Article Student Living Cuts Manual Expense Approvals by 80% and Saves 17% on Travel
Results
4/5
transactions automatically approved
17%
net travel savings
96%
adoption rate
Region
NORAM: North America
Headquarters
Chicago, Illinois
Company Size
Small and Medium-sized Business (1-800 employees)
Industry
Real Estate and Construction
Products Used
- Navan Expense
- Navan Business Travel
Article Student Living, a vertically integrated student housing company with 500 employees and a portfolio of 50 assets across the United States, grappled with a cumbersome and inefficient travel and expense (T&E) management system. Labor-intensive processes hindered productivity and caused widespread frustration. Seeking a more streamlined and efficient solution, Article partnered with Navan and transformed its T&E program from tedious to turbocharged.
Before Navan
Article had been struggling with its previous T&E management system. According to Jeremy Sites, vice president of finance and accounting, the system required a “massive amount of manual work” from everyone involved.
“Our prior system was essentially fully manual, from people coding their expenses to approvals to recording expenses within our ledger,” said Sites.
Travel is the biggest bucket of discretionary spend at Article. But, as Sites noted, “employees did not enjoy using our previous system.” Many bypassed the platform entirely and opted to book travel through consumer websites, using their personal or corporate cards.
For the finance and accounting team, reconciling monthly expense data was labor-intensive. The previous system lacked integrations with Article’s existing HRIS and ERP systems, further complicating matters. Sites explained that extracting basic information required deep data dives, pivot tables, and extensive Excel work. Something had to change.
Why Navan
“Because of our challenges, I knew that we needed a more comprehensive solution,” said Sites, who sought a new system to alleviate the manual processes that plagued Article’s previous setup.
The company was looking for a solution that:
- Integrated with Article’s HRIS and ERP systems
- Automated the expense submission, approval, and reconciliation processes
- Provided real-time insights
Sites and his team found that Navan offered exactly what Article needed. The strategic decision to partner with Navan set the stage for transformative improvements across the company’s financial operations and for its road warriors.
Results with Navan
The implementation of Navan has transformed Article’s expense management process. Now, extracting expense data is effortless, and real-time dashboards give the company immediate visibility into its financials. Plus, employees who once dreaded the old system are now satisfied and engaged with Navan.
“
Navan automatically approves 4/5 transactions because they are within the policy controls we’ve set up, which saves managers time by allowing them to focus only on expenses that fall outside the normal course of business.
Jeremy Sites
Vice President of Finance and Accounting
Efficiency Unleashed: Integration, Automation, and Control
A key reason for choosing Navan was the platform’s ability to export clean data for integration into Article’s ERP, allowing for detailed reporting at the property, department, and division levels. This fixed a major problem with the company’s prior system, which grouped all employees under one umbrella.
Case in point: Before switching to Navan, Article’s director of marketing spent 4-6 hours each month — on a Saturday, no less — manually reviewing individual ad spend transactions and allocating them to the correct accounts. The process was equally arduous for Sites’ team.
“Before Navan, it took the entire finance and accounting department to reconcile data every month,” he said. “We had to pull different accrual reports to match the cash paid, what was recorded on the ledger, and what was missing."
Since moving to Navan, these burdensome processes are history. Managers no longer waste hours manually reviewing and coding expenses, and Article enjoys real-time visibility into spend.
“Navan automatically approves four out of five transactions because they are within the policy controls we’ve set up, which saves managers time by allowing them to focus only on expenses that fall outside the normal course of business,” said Sites.
Employee Satisfaction and Savings Soar
Another improvement Article has seen with Navan is a near-perfect adoption rate of 96%. “It’s important to have a high adoption rate because we need cardholders at our company to adhere to the policies,” said Sites. “It’s problematic when someone pulls their personal card out because it could take them 30 days to put those receipts in the system.”
The process has also improved for expenses submitted manually. With the previous system, it took 15-45 days for an employee who submitted a reimbursement request to receive the money. With Navan, reimbursements are typically paid within one week.
Article has also seen 17% net savings on travel with Navan.
“It was important for us to find a solution where we can monitor travel spend effectively and ultimately save money,” said Sites. “My job is to always care about profitability, and achieving savings on travel — our largest bucket of discretionary spend — was low-hanging fruit for us.”
The company is saving money, and employees can focus on their jobs instead of paperwork.
We don’t want our employees worrying about compiling receipts and doing month-end or weekly coding,” said Sites. “With Navan, you can rely on the data extracts and know that you have 100 percent of the data.”
“
It was important for us to find a solution where we can monitor travel spend effectively and ultimately save money.
Jeremy Sites
Vice President of Finance and Accounting
What’s Next
Article Student Living plans to continue leveraging Navan to further enhance its financial operations. Sites noted that, thanks to Navan, the company will not need to add additional headcount to its finance and accounting team even as more properties are added to its portfolio.
With the efficiency gains and cost savings already realized, Article Student Living is confident that Navan will continue to support its growth and streamline its expense management processes.
And today, Article employees are no longer spending time mired in paperwork. “We don’t want our employees worrying about compiling receipts and doing month-end or weekly coding,” said Sites. “We like to have employees on location and focused on the job they were hired to do."
See Navan in action
Join the thousands of businesses worldwide who trust Navan
