Rapha automated travel operations with Navan, achieves double-digit savings

Region

EMEA: Europe, Middle East, and Africa, NORAM: North America

Headquarters

London, UK

Company Size

Small and Medium-sized Business (1-800 employees)

Industry

Retail

Products Used

• Navan Business Travel
• Navan Expense
• Navan Travel Payments

Rapha is a premium cycling apparel company, founded in London in 2004. With employees across the globe, it serves both cycling enthusiasts and professional teams. As the organization expanded its international operations across multiple markets, travel became essential for managing retail stores, wholesale partnerships, e-commerce operations, and brand partnerships. However, the company’s legacy travel management system created friction for its workforce and limited visibility into travel spend and patterns.

Before Navan

Rapha faced a fragmented travel management approach that created operational challenges. The company relied on Corporate Traveller for travel bookings and Concur for expense management, both of which proved inadequate for the needs of its global workforce.

“Our finance team spent many hours each month on coding and approvals and reconciling receipts,” explained Aneta George, Senior Management Accountant. “The manual process also increased the risk of errors and missed postings, which added more inefficiencies and made our monthly reviews harder and longer.”

The expense reconciliation process was particularly problematic, requiring manual invoice processing and resulting in frequent errors that took even more time to correct. “Any issues we had with Concur required raising a support case, which was time-consuming,” noted Aneta.

Additionally, Corporate Traveller offered limited travel options, especially for frequently visited destinations like Vietnam, where some of Rapha’s factories are located. The exceptionally high ticket prices often resulted in employees booking outside the platform and bypassing company travel policies.

Why Rapha chose Navan

After Rapha evaluated its options, the necessity of a modern alternative became clear.

“What stood out to me about Navan was how comprehensive the policy controls were within the platform,” said Sarah Boorman, Head of Finance. “I liked that it had both the broad and detailed levels of customization, and it was honestly brilliant. We can tailor policies by department, seniority, and specific roles.”

The company needed a travel solution that provided flexibility while maintaining control. Navan enables admins to set and enforce custom policies exactly as needed, helping to ensure consistency and better cost control across the business.

The Navan effect

Rapid implementation and exceptional support

For an international deployment spanning 12 countries, the smoothness of the onboarding process exceeded expectations. Rapha launched Navan across its global operations just 39 days after signing.

This rapid deployment was made possible through dedicated customer success support. “The onboarding process was exceptional, largely thanks to Billy Morris, our account manager,” said Aneta. “He hosted multiple employee training sessions, responded to emails within minutes, and was always ready to jump on a call whenever we needed. His commitment and knowledge of Navan made the transition seamless and highly effective.”

The implementation strategy focused on clear communication and comprehensive training to ensure smooth adoption across all locations. Rapha leveraged Navan’s proven rollout methodology to streamline the process for its diverse workforce. “Navan provided a template that outlined easy instructions on how to register, and we shared this with employees through our internal systems,” said Aneta. “That was shortly followed by the first training for general employees, then for the managers. The entire process was relatively easy.”

Significant time savings and operational efficiency

The implementation delivered substantial time savings across the organisation through intelligent automation that eliminated manual processing bottlenecks.

“Automation handles tasks like coding, receipt tracking, and approvals for in-policy expenses, which has definitely freed up time for both finance and managers,” said Aneta. “All compliant expenses just go through automatically, and we only deal with the exceptional cases. It’s saved us a massive amount of time.”

This shift from a manual review of all expenses to exception-based processing has transformed operations for Rapha’s finance team. Previously, expense processing required the team to pull multiple reports and manually combine data, as there was minimal integration with the company’s accounting software. Now, Navan provides pre-built, customised reports that require minimal manipulation, dramatically reducing the time spent on monthly reconciliation.

Policy management and flexibility

The platform’s policy engine has streamlined compliance whilst maintaining necessary business flexibility. Clear approval workflows for out-of-policy bookings help ensure that the company can meet its business needs and control costs.

Streamlined expense management with real-time visibility

“We find the Navan cards to be very useful,” said Aneta. “We love that we have real-time spend visibility. It makes the cards safe to use for both senior and junior members of staff, and makes reporting much easier, because all spend essentially reconciles on its own.”

Navan’s automation capabilities have significantly transformed operations. “It’s fantastic that the Navan AI reads receipts and automatically verifies the date and amount — and correctly allocates the tax,” said Aneta.

“Before Navan, there was always a risk that employees wouldn't be reimbursed on time, due to the very high volume of expenses and reliance on just one or two staff members to process them,” said Aneta. “Now, with Navan, payouts happen automatically every Monday, which sets clear expectations for employees across the business.”

Plus, Navan’s real-time reporting capabilities have improved decision-making processes. “With the reports that we’re able to download from Navan, we can look at how much people have spent and how that compares to their budget for that period,” explained Aneta.

Looking to the future

As Rapha continues to expand its international operations, Navan is providing a strong foundation for future optimisation and growth.

“We’re focused on utilizing the analytics and reports to identify travel patterns, which will help us negotiate better rates with hotels and flight providers, and secure better perks and membership offerings,” said Sarah.

Navan is also helping Rapha with its focus on sustainability. “Navan’s built-in carbon reporting helps us track travel emissions and report against our sustainability objectives,” said Sarah.

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"The platform offers unmatched flexibility in policy control and has delivered far more value and user satisfaction than we expected, which I don't think many competitors could match. We anticipate continued success with Navan."

Sarah Boorman

Head of Finance