The Navan Events Team’s Secret to Flawless Planning

Planning and executing corporate events is no small feat. Events teams juggle countless moving parts — from coordinating travel logistics for attendees to managing expenses, all while helping to ensure that everything runs smoothly. The success of an event relies on the precision of these details; even minor oversights can lead to significant headaches. 

Whether it’s a high-stakes conference or an intimate client dinner they’re preparing for, corporate event planners need tools that reduce the administrative burden, streamline communication, and allow them to focus on creating memorable experiences.

Of course, this is the case for all events teams, including Navan’s. And that’s where Navan’s all-in-one travel and expense management platform comes in.

Navan’s events team masterfully uses the company’s travel and expense management solutions to orchestrate conferences, offsites, dinners for clients and prospective clients, and incentive trips. 

This post will highlight how the team uses key features to streamline its event planning process and deliver exceptional experiences. By leveraging these tools, event planners can focus less on logistics and more on making each event successful. 

Navan Travel: Streamlining Group Travel for Big Events

Navan’s travel booking platform is the backbone of the events team’s travel coordination process. Whether planning a small gathering or a large conference, Navan Travel meets the travel needs of all attendees. 

Specifically, Navan’s Group Travel tool simplifies this process by allowing event organizers to manage group bookings efficiently. 

Here’s how the team leverages Navan’s travel booking tools and Group Travel feature:

Flight, Hotel, and Transportation Bookings

For smaller events, such as a client dinner in Houston, the events team leverages Group Travel to invite Navan sales reps to book their flights, hotels, or car rentals. Organizers can easily monitor bookings in one place and oversee T&E spend for each event. 

Live Updates and Real-Time Tracking

The events team can monitor travel status in real time, allowing them to respond quickly to delays, cancellations, or other travel disruptions. 

Easy Adjustments

One of Navan Travel’s most useful features is the ability for travelers to quickly and easily make changes — even at the last minute. 

Navan’s Senior Manager of Event Marketing, Lauren Mallen, shared a situation that often occurs: She wants to change her flights closer to an event. 

“I often book event travel months in advance and choose the earliest arrival and latest departure times to allow plenty of time for event set up and tear down. I often want to be home as soon as possible after a long week at a tradeshow, and luckily, I can easily log in to Navan and make changes on my own at any time,” she said.

Centralized Booking Management

For Navan’s annual Sales Kickoff (SKO), the team uses the Group Travel tool to manage bookings for more than 500 sales and customer success members. The platform lets event organizers see who has booked travel, who hasn’t, and what each person’s itinerary is. This visibility allows the team to follow up with individuals who may have missed deadlines or need to adjust their travel plans.

Flexibility Across Travel Modes

The Group Travel tool supports attendees whether they’re flying, driving, or taking a train. For instance, some NYC team members opted to take the train to an event in Philadelphia, which was quickly booked and tracked through Navan to support smooth coordination for all travelers.

Real-time Spend Tracking

The tool provides insights into real-time spending as travel arrangements are made, which allows event organizers to track travel spend against their event budgets and allocate the remaining budget to other event aspects.

Tip: Use Navan Group Travel for significant events to centralize all booking details and help ensure that nothing slips through the cracks. This tool also helps identify and address overspending before it becomes an issue.

“

Organizing flights for sales reps for dinners or tradeshows is notoriously challenging. In the past, I’d have to hope reps followed instructions, booked on time, and sent me all their details. It was very manual and time-consuming.

Navan makes it so much easier! When I set up an event, Navan suggests in-policy hotels nearby and flights that align with the event timing. It even syncs with Google Calendar, blocking off travel time and including flight and hotel information for easy access.

With Navan, I can see all booking data in one dashboard — who has booked, arrival times, delays, and where everyone is staying. It’s a huge time-saver! It even catches policy issues, like a rep who once booked a $1,000-a-night room at a casino. I was able to see it early and have them rebook at an in-policy hotel.

Avery Addison

Field Marketing Manager, Navan

Navan Guest Invite: A Game-Changer for Guest Travel

Navan’s Guest Invite feature is a standout tool for event organizers managing non-employee travel. It simplifies inviting guests — such as customers, potential employees, contractors, or plus-ones — to an event. 

For larger events, Navan’s Guest Invite tool handles bookings for employees and their plus-ones, keeping all travel details in one place.

Navan’s events team used this feature extensively during an exclusive internal event called Excellence Club, where a group of high-performing employees from across the global organization were invited to a unique destination. Here’s how the tool made this process more efficient:

• Streamlined travel invitations: Each of the 150 high-performing employees invited to Excellence Club could bring a guest on the trip. Instead of handling the travel arrangements for 300 people, the events team used Guest Invite to allow internal members and their guests to book their own travel. This decision significantly reduced the administrative workload while assisting everyone in adhering to the company’s travel policies.
• Complete visibility: Once guests book their flights and hotels, the events team can view all the details in Navan’s dashboard. This feature allows them to organize group transportation from the airport to the event venue so everyone arrives on time. 

Tip: For large events with external attendees, use Navan Guest Invite so guests can book their travel independently while adhering to company policies. This saves event organizers significant time and helps ensure that guests have a smooth, hassle-free travel experience.

Reed & Mackay’s Enhanced Event Management

Some events are large and complex enough that even the scrappy Navan events team could use support that goes beyond Navan’s platform. For that assistance — everything from booking hotel room blocks to on-site logistics — they partner with the event management services group from Reed & Mackay, part of the Navan Group. 

Here’s how the events team benefits from this partnership, and what Reed & Mackay’s team brings to the table:

• Full-service event planning: For Excellence Club, Reed & Mackay handled hotel sourcing, room assignments, and on-site logistics, freeing up the Navan team to focus on managing attendees and internal communications. Lauren described her R&M  colleagues as key partners who helped the event run smoothly by handling elements like transportation and food and beverage.
• White-glove service: The team offers proactive, hands-on support. Lauren recalled an example where a speaker was delayed due to a logistical issue at the hotel, and an R&M colleague stepped in to resolve everything as quickly as possible. 
• Expert sourcing and contract negotiation: The R&M team handles sourcing and contracting with hotels and venues. They’re experts in securing favorable terms that meet all the requirements for complex events like Excellence Club.
• Dedicated on-site support for seamless execution: The Reed & Mackay team provides on-the-ground support, from coordinating transportation to managing last-minute changes. Their on-site presence allows the Navan events team to handle attendee relations confidently, knowing that logistics are professionally managed in real time.
• Enhanced flexibility with contingency management: Reed & Mackay’s proactive problem-solving includes anticipating and addressing potential issues, such as last-minute venue requirements or equipment needs. 
• Time-saving coordination across global locations: Reed & Mackay’s global network facilitates efficient coordination for large-scale, multi-location events, especially in diverse cities.

Tip: Consider working with a third-party service like Reed & Mackay for high-profile or complex events. They can handle logistical details, allowing you to focus on the attendee experience.

“

At one event, we discovered that a speaker we needed for the presentation setup was missing. We had been waiting for the hotel to bring it, but time was running short. A Reed & Mackay team member took matters into her own hands, grabbing a bike and personally delivering the equipment to the event site. That’s the kind of white-glove service and quick thinking you can’t put a price on.

Lauren Mallen

Events Marketing Senior Manager, Navan

Navan Expense Management: Keeping Event Budgets in Check

Managing expenses is crucial for events, especially when they involve many attendees and large budgets. Navan’s expense management tool makes it simple for the team to track every expense in real time to stay within the allocated budget. 

Here are a few of the ways that Navan’s events team leverages the expense management tool:

• Purchase cards for event expenses: Lauren and her team use Navan’s purchase cards to cover on-site costs for events like the Houston client dinner. Instead of tracking down receipts manually, every transaction is automatically logged into the system, eliminating the risk of losing receipts and letting the team see how much they’ve spent in real time.
• Automated reporting: The system automatically generates expense reports categorized by type after each event. At a previous company, Lauren felt like she was constantly “losing money” by not tracking small event-related purchases, like scissors or tape. Now, with Navan’s automated system, every dollar spent is accounted for.
• Custom policies and limits: Navan’s pre-set policies are built into each of the products used for events, which helps the team avoid going over budget. This feature is particularly useful during large events involving hundreds of attendees and guests.

Tip: Events teams can set spending limits for specific expense categories like food, transportation, or supplies to keep everyone within budget and prevent unexpected expenses from cropping up.

Best Practices for Events Teams Using Navan’s Tools

After years of using Navan’s solution, the events team has developed a number of best practices for maximizing the platform’s potential:

• Track spending in real time: Always monitor travel and event expenses as they happen. This helps teams stay within budget and quickly resolve any issues with overspending.
• Proactively communicate with attendees: Use Navan’s tools to monitor who has booked travel and who hasn’t. Follow up with attendees who have yet to book their travel.
• Use purchase cards for expenses: Instead of relying on personal cards and cumbersome reimbursement processes, use Navan’s purchase cards for easy, trackable expenses.

By using Navan’s travel and expense management tools, the events team has streamlined its processes, saved countless hours, and delivered better event experiences. Navan’s all-in-one solution is indispensable for any event marketing team when doing everything from managing budgets to supporting attendees’ travel.

Learn how Navan’s tools can simplify your event planning and see how your team can benefit from an all-in-one solution for managing all travel and expense management. Schedule a demo today.