Campus Life & Style (CLS), a prominent student housing real estate company based in Austin, Texas, manages over 50 properties nationwide. As the company experienced growth and an increasing number of employees undertaking travel, CLS sought a more effective and economical solution for managing corporate travel and expenses. Jiles Paul, CLS’s National Cost Management Administrator, detailed how Navan’s integrated platform significantly improved their approach to travel and expense management.
Navigating Challenges Before Navan
Previously, CLS utilized Concur for expense management and relied on Capital One credit cards for travel, lacking a structured travel policy. This absence of a cohesive system made it challenging to monitor the travel activities of their teams, especially for marketing, leasing, and facilities operations specialists who frequently traveled between properties. Paul explained, “People were just booking at will with their Capital One cards. There were few negotiated deals, little oversight, and it was not cost-efficient.”
The company’s substantial growth since its inception in 2015 amplified the complexity of travel and expense management. The finance team faced difficulties in tracking employee locations, expenditures, and opportunities for cost optimization. “It was getting really difficult to see what was being spent and where,” Paul stated. “We needed a better way to manage travel and expenses across our portfolio.”
The Decision to Choose Navan
CLS evaluated various travel and expense solutions, including Egencia, but ultimately selected Navan due to its all-encompassing platform and dedicated customer support. Paul noted, “Having a local team in Austin and a dedicated account manager gave us confidence that we would receive ongoing support.”
The company opted for a phased implementation, beginning with Navan Travel and subsequently integrating Navan Expense. A critical factor in their decision was the capability to unify travel and expense management within a single platform. As Paul highlighted, “We just wanted travel and expense to be in one platform. It just made sense to go with Navan.”
A significant impetus for this change was the imperative to expedite financial closing processes and simplify expense coding and allocation. The experience with Concur had presented challenges: “It was a time commitment with Concur to upload receipts and sift through all the pictures of the receipts we’d take,” Paul elaborated.
Tangible Results with Navan
The implementation of Navan Expense has empowered employees to submit expenses in real-time, eliminating the previous end-of-month delays and significantly boosting efficiency and platform adoption. Furthermore, the user-friendly design of the Navan app has been a substantial improvement over Concur, which employees often found cumbersome to navigate. “That is definitely the biggest improvement since switching to Navan Expense,” Paul shared. Employees particularly value the ease of swiping transactions, reviewing them, or uploading receipts instantaneously.
From a travel perspective, CLS has realized considerable cost savings. In a year-over-year comparison following the initial rollout of Navan, CLS observed a reduction of over $300,000 in travel expenditures across flights, hotels, and rental cars. Paul attributes these savings not only to policy adjustments and enhanced oversight but also to Navan’s crucial role in streamlining travel management, providing clear visibility into spending, and facilitating more informed booking decisions.
Additionally, Paul noted the responsiveness and helpfulness of Navan’s support team when employees require modifications to their travel plans. The platform’s feature allowing employees to book personal travel has also been well-received.
Future Outlook and Integration
With its ongoing expansion into the multifamily housing sector, CLS intends to further leverage Navan’s expense management capabilities and maintain its high rate of travel booking adoption on the platform. The company is keenly focused on maximizing cost efficiencies and utilizing advanced reporting features to gain deeper insights into spending patterns and operational effectiveness—objectives that were not achievable with their previous system.
When asked to summarize Navan in three words, Paul’s response was unequivocal: “Catalyst for growth.”