Executive summary
Givaudan’s Taste & Wellbeing Marketing & Consumer & Sensory Insights (CSI) team in Europe supports some of the world’s largest food and beverage brands with insight-led flavor strategies. As research spread across platforms, folders, and inboxes, the team spent too much time searching for insights they already had. By introducing Stravito as a single point of entry for insights, the team now runs projects 3–10x faster, supports more stakeholders, and frees up time for deeper thinking, creativity, and innovation.
About Givaudan Taste & Wellbeing Europe
Givaudan is a global leader in flavors and fragrances, with more than 16,900 employees worldwide. Within its Taste & Wellbeing business, the European Marketing & CSI team supports customers across categories, including beverages, sweet goods, dairy, savory, snacks, and healthcare—anywhere taste plays a critical role in success.
The team works closely with internal stakeholders across marketing, sensory, and technical teams, as well as external customers ranging from global to regional food and beverage manufacturers.
The challenge: insights everywhere, but hard to use
Flavor creation is both a science and an art. At Givaudan, when creation and product development teams bring new ideas to life, they shape them with relevant, unique consumer and sensory insights from the CSI team to meet real human needs. But accessing those insights wasn’t always easy.
Research lived across external platforms, internal systems, personal folders, and even colleagues’ memories. Answering a single customer brief often required knowing where information lived and who to ask. Some team members went the extra mile to track everything down; many understandably didn’t, because it took too much time.
The result was slower decisions, a growing reliance on inference when evidence couldn’t be found quickly enough, and mounting search fatigue that threatened the team’s insight-led culture. What the team really wanted was simple: a “Google for research” that made insights easy for everyone to find and use.
The solution: bringing “Genie” to life
The team needed a fast, reliable way to bring their vision to life. After evaluating several vendors, they selected Stravito.
Four factors stood out.
First, the people. From the start, the Stravito team demonstrated a strong service mindset that resonated with Givaudan’s own B2B culture. “The attitude made a big difference,” says Basak Oker. “You could feel, ‘We’re here for you.’”
Second, the user experience. Stravito felt modern, intuitive, and self-explanatory. Users could understand how it worked within minutes, without heavy training—critical for driving adoption beyond insights specialists.
Third, speed to value. The team wanted a solution they could implement quickly, including integrations with key external content providers. Stravito supported both the technical setup and the internal rollout.
Finally, value for money. Stravito wasn’t chosen for being “cheap,” but because the overall value—combining speed, usability, support, and adoption—made clear business sense.
The team named their Stravito instance “The Genie,” trusting it would help make their insights wishes come true.
The results: faster decisions, richer conversations, more human time
Even a short time after launch, Genie’s impact is clear.
On many projects, the team estimates decision-making is now 3x faster—and in some cases up to 10x faster. With Stravito’s AI Assistant surfacing relevant internal and external research quickly, projects that once took weeks can now be completed in days or even hours.
Easier access to existing insights also means less duplicated work. The CSI team can support more briefs with the same resources, while teams are less likely to commission new research when the answers already exist. That reduces waste and frees budget for genuinely new questions.
Stravito also plays a central role in both proactive and reactive work. For proactive innovation initiatives—such as helping customers design “iconic” flavors—the platform supports an internal Innovation Roadmap process, enabling teams to immerse themselves in category, consumer, and sensory trends more quickly and systematically.
For reactive customer briefs, Stravito helps regional teams rapidly understand local markets—even if they don’t live there—by bringing Givaudan’s own research and external sources together in one place. This leads to richer discussions internally and more informed, confident conversations with customers.
Formal KPIs continue to evolve, with further impact measurement underway.
The future: expanding access and deepening impact
Beyond productivity gains, the team sees meaningful human benefits. Thanks to Stravito, people spend less time searching and synthesizing—and more time, creating, collaborating and innovating.
As Basak puts it, Stravito gives people “more time to think about new opportunities and new ideas—and maybe have some time to themselves… more time at home with their loved ones, kids, or dogs, or cats.”
Today, Stravito is available to regional and local marketing and CSI teams across Europe. The next step is to extend Genie further into the organization, particularly to sales and key technical stakeholders, so more people can lead insight-led conversations with customers.
While broader global initiatives are still being explored, one thing is clear: speed and confidence in decision-making now matter more than ever. For Givaudan, Stravito helps teams move beyond access to insights and toward faster, better-informed decisions.
See how Stravito can help your team
If your insights are scattered across tools, folders, and inboxes, and your teams are dreaming of a “Google for research,” we’d love to talk.
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