Asana adopts Navan’s full solution and unlocks exceptional results
Results
98%
of P-card transactions auto-approved
23%
savings on Navan Rewards hotel bookings
13%
overall hotel savings
With 1,800 employees and over a million users worldwide, Asana is a publicly traded enterprise work management platform that helps companies organise, track, and manage work, all in one place. But until recently, the company was not managing its travel and expense programme in one place, which led to frustrations when scaling globally. Asana has used Navan for travel management since 2018 and saw stellar results, such as 13% savings on hotels. In March 2023, Asana adopted Navan for its expense and payments needs and in doing so unlocked the full benefits of all-in-one travel and expense management.
Before Navan
Off-platform bookings and disjointed data
Asana had been using Navan to manage global travel, but things got complicated when it came to keeping track of expenses and spending. The company used separate providers to manage its expenses and corporate card transactions in the US, and the company maintained multiple banking relationships globally.
“There were frequent issues with EMEA and APJ corporate cards,” said Vern Carandang, programme manager for travel and expense at Asana. One significant difficulty was poor payment acceptance rates, which meant merchants were declining transactions — and employees were understandably frustrated.”
The use of disparate solutions caused other headaches as well. At reporting time, Carandang had to manually convert global currencies to USD, which wasted hours and risked manual errors.
“We have 13 global offices. So imagine me having to download all these reports, convert everything, and then put together the reporting,” said Carandang. “What’s great about Navan is you can convert everything to USD, and the reporting is phenomenal; Navan saves so much time.”
Why Asana chose Navan
According to Carandang, global scalability was the main reason why Asana started looking for a new solution for its expense and spend management woes. After an extensive RFP process, Asana chose Navan because of the benefits of having an all-in-one solution for travel, expense, and spend management.
What Navan users at Asana say
"The new travel experience is unmatched — and I am really grateful as a customer-facing traveller!" — Road Warrior
The Navan effect
The impact of adding Navan Expense
Now that Asana is up and running with Navan Expense, the company has immediately seen the benefits of a streamlined, end-to-end solution.
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"Now that Navan Expense has launched, we consistently hear rave reviews about it from employees."
Vern Carandang
Programme Manager for Travel and Expense
“Having travel and expense under one system simplifies everything. It’s unmatched versus the hodgepodge of multiple providers across expense management and corporate cards we used before,” said Carandang.
What Navan users at Asana say
"I submitted my first expense through Navan. It is a game-changer and fantastic! Well done!" — EMEA Finance Leader
Today, 98% of transactions made with Navan purchase cards are auto-approved. And deploying Navan Expense has also led to faster reimbursements globally. With the disparate solutions in play, employees had to wait to get money back in their pockets. With Navan, employees typically get reimbursed within days.
“Navan resolved our global scale issues,” said Carandang. “Now that Navan Expense has launched, we consistently hear rave reviews about it from employees.”
“
"Having travel and expense under one system simplifies everything. It’s unmatched versus the hodgepodge of multiple providers across expense management and corporate cards we used before."
Vern Carandang
Programme Manager for Travel and Expense
Navan Rewards boosting travel savings
As a longtime Navan Travel partner, Asana has seen firsthand how the solution can make corporate travel enjoyable for travellers, effortless for admins, and beneficial for the company’s bottom line.
“We’ve seen a lift from a cost savings perspective thanks to dynamic pricing,” Carandang said, referring to the fact that Navan allows Asana to build custom policy controls and determines a fair market price for every trip search. “Having those dynamic policies and configurations has been good for us because Navan provides a visual cue for our employees to be mindful of pricing.”
Asana has also seen substantial cost savings thanks to the Navan Rewards programme, which incentivises travellers to book hotels that save the company money. The latest figures show that Asana’s average nightly hotel rate is 23% less for people who book with Navan Rewards incentives.
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"Overall, having Navan as our all-in-one solution is just so much easier, and everyone is happy with it."
Vern Carandang
Programme Manager for Travel and Expense
Meetings & Events
The company has also used Navan’s Meetings & Events feature to help plan its annual sales kickoff (SKO) and president’s club events. The feature allows companies to seamlessly manage events in a central hub with built-in event approval flows. “This was a great experience for our internal events team because it was simple for our end users to book, saved our team time and helped them stay organised,” Carandang explained. “We’re huge fans of Meetings & Events.”
“Overall, having Navan as our all-in-one solution is just so much easier, and everyone is happy with it,” he said.