries and met hundreds of entrepreneurs and managers in many different industries, we developed an in-depth ability to
identify the key competitive success factors depending on very diverse market and competitive contexts. This experience has been used to design and develop our
business games on international marketing, used for years in several leading business schools.
QUANTITATIVE MODELS FOR MANAGEMENT
We have a passion for models and, particularly, for complementing intuition, experience, and managerial judgment with measurement and algorithms. Most of these algorithms, also based on proved decision-making theories, inferential statistics, and artificial intelligence are at the heart of the projections on competitive behavior in our business games on strategic management and international marketing.
CASE HISTORY
IFOA DL Master in Marketing, Sales and International Business
We worked for seven years with IFOA and the University of Wales (the accreditation body) to design, develop, manage and deliver the first Italian Distance Learning Master Program in International Marketing and Sales, addressed to owners and managers of SMEs interested and involved in internationalization.
UNIQUENESS
This two-year blended-learning program is still unsurpassed in 2022, in terms of both curriculum and teaching methods.
INNOVATIVENESS AND CONCRETENESS
We designed and developed a series of original learning tools that many participants have been using also in their professional practice.
COHERENCE AND INTEGRATION
Contrary to what we see in many Master programs, we designed and implemented systematic approaches and tools for coherently integrating various faculty profiles and teaching methods.
EFFECTIVENESS
Most participants found this experience extremely enriching and helpful for their careers: after about 20 years, we are still in touch with some of them.
CASE HISTORY
Ready to export
We conceived and developed a unique and innovative set of web tools that, with limited assistance by consultants or officers of various public and private organizations, help Italian SMEs in their international marketing endeavors (Ready-to-export, engineered by Ecoh Media).
UNIQUENESS
Nothing comparable currently exists in the world, in terms of both friendliness and affordability.
INTERACTIVITY AND CUSTOMIZATION
Integrated algorithms produce simulated results of the users’ decisions and estimates, and personalized feedbacks.
RELIABILITY
Selected modules have been successfully tested with several hundred clients of the most important public institution that supports Italian exports.
PERMANENT UPDATES
The data about 1,200 industry sectors in the 75 most attractive foreign countries are permanently and automatically updated.
CASE HISTORY
Market orientation of organizations
On behalf of UNI , the Italian standardization body, and the most important italian <ssociation for marketing development (AISM), we conceived and coordinated the development, together with other experts, of the first collection of best practices on Market Orientation of Organizations, an integrated set of guidelines to concretely orient any type of organization to market and customer-centricity.
This body of best practices, in Italian, was published in October 2022, and can be downloaded for free from UNI’s website after registration. The project is briefly described in this article.
UNIQUENESS
There are hundreds of national and international standards on behavioral, deontological, ethical, and social aspects, such as those on social responsibility, sustainability, work environment, and management systems, but until now there was virtually nothing on marketing guidelines, except for a few standards on branding and market research.
EXHAUSTIVENESS AND INTEGRATION
The guidelines provided by this practice are integrated into an organic and comprehensive system that describes the different types of activities (analytical, strategic and operational) needed to put market orientation into practice, the organizational functions designed to carry them out, and the performance indicators to measure their achievement.
APPLICABILITY TO ANY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION
This practice provides guidelines on market orientation to any type of public or private organization, profit or non-profit, of any size and in any business sector it operates.
FOCUS ON BENEFITS
This benchmark practice provides not only the strategic and operational guidelines for market orientation, but also highlights their benefits in terms of innovation, improved organizational aspects and economic and financial results achievable by the organizations that implement them.
CASE HISTORIES
Business games
It is widely known, at least in the field of management education, that business games (simulations in which the results obtained by each player are also influenced by the decisions made by the others) are, if well designed and structured, the most effective and powerful learning method, since they replicate, without risk and with the highest degree of motivation and involvement of the participants, the challenge of managing any type of organization in competitive settings, as well as the results of the best (and worst!) decisions to succeed in such settings.
The games we have designed and implemented with our partners over the course of more than four decades, and successfully tested both in Italy and abroad, have proven to be particularly useful in developing decision-making and system thinking capabilities, team-work and planning skills, critical thinking and strategic orientation, which are important prerequisites for improving business results in the medium to long term, but also immediately productive of positive and participatory attitudes among the recipients.
The logic of business games and the benefits of strategic marketing games are summarized in this article (in Italian for now):
MASS & CUSTOM: BUSINESS GAME OF STRATEGIC MARKETING AND BUSINESS STRATEGY
The game, on an Excel platform, has been the main thread, since 1918, of the training program for startups organized each year, from September to December, by Confindustria Chieti-Pescara, Italy, and has also been successfully tested for more than a decade in individual companies and in the master’s degree program in Strategic Management at the University of Roma Tre.
MARKET ORIENTATION: BUSINESS GAME OF STRATEGIC MARKETING AND MANAGEMENT IN B2B INDUSTRIES
It is an update of “Mass & Custom,” which emphasizes the principles and benefits of market orientation and is inspired by the “Market Orientation” project we managed on behalf of UNI and the Italian Marketing Association (see above). This version of the game, compact and entirely manageable, preferably, in one and a half days, in the classroom or remotely, will be our workhorse in the coming years.
EX4EX: BUSINESS GAME OF INTERNATIONAL MARKETING WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FUNCTIONALITIES
Ex4ex, on a web-based platform, was realized in two versions: the one for classroom use was the main thread, from 2005 to 2015, of the International Marketing module of the Cor.C.E. Master’s program organized by ICE (Italian Trade Agency), while the second is still accessible for individual use, against virtual competitors simulated by the system.
GLOBAL BRANDING STRATEGY GAME
Simulation game of the effectiveness of global communication strategies, designed and developed on an Excel platform, and delivered during management education programs addressed to entrepreneurs of Chinese SMEs and organized by CUOA in 2011 on behalf of the Overseas Education College of Jiao Tong University in Shanghai.
EXPORT & DISTRICT GAME: BUSINESS GAME OF STRATEGIC MARKETING FOR GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Game on an Excel platform aimed at improving the performance of government agencies in providing support services to exporting SMEs, created and used to support management education programs promoted by ICE in South Africa in 2009.
EXSIM: BUSINESS GAME OF INTERNATIONAL MARKETING FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND MANAGERS
This game, on an Excel platform, was the main thread, from 1999 to 2006, of the first distance Master’s Degree in International Marketing (over two years, blended) for entrepreneurs and managers of Italian SMEs, organized by the IFOA Institute in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Subsequently also used in university courses on international marketing at MIB in Trieste and at LIUC in Castellanza, Italy.
COMPUTER SHOP BUSINESS GAME
Business game on a Lotus 1.2.3 platform, designed and implemented in 1984 for Bit Shop Primavera (then of the MicroAge/Olivetti Group), one of the first franchising networks in the industry.
BANKING GAME
The first Italian business game in the banking sector, developed in 1980-81 on an Apple II platform on behalf of the then Intesa Group (Istituto Bancario San Paolo di Torino, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Banco di Napoli, Banco di Sicilia), aimed at developing the branch management skills of the member banks, and main thread of an intensive management education program addressed to more than one hundred managers.
Some of our clients
A right media mix can make the difference.
Some Testimonials
I had the pleasure to work with Nestpan International on several different projects, and all of these experiences were very enriching for all of us. NI’s professionals still represent an important asset for our Agency.
Luigi Ferrelli
ITA, Italian Trade Agency
Director of HR and Administration, Former Head of the Management Education Division
Over my decades-long tenure at ISO in Geneva, I had the opportunity to interact with Nestplan International and appreciated their rigorous yet innovative approach to strategy and international marketing.
Daniele Gerundino
Academic Fellow of the University of Geneva
Former Strategic Adviser to the ISO Secretary-General
Few hours of coaching with Nestplan International significantly contributed to broadening my strategic perspective, identifying unexplored opportunities, and better focusing my resources on the most attractive targets.
Michele Moscati
Owner and CEO
Ramos S.r.l.
Nestplan International represents a true excellence, thanks to their pragmatic approach focused on pursuing tangible outcomes. Their assistance was decisive in planning and successfully implementing a new large international initiative of my organization, involving more than 40 countries.
Vincenzo Morlini
Former President and CEO
AFS Intercultural Programs – New York
Nestplan has developed a thorough, robust and tested approach to help clients deploy effective market strategies by challenging conventional thinking and identifying opportunities for sustainable competitive advantages.
Gino Morelli
Director EMCG,
New York & London
I have been knowing Nestplan’s consultants since the late eighties of the last century as a Head of the former Olivetti A.I. Center in Cupertino, and I am still in
close contact with them, after having shared their enthusiasm and commitment in some exciting A.I. projects addressed to exporting SMEs.
Piero Scaruffi
President of the Silicon Valley A.I. Research Institute, founder of the Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER), Silicon Valley & China
Nestplan International’s Giorgio Gandellini has been, and will be, very helpful in supporting the startups of our region in the “Startimpresa” program of Confindustria Chieti-Pescara, thanks to his interactive and simulation-based approach, and his focus on planning, data management, and decision-making.
The courses taught by Giorgio Gandellini in ICE’s CorCe Master’s program were the most stimulating and exciting, the ones that really gave me food for thought, opened my head and made me understand what marketing is. In recent years, many of his comments have accompanied the development of my career; it was a privilege to meet him in my educational journey.
Carlo Papa
Area Sales Manager
PR Electronics, Milano
Get in touch! Drop us a line and see if we can work together
Blog
Please find here the latest news and updates from us. Projects, articles, opinions on facts and events that strike our attention.
Chatbots and Customer Engagement: AI-Powered Conversations That Convert
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The shocking case of blind startups!
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Predictive Analytics: Unleashing the Power of Data in Marketing Strategies
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Read moreOur Team
An international network made of professionals with decades of experience in their respective fields of expertise.
Giorgio Gandellini
Founder, CEO and Managing Director
As founder and CEO of Nestplan International, Giorgio is the primus inter pares of a network of professionals. He has more than fifty years of managerial, management education and consulting experience with major multinational companies in manufacturing and service sectors, government and public institutions, and hundreds of SMEs, in more than thirty countries.
Alfonso Pace
Managing Partner, VP Digital Strategy
Alfonso is CEO and Founder of a digital communication and strategy consultancy. He has been a strategic marketing consultant for several Italian SMEs and a trainer for various management education institutions. His passion for the Internet led him to focus first on information management issues and later on the digital side of the communication strategies.
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