1E saves 160 hours a month on expense management with Navan's all-in-one solution

As a global software development company with offices in the UK, India, and the US, 1E employees travel regularly to collaborate together and meet customers around the world. Priding itself on giving customers an excellent user experience—it has a 99% customer satisfaction rating—1E sought a travel and expense (T&E) provider that delivered the same quality to its own employees.

Before Navan—the problem

Expense

1E’s previous expense process was “clunky, slow, and very time consuming”, says Group Accountant Luke Freeman. 

Transaction data took days to appear in the Silicon Valley Bank platform, meaning travellers needed to add receipts at a later date—which they often forgot to do. Expense reports therefore weren’t typically finalised until weeks after a trip. Missing receipts caused “a lot of problems”, says Financial Controller Binny Sandhu, whose team spent hours chasing this information from travellers.

The finance team struggled to proactively limit spending: “We could put limits on credit cards but that's all. We had minimal information and minimal control,” Binny adds.

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“In 2021, auditors told us we didn’t have enough visibility or control of our expenses. Navan changed that—we can now see exactly what everyone’s spending. From a financial control perspective, it’s so much better.”

Binny Sandhu

Financial Controller

Travel

For travel, 1E used Egencia but it lacked suitable inventory. Employees also frequently found prices for the same inventory to be much cheaper off platform, leading them to book directly with travel providers.

As a result, 1E had poor visibility of its travel spend. When the contract with Egencia ended, 1E decided to bring travel booking in-house but this too created issues. Employee Engagement Leader Giorgio Christou booked travel for the whole company and the process was largely managed over email, “which wasn’t viable or scaleable”, remembers Binny.

This made it hard to track and report on, and created an unsustainable and impractical workload for Giorgio.

Why 1E chose Navan

After years of using separate legacy solutions and managing its own T&E programme, 1E was quickly impressed by Navan’s end-to-end travel, expense, and corporate card solution. 

In particular, Giorgio says the following features were influential in 1E choosing Navan:

• Automated expense management
• Extensive travel inventory
• User-friendly platform
• In-depth reporting capabilities
• The all-in-one T&E platform

The Navan effect

Seamless T&E

Partnering with Navan instantly streamlined three solutions into one and alleviated the frustration of managing multiple outdated T&E solutions.

Travellers’ expenses appear instantly in their mobile app, while admins get visibility of all spend straightaway through the centralised dashboard.

Previously, one person’s full-time job was managing expenses, chasing receipts from employees, and checking if spend was compliant. Now, they’ve been freed up to focus on strategic initiatives thanks to automated approval processes that are built into the platform.

Travellers are enjoying booking and expensing on the Navan platform. The 82% mobile app adoption rate is a testament to the popularity of Navan’s digital-first solution and the broad travel inventory it features.

Binny also says Navan has made 1E travellers more accountable for their actions. They now spend company money more wisely thanks to greater transparency and clear policy guardrails, which 1E travel admins can implement and update in real time.

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"My favourite feature is Navan Rewards. It encourages our travellers to save the company money and in return they get travel credits to use towards their next holiday, which is really cool."

Giorgio Christou

Employee Engagement Culture Leader

The benefits 1E is seeing

After implementing Navan’s end-to-end T&E solution, employees across 1E have benefitted: 

Finance team:

• Sees all T&E spend as it happens
• Gets in-depth programme data insights
• Saves significant time which it can dedicate to strategic tasks

Travellers:

• Self-book travel in minutes on the consumer-grade platform
• Book from a comprehensive travel inventory
• Access in-app support 24/7
• Earn rewards for booking cost-effectively
• Can forget about time-consuming expense reports

Travel managers:

• Build detailed data reports with ease
• See all T&E spend in real time

Looking ahead

Into a greener future

Since onboarding with Navan, 1E employees have benefitted from Navan Rewards, a new feature fully funded by Navan that gives 1E employees personal travel credits when they book cheaper hotels.

With employees motivated to book lower-cost business travel at will, 1E is seeing greater savings and more engaged employees.

As well as refining its travel programme with features such as Navan Rewards, 1E uses the comprehensive data dashboard to reduce its carbon footprint.

For example, the 1E travel team uses the platform’s carbon emissions reporting to track its sustainability progress, while a Navan platform feature encourages travellers to take the train instead of flying for suitable routes.

And 1E employees appreciate it. The NPS score of +70 shows that by partnering with Navan, 1E has delivered on its objective to give its employees a T&E experience that meets its own high standards.