Givaudan's Taste & Wellbeing business supports some of the world's largest food and beverage brands with flavor strategies backed by consumer and sensory insights. For the European Marketing & CSI team, scattered research across multiple platforms, folders, and systems meant lost time and duplicated effort. By centralizing insights into a single platform—Stravito—the team now completes projects 3–10x faster while supporting more customer briefs with the same operational resources.
The Operational Problem: Fragmented Data Slows Production
In flavor development and product creation, timing is everything. Research data lived across external platforms, internal systems, personal folders, and colleagues' memories. Answering a single customer brief required knowing where information existed and who to ask. Some team members invested extra time tracking everything down; many didn't because the search overhead was too high.
The impact was measurable: slower decisions, growing reliance on inference when evidence couldn't be found quickly enough, and mounting search fatigue that threatened the team's insight-led culture. The team needed what amounted to a "Google for research"—a single point of entry where insights could be located and deployed instantly.
The Implementation: Platform Selection and Rollout
After evaluating several vendors, Givaudan selected Stravito. Four operational factors drove the decision.
First, vendor responsiveness. From initial contact, the Stravito team demonstrated a service-minded approach aligned with Givaudan's B2B culture. "The attitude made a big difference," says Basak Oker. "You could feel, 'We're here for you.'"
Second, user adoption. The interface proved intuitive and self-explanatory—users understood how to navigate it within minutes, without extensive training. This was critical for driving adoption beyond specialized insights teams to broader stakeholder groups.
Third, speed to deployment. The team needed rapid implementation, including integrations with key external content providers. Stravito supported both technical setup and internal rollout on an accelerated timeline.
Fourth, operational ROI. Stravito was selected not for cost alone, but because the overall value—combining implementation speed, usability, support quality, and adoption rates—delivered clear business justification.
The team branded their Stravito instance "The Genie," positioning it as the tool to make their operational efficiency wishes come true.
Results: Faster Decisions, Higher Capacity, Reduced Redundancy
The productivity gains were immediate and measurable. Decision-making now runs 3x faster on many projects—and up to 10x faster on others. With the AI Assistant surfacing relevant internal and external research rapidly, work that previously took weeks now completes in days or hours.
Centralized access to existing research also eliminated duplicated work. The CSI team now supports more customer briefs without adding headcount, while teams are less likely to commission new research when answers already exist in the system. This reduces waste and reallocates budget toward genuinely novel research questions.
Operationally, Stravito supports both proactive and reactive workflows. For proactive innovation initiatives—such as developing "iconic" flavors for customers—the platform enables teams to access category, consumer, and sensory trend data systematically and quickly through an internal Innovation Roadmap process.
For reactive customer briefs, Stravito helps regional teams rapidly understand local market data—even when team members lack direct market experience—by consolidating Givaudan's internal research and external sources in one searchable system. This accelerates internal discussions and delivers more informed, confident customer conversations.
Formal KPIs continue to evolve, with further impact measurement underway.
Next Steps: Expanding the System Across Operations
Beyond measurable productivity gains, the platform delivers human operational benefits. Team members spend less time searching and synthesizing data—and more time creating, collaborating, and innovating.
As Basak notes, Stravito enables "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."
Currently, Stravito is available to regional and local marketing and CSI teams across Europe. The expansion roadmap includes sales and key technical stakeholders, extending insight-led capability across the entire customer-facing operation.
While broader global deployment is still under review, the operational imperative is clear: speed and confidence in decision-making now outweigh traditional constraints. For Givaudan, Stravito transforms research access into reliable, faster decisions at scale.
About Stravito
Stravito is the Insights Intelligence Platform global brands trust to turn their existing research into confident, growth-driving decisions. Purpose-built for insights teams, Stravito pairs best-in-class AI with human expertise to apply vetted knowledge in decision-critical moments.
The platform unifies research in a secure space where teams ask strategic questions and receive synthesized, source-cited answers via the Stravito AI Assistant. AI Personas—built from your own segmentation studies—simulate authentic consumer perspectives, enabling teams to stress-test products, campaigns, and strategies in real-time. The result: evidence-backed decisions, accelerated market impact, and commercial momentum.
Founded in Sweden in 2017, Stravito is trusted by global leaders including Nestlé, and Comcast. The company is ISO 27001 certified, SOC 2 Type II attested, and has been recognized in the Financial Times' FT 1000 list of Europe's fastest growing companies.
