Givaudan's Taste & Wellbeing Marketing & Consumer & Sensory Insights (CSI) team plays a critical role in helping some of the world's largest food and beverage brands develop products that align with evolving consumer preferences. Supporting categories that span beverages, dairy, sweet goods, savory, snacks, and healthcare, the team relies on consumer, category, and sensory research to inform everything from flavor development to long-term innovation strategies. As the volume of available research continued to expand, however, accessing the right information quickly became an increasing challenge.
The Challenge
Like many global organizations, Givaudan found its research dispersed across multiple platforms, external providers, internal systems, shared folders, and individual teams. Responding to a customer brief often required employees to know not only where information was stored but also who might have access to it. Valuable insights frequently existed somewhere within the organization, yet locating them consistently required significant time and effort.
As a result, projects moved more slowly, existing research was sometimes duplicated, and teams occasionally relied on inference when relevant evidence could not be found quickly enough. Rather than generating more research, Givaudan needed a way to better leverage the knowledge it already possessed by creating a single, searchable destination for trusted insights.
The Solution
After evaluating several knowledge management platforms, Givaudan selected Stravito to serve as its centralized insights platform. The decision was based on several factors, including the platform's intuitive user experience, rapid implementation, ability to integrate with existing research providers, strong customer support, and overall business value. The goal was to create a solution that employees across marketing, sensory, technical, and commercial teams could begin using with minimal training while making trusted research significantly easier to access.
Internally, the team named its Stravito platform "Genie," reflecting its ability to surface relevant research quickly and simplify access to existing knowledge across the organization. By consolidating internal and external research into a single point of entry, Givaudan reduced the time employees spent searching for information and increased the time available for analysis, collaboration, and innovation.
The Results
The impact was measurable almost immediately. According to Givaudan, many projects now move three to ten times faster than before implementation, with research that previously required days—or even weeks—to locate becoming accessible in minutes through Stravito's AI-powered search capabilities. Easier access to existing insights has also reduced duplicated work, allowing the CSI team to support more customer briefs while directing research resources toward genuinely new opportunities rather than recreating work that already exists.
The platform has strengthened collaboration throughout the organization as well. Whether supporting proactive innovation initiatives or responding to customer requests, marketing, sensory, and technical teams now work from a shared foundation of consumer and market intelligence. Regional teams are also able to better understand unfamiliar markets by accessing centralized research instead of relying solely on local expertise, leading to more informed internal discussions and greater confidence in customer conversations.
Beyond measurable productivity gains, Givaudan views the platform as a way to create more time for higher-value work. By reducing the time employees spend searching for information and synthesizing research, teams can focus more attention on strategic thinking, creativity, and developing new ideas that ultimately benefit customers.
Looking Ahead
Today, Stravito is available to Givaudan's regional and local Marketing and Consumer & Sensory Insights teams across Europe, with plans to extend access to additional commercial and technical stakeholders. As the company continues evaluating broader global expansion, leadership views faster access to trusted insights as an increasingly important competitive advantage in an industry where consumer preferences, product development cycles, and innovation timelines continue to accelerate.
For Givaudan, the value of Stravito extends beyond organizing research. It has transformed existing knowledge into a more accessible business asset, enabling teams to make faster, better-informed decisions while creating more capacity for innovation. In today's food and beverage landscape, where speed and confidence are becoming just as important as creativity, that ability may prove to be one of the company's most valuable competitive advantages.
