How UCB Partnered With Navan to Prioritize Employee Experience and Real-Time Control

Region

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

Headquarters

Brussels, Belgium

Products Used

• Navan Business Travel
• Navan Pro

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UCB is a premier biopharmaceutical company dedicated to transforming the lives of people living with severe diseases. Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, the organization maintains a powerful global presence, with approximately 10,000 employees working in major operational hubs across the globe, including key sites in Atlanta.

Travel is managed under the procurement organization, and the team treats it with a unique philosophy; traveler satisfaction is the primary metric for success. Ilja Strumane, head of corporate services procurement, and Nathalie Melloul, business services and T&E lead, spearhead this vision. UCB considers travel to be a high-stakes touchpoint for employee morale, so a high-quality user experience is as essential as budgetary discipline. And as UCB scaled globally, they realized they needed a modern, digital-first solution to achieve those goals with their travel program.

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Travel can be a hassle, so our goal is to make the journey as smooth as possible, starting with a simple and seamless booking experience.

Ilja Strumane

Head of Corporate Services Procurement

Before Navan

Before partnering with Navan, UCB relied on a traditional travel management company (TMC) for more than 14 years. But as the travel landscape evolved post-pandemic, legacy processes began to show significant friction. Team members found themselves managing a fragmented ecosystem that utilized different tools in different regions, which created administrative headaches, a lack of transparency, and rigid policy management.

Another major pain point: content fragmentation. With BCD Travel, UCB lacked access to all global fares and rates. This transparency gap frustrated employees and drove them to look outside the official system for lower prices, resulting in costly program leakage. Travelers’ frustration was so bad that when external travel disruptions occurred, they attributed the friction to the TMC — even when it wasn’t the TMC’s fault. The need for a more reliable, user-friendly platform was urgent. "After several years of working with the same TMC, we decided to launch an RFP to assess the solutions available on the market and identify the best fit for UCB’s requirements,” said Melloul.

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It became clear that traditional TMCs were not providing the level of innovation and digitalization needed to keep with the dynamic changes in the market.

Nathalie Melloul

Business Services and T&E Lead

Why Navan

UCB sought a digital-first partner that could offer simplicity, modern workflows, and global uniformity across the company’s main travel corridors — particularly between its Brussels headquarters, North America, and Japan. The travel team didn’t want a change that was merely cosmetic; they wanted a structural shift in their operations.

Three core pillars set Navan apart, according to Strumane:

• Complete access to all fares and rates to eliminate external booking leakage
• An intuitive user interface built for modern workflows
• Unmatched flexibility and speed in managing global travel policies

“Navan’s interface was extremely easy to use, said Melloul, “and from a management point of view, we liked that we could have access to real-time data, which we lacked with our prior solution.”

Beyond the user interface and clearer pricing structures, the platform gave UCB the corporate agility they had been missing. Navan gave the team newfound control over their own rules. “If we want to change our policy — for example, let’s block all travel to the Middle East — we do it in one simple click,” said Strumane. “We own the travel policy.”

Results with Navan

Since moving to Navan, UCB has experienced a fundamental shift in its travel operations, successfully scaling the platform to support employees across 26 countries under a single, unified system. The platform has finally allowed the procurement team to meet its core objective of balancing financial oversight with genuine employee happiness.

The most immediate impact was a massive surge in online adoption rates, driven by the platform’s visual attractiveness and intuitive design. Travelers have responded with overwhelming enthusiasm, reflected in a +49 Net Promoter Score (NPS) — a testament to UCB’s philosophy that traveler satisfaction is the ultimate metric for success.

Melloul has received lots of positive feedback from internal stakeholders. “People who used to call our previous agency to book trips are now making their own bookings on Navan,” she said. “They find the process to be easy and efficient.”

From a management perspective, Navan’s transparency and speed have revolutionized day-to-day operations. For Strumane, the new solution vastly simplifies her leadership responsibilities. “What I appreciate most in my role is the ease of reporting,” she said. “I get questions from the team, and I can give them an answer within a minute.”

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Navan is an AI-forward travel solution that is fit for the future.

Ilja Strumane

Head of Corporate Services Procurement

Future with Navan

For UCB, partnering with Navan is all about forward momentum. Rather than settling for a static travel program, the team is focused on leveraging emerging technology to continuously improve the employee experience.

A forward-looking vision now drives the program. "For me, the key is to stay ahead,” said Melloul. “It’s innovation, it’s digitalization, and it’s how AI can be further integrated to help our travelers.”

Ultimately, the endorsement from UCB’s leadership is firmly grounded in the tangible results the company has already achieved. ”If someone asked me if they should move to Navan, I would say, ‘yes, absolutely,’” said Straumane.