In This Climate, Efficient Business Growth Requires Smarter Travel. Here’s Why.

I’ve spoken with dozens of CFOs in the past few weeks, and I get it: Today’s head-spinning turbulence—tariffs! inflation! supply chain disruptions!—feels like an existential threat. And amid the madness, you’re getting squeezed from all sides to make the impossible happen: growth. Efficient growth. And, oh, could you make it happen right now?!

So you’ve offshored. You’ve adopted AI. You’ve been cutting to the bone. And you may feel like you’re out of levers to pull.

You’re not. But finding new levers — especially to reach seemingly impossible goals — requires creativity. It requires change. The CFOs I’ve been talking with get that. They’ve figured out that change requires a smarter tech stack — one that can create time and cost efficiencies that propel them to efficient growth.

Those CFOs have also figured out that T&E is that new lever — one that can help keep teams on the road and cut travel budgets. Smart T&E gives CFOs the opportunity to steer their companies toward that goal of efficient growth by saving money.

Make no mistake: We’re talking about truly dramatic cost savings. At Navan, our customers save an average of 15-20% on their T&E programs. And it’s not just hard costs. With certain legacy T&E solutions, the average expense report takes 13 hours (13! hours!) to submit and process, according to Forrester. It doesn’t help that these solutions are cobbled together from different companies. They may claim to be “integrated,” but they can only help you tread water.

In today’s environment, you need a jet boat. And with a fully integrated, end-to-end system like Navan, that’s what you get. Expenses are automatically reconciled. Traditional expense reports disappear. Employees are empowered to make informed decisions. Companies are enabled to apply T&E policy at the point of card swipe — not days or months later (and only after hours or days of all-hands-on-deck busywork). Tack on Navan’s real-time visibility into spend — to head off issues before they become problems — and your new strategy levers begin to multiply.

Ok, but you still have to change the system, and surely that’s expensive, slow, and disruptive? Think about this: When you first used Uber, did you need a manual? Days of instruction? No! Nor will you with Navan. Our software was designed for plug-and-play integration into any tech stack and features an intuitive, grab-and-go UX.

Yes, we’re living in a swirling ocean right now. But we’ve been here before. When Covid hit, Navan’s revenue dropped to zero. Did we fold? Sit on the sidelines? No! We doubled down. Invested in our travel infrastructure. Pivoted the product to include expense management. Expanded globally. And as we got more aggressive, we also got more efficient. We knew it was an opportunity to turn our innovative software into the lever companies could tap for game-changing growth.

CFOs, it’s time to lean on that lever. The swirl has returned — but so has the opportunity. Reach out to me to talk about what a new era looks like for your company. Or get a demo today and see the power of T&E first-hand.