How to Build a Vendor Consolidation Strategy in 8 Steps

Vendor consolidation is the process of reducing the number of suppliers your organization works with by combining contracts, eliminating redundant tools, or switching to platforms that serve multiple functions.

In T&E, this typically means replacing separate travel booking tools, expense systems, and corporate card programs and vendors with a single integrated platform. It can be especially helpful for finance and procurement leaders by creating one framework for service levels, one reporting rhythm, and one owner who can fix what breaks.

When to Pursue Vendor Consolidation in T&E

Here are four signs that signal you need to consolidate vendors:

Your Negotiated Rates Aren’t Delivering Measurable Savings

Vendor consolidation can result in travel program savings, but only when travelers use your preferred suppliers.

That’s less likely when bookings are scattered across multiple platforms. You also won’t be able to measure realized savings versus public fares or your previous baseline. Consolidated platforms give you the data to prove whether your airline and hotel contracts are delivering value, and the visibility to course-correct when they aren't.

Travelers Book Outside Approved Channels

According to Deloitte's 2024 Corporate Travel Study, only 56% of travelers who know their company has a corporate booking tool say they always use it. When they don’t, money is spent outside of negotiated rates. It also results in travelers being invisible to duty of care systems, and expenses that arrive weeks late for reconciliation.

Consolidated platforms can help increase managed channel adoption — as long as they feature an intuitive user experience and a robust inventory.

After all, travelers tend to book outside approved channels when the managed platform lacks access to low-cost carriers, direct hotel connections, or competitive OTA (online travel agency) rates.

This leakage can prevent companies from achieving volume commitments with preferred suppliers and eliminate the consolidated data needed for contract discussions.

Ryder, a transportation and logistics company with more than 6,000 active travelers, experienced this firsthand. “Oftentimes, we noticed we were getting better rates outside of the platform,” said Sanford Hodes, Chief Procurement and Corporate Development Officer, “which caused a lack of confidence within the organization.”

After consolidating to Navan, Ryder realized 14% savings on flights and gained the real-time visibility its procurement team needed.

Procurement Analytics Can’t Support Supplier Discussions

Here’s one sign that consolidation has become necessary in your organization: When building a spend report requires manual reconciliation across platforms.

You shouldn’t need to pull data from three tools to answer questions like “What did we spend on Chicago to New York flights last quarter?” or “Which London hotels are we using most?” Line-level visibility (spend by supplier, route, hotel chain, room type, booking lead time) should come from a single source.

That data is what makes your RFP (request for proposal) responses and contract renewals credible.

Policy Doesn’t Align with Your Sourcing Strategy

When policy lives in a PDF and booking happens in a separate tool, sourcing strategy and traveler behavior drift apart.

In that case, travelers won’t book the preferred rates you’ve negotiated — not out of defiance, but because the booking tool doesn’t surface preferred options or enforce the rules you’ve set.

Consolidation closes that gap by making your preferred suppliers the default choice during a traveler’s search.

8-Step Vendor Consolidation Strategy for T&E

If any of these signals sound familiar, a structured consolidation framework can help you move from diagnosis to action. The following eight steps guide the process from initial assessment through ongoing optimization.

1. Assess Your Current State and Integration Requirements

Start by cataloging every travel and expense tool, corporate card program, approval workflow, and reporting system your organization uses. For each vendor relationship, document its business purpose and classify integrations as mission-critical or optional.

Map your existing ERP, HRIS, and corporate card connections, because you’ll need to replicate these in the new platform. Test current API connections and document data formats so you can validate compatibility during vendor evaluation. This upfront work prevents integration failures that can derail projects later.

Apply the same documentation discipline to supplier contracts. Capture your current negotiated rates and volume commitments, as you’ll need this baseline to measure whether consolidation actually delivers savings.

2. Define Specific Objectives

Consolidation can serve multiple goals: cost reduction, compliance improvement, faster month-end close, better employee experience, or stronger supplier relationships.

Clarify which of these matters most, then translate them into measurable targets. For example:

• Increase preferred supplier utilization from 60% to 85%.
• Achieve 90% platform adoption within 12 months (a benchmark that Navan customers achieve).
• Reduce off-channel bookings from 40% to under 15%.
• Cut the average booking time from 45 minutes to under 10.

These targets become your scorecard for step #8.

3. Align Cross-Functional Stakeholders

Your vendor consolidation project should include the following stakeholders:

• Travel managers: Own booking patterns and traveler preferences; should participate in vendor evaluation and selection
• Finance teams: Own reconciliation and month-end close; should configure expense validation rules and approval workflows
• Procurement professionals: Own supplier relationships and preferred vendor requirements

4. Evaluate Integrated Platforms

When assessing T&E platforms to replace multiple vendors, create a requirements matrix covering:

• Inventory breadth
• Policy enforcement
• ERP and HRIS integration
• Corporate card compatibility
• Mobile experience
• Analytics depth
• Duty of care features

Content breadth impacts adoption, so confirm that the platform provides:

• GDS (global distribution system) access: Full inventory from Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport
• Low-cost carriers: Direct connections to budget airlines that travelers want to book
• Rail options: Particularly important for European travel programs
• Hotel content: Direct connections plus OTA inventory to match consumer site rates
• Rate transparency: Clear sourcing information so travelers trust the options

5. Negotiate Clear SLAs (Service-Level Agreements)

Your platform partner should commit to specific service levels, such as:

• Response times: How quickly agents respond to booking issues and traveler support requests
• Booking accuracy: Error rates and correction processes
• Refund handling: Timelines and processes for cancellations and changes
• Disruption management: Rebooking procedures, proactive alerts, and escalation paths

6. Design Phased Implementation with Parallel Operation

Run legacy and new systems side-by-side for 4–8 weeks with real-time synchronization. This parallel period helps you catch data inconsistencies and confirm the new platform meets business requirements before migrating.

7. Implement Training and Change Management

T&E platforms are used by most employees, which makes adoption the deciding factor between success and failure. Focus on:

• Sandbox environments: Let employees practice without consequence before go-live dates.
• Office hours: Schedule dedicated support time for travelers navigating the new system.
• Departmental champions: Train peer advocates who can answer questions and encourage adoption.

Finally, address travel manager concerns directly.

Travel managers sometimes resist consolidation because they worry AI and automation will eliminate their roles. Reframe the conversation. After all, consolidation frees them from administrative work, so they can focus on program optimization, supplier strategy, and risk management. Show how the platform’s analytics and insights make their expertise more valuable, not less.

8. Monitor Metrics and Course-Correct

Track the objectives you defined in the second step. During the first 90 days, review:

• Platform adoption by department: Which teams are lagging behind, and why?
• Preferred supplier utilization: Are travelers actually booking contracted airlines and hotels?
• Off-channel bookings: Where is leakage happening and what’s causing it?
• Policy compliance patterns: Which violations are most common?

These metrics provide early warning when something isn’t working. If adoption stalls in one department, dig into the root cause. It might be a training gap, or perhaps a workflow that doesn’t fit how that team operates.

What Are the Benefits of Vendor Consolidation?

Organizations that consolidate vendors see benefits across five key areas:

Hard Savings from Supplier Management

When all bookings flow through a single platform, procurement teams can finally answer this question: Are our negotiated rates actually saving money? Navan’s T&E platform, for example, could reduce annual travel spend by 16%.

Those direct savings compound when you factor in the time procurement teams spend managing multiple vendor relationships.

Process Efficiency and Reduced Administrative Overhead

The number of tools procurement teams manage plays an important role in their performance.

By consolidating separate tools and vendors, procurement teams get time back for impactful sourcing work while avoiding headcount growth. In fact, top-performing procurement organizations operate with 32% fewer full-time employees than their peers.

Efficiency gains accelerate further when procurement teams can access data without assembling it from multiple sources.

Real-Time Data Access and Visibility

When all your T&E data resides in a single database, finance teams see transactions as they happen, rather than waiting weeks for expense reports.

For procurement, consolidated data allows you to analyze spending patterns by any dimension (route, city pair, hotel chain, traveler segment, or time period) without assembling reports from multiple sources.

Better Policy Compliance Through Built-In Enforcement

According to Deloitte's 2025 Corporate Travel Study, frequent travelers have become more compliant with corporate booking tools — 49% now say they always use corporate channels, up from 43% the prior year.

Unified corporate T&E platforms like Navan lead to better employee adherence to T&E policies and cost savings.

Navan’s traffic light policy system makes compliance visible at the moment of booking: green-zone options meet policy and require no approval, orange-zone bookings flag for manager review, and red-zone selections are declined before purchase. Travelers make better decisions without additional effort because compliant options surface first.

Reduced Leakage and Stronger Supplier Relationships

High T&E platform adoption directly affects your position in supplier discussions. When adoption reaches 90% — the rate Navan customers typically achieve — you can commit to volume targets with confidence and approach contract renewals from a position of strength.

Implement a Unified T&E Platform to Consolidate Multiple Vendors

Unified T&E platforms like Navan solve vendor fragmentation by combining travel booking, expense management, and corporate card programs into a single platform. Navan’s adoption rates range from 82 to 90%, compared to an industry average of 40 to60%, and implementation takes under 100 hours.

The platform helps organizations address the adoption gap that leads to off-platform bookings while providing the line-level data procurement teams need for stronger supplier relationships.

Schedule a demo to explore how Navan can strengthen your T&E program.