IFF

Led by Jayan Pillai, the fragrances team at IFF overcame internal legacies inherited from the flavours business to grow at a clip that was five times faster than the rest of the industry: from a turnover of Rs 15 crore in 1995 to Rs 100 crore in 2002. The two key shifts made by the team that took them to a quantum growth happened both at the strategy level as well as at the execution on ground.

At the strategy level, while creating targets for growth, rather than increasing the previous years target by an incremental percentage, the team focused on the market potential for fragrances. This made them realize the opportunity in as yet untapped markets and increased their targets manifold.

At the execution stage, instead of chasing after any business that came their way, they focussed on big wins. As a result, the entire organization structure was geared towards managing large accounts, maintaining high quality standards and improving the strike rate of their submissions. What did not matter anymore was the number of submissions the team was making.

A striking example of the systems that were set up to ensure high quality submissions is the setting up of an internal Quality Control (‘QC’) team. The standards set by the internal QC team were far higher than those demanded by customers. Any submission, before reaching the customer, had to be ‘passed’ by the QC team. As a result of the tough test that each submission was put through, the strike rate increased by leaps and bounds. This resulted in a series of big wins and a much-needed boost of confidence for IFF.