Farwest Corrosion Control Cuts Weekly Expense Time by 88% Using Navan

Region

NORAM: North America

Headquarters

Downey, California

Industry

Industrial

Products Used

• Navan Business Travel
• Navan Travel Payments
• Navan Expense

Farwest Corrosion Control is a leader in the cathodic protection industry, which is dedicated to protecting critical infrastructure like oil, gas and water pipelines from material degradation. Headquartered in Downey, California, the company has more than 200 employees offering specialized materials, installation systems, and technical support services across seven locations in the United States. 

As a relationship-driven business, Farwest relies heavily on mobility. Its business development teams frequently travel for face-to-face customer engagements, while its engineering and construction crews move continuously between job sites. To sustain its growth and maintain tight operational control, the company required a unified, scalable platform to manage its extensive travel and expense needs.

“

Travel is a huge part of what we do here at Farwest. Our business development and sales teams travel often for networking events and face-to-face visits with our customers. It’s a very heavy relationship-based industry.

Linda Rodrigues

Vice President of Business Devleopment

Before Navan

Prior to partnering with Navan, Farwest employed highly manual, fragmented processes that strained both travelers and the accounting department. Farwest’s controller, Brent Shemet, recalled how tedious the administrative process was when he joined the company seven years ago. “Expense reporting was all done on paper,” he said. “Receipts and a form went in an envelope that was routed to a manager for approval, then went to accountants who manually entered each and every transaction. Eventually, we graduated to Excel, but it was still a very manual process."

During that time, business travel was time intensive to manage. Employees booked trips independently through airline sites or consumer platforms like Expedia, which put a heavy administrative burden on Shemet and his team. The accounting department had to manually track approvals and compliance, maintaining a dedicated tracker just to see who had submitted reports. This fragmented approach meant the company lacked real-time visibility into overall corporate spend and struggled to monitor where employees were at any given time.

As the company grew, the manual processes became unsustainable.

“

It gives me a complete peace of mind knowing that we are closing the books accurately, because once an expense is recorded, it flows seamlessly directly into our accounting system.

Brent Shemet

Controller

Why Navan

Farwest set out to find a highly automated, cost-competitive travel and expense solution. Company president Kenji Gailey initially considered Concur because of his familiarity with the legacy system, but Shemet successfully advocated for Navan’s all-in-one, AI-powered solution based on its modern functionality and robust, built-in controls.

Beyond its advanced capabilities, Navan provided a remarkably fast implementation schedule that enabled Farwest to launch in just 23 days.

One of the definitive selling points was Navan’s ability to handle dynamic, location-based travel. Gailey highlighted this advantage. “Navan has some pretty neat capabilities that allow for setting parameter-based travel depending on where you’re traveling,” said Gailey. 

Traditional software thresholds often fail to accommodate geographical cost variations, but Navan solved this problem. ”With the previous systems I’ve worked in, you get a threshold that doesn’t always work,” he said. “You could be in New York City, or you could be in a place like Kansas, which represents a widely different cost of travel. Being able to set those distinct parameters in Navan is incredibly handy.”

Results With Navan

Seamless expense process

The transition to Navan’s AI-powered platform delivered immediate relief and transformed the day-to-day operations for Farwest’s traveling staff, resulting in a perfect 100% customer satisfaction (CSAT) rating among internal users.

Linda Rodrigues, vice president of business development, observed a massive reduction in the administrative burden placed on her sales team, with tracking time reduced from up to four hours a week down to just 30 minutes. “Navan has simplified the entire expense process,” she said. “Expense management went from something that we had to actively think about every single week to something that we really don’t think about anymore. The card is charged, we take a picture of the receipt, and we get to move on.”

“

Almost as soon as the card is swiped, the transaction appears in Navan, allowing me to take a picture of the receipt within literally a couple of seconds.

Kenji Gailey

President

Real-time reporting

For the leadership team, the platform provided unprecedented real-time visibility and robust oversight. Gailey praised the speed of Navan’s transaction processing. “Depending on which credit card we use, the transactions show up almost instantaneously,” he said. ”Almost as soon as my CNB card is used, the transaction appears in Navan, allowing me to take a picture of the receipt within a couple of seconds. It is incredibly convenient, and I no longer have to worry about carrying physical paper receipts around.” Centralization also improved team coordination when employees traveled for the same event or project. “Being able to see where team members have booked their hotels is a helpful feature,” said Gailey. “When we are traveling together for a conference or customer visit, Navan makes it easy to understand where the group is staying without chasing separate itineraries.”

From a financial perspective, Navan’s real-time reporting has completely altered how Farwest tracks its corporate spend. For Shemet and his team, the automatic controls have had a direct impact on finance workflows. “The most critical features for us are the built-in controls around policy compliance and real-time reporting,” he said. ”It gives me complete peace of mind knowing that we are closing the books accurately, because once an expense is recorded, it flows seamlessly directly into our accounting system."

Rodrigues echoed this sentiment. “The real-time reporting is an incredibly impactful feature,” she Rodrigues. “We utilize it much more now than we did previously, because it gives us total visibility into expenses and allows us to accurately budget for future networking events.” 

Shemet said that the feedback within the finance department has been overwhelmingly positive. ”The appreciation centers around the general ease of use and a shared gratitude that submitting expenses is much less of a burden than it was previously.”

Future With Navan

Navan has successfully shifted Farwest Corrosion Control away from tedious paper and spreadsheet tracking into a streamlined digital era, providing an infrastructure that supports corporate agility and accountability. By replacing fragmented consumer booking and manual expense entry with an all-in-one centralized platform, Farwest has successfully eliminated operational friction, while giving its accounting and leadership teams total visibility into project costs and employee travel.

As Farwest continues to expand its market footprint, the company will lean heavily on Navan’s technological foundation to support its growing workforce without adding administrative overhead. ”As we grow, we need more systems that reduce manual work instead of adding to it,” said Gailey. “With Navan, we can scale the business and manage everything with more discipline.”