How VEG Saved and Streamlined With Navan

Veterinary Emergency Group (VEG), which provides emergency and urgent care services for pets, has 4,000 employees in 65 locations across the U.S. Other travel and expense (T&E) solutions had not fulfilled VEG’s needs, and with the organization’s ambitious plans to scale, sticking with the wrong T&E solution would have only made the situation worse.

Before Navan: “A Complete Mess”

That’s how Brett Holloway, SVP of Finance for VEG, described the organization’s T&E program — or lack thereof — before using Navan. 

On the expense side, VEG tried Concur and Expensify — but those ended in disaster, according to Holloway. He said these platforms could only handle basic processes, like coding expenses. “There was no special sauce,” he said. As a result, it was difficult to understand the economic reality on the ground and in the hospitals. And VEG didn't use any travel management platform.

To achieve more effective expense tracking and increased travel compliance, VEG needed a new, integrated T&E solution that could grow with them. 

Enter Navan.

No Longer Barking Up the Wrong Tree

When VEG made the switch to Navan, Holloway found the sales and implementation process to be easy and straightforward — so easy, in fact, that VEG went live with Navan in just 60 days.

Navan has helped VEG streamline its T&E operation by enabling the organization to consolidate administrative operations. With the ability to configure policies based on employee attributes and whether they’re traveling or not, VEG can empower their employees to spend appropriately. A single employee can handle all of the administrative work so VEG doesn’t have to worry about hiring more admins and managers as it grows.

Thanks to Navan’s configurable, proactive policies on the expense side, finance managers know that the entire population of expenses has been coded correctly — with the company’s policy enforced. The result: fewer back-and-forths between employees, managers, and admins so that managers can focus on exceptions.

VEG has also been better able to control costs by improving compliance. Holloway can see when employees are within policy — and when they’re not. And Navan has given VEG a clear, real-time window into its finances.

“Navan removes that roadblock for us to scale,” said Holloway. “Now we can focus on growing our business.”

The Cat’s Meow

VEG employees travel a lot. Fortunately, “we’re spending about as little as we can on travel,” said Holloway. “We’ve saved hundreds of thousands of dollars with Navan.” On flights alone, VEG has achieved a savings of 13%.

One reason has been the adoption rate, which at 88% is among the highest for any platform VEG uses. And leakage is down to its lowest level ever. “That tells you empirically that Navan works,” said Holloway. Plus, employees like the solution, giving Navan an NPS score of +59 — what Holloway calls a “testament to the quality of the platform.”

The widespread use of Navan across the organization lets VEG see where their employees are and better track what all of them are spending.

“Our employees travel all over; you never know where people are going to be,” said Holloway. With Navan, VEG doesn’t have to wonder.

VEG has a bright future: In the next three to five years, the organization is looking to become three to five times bigger. “Thinking about how to manage at that scale [with our previous T&E solution] was daunting,” said Holloway. “But Navan has reduced that potential administrative burden substantially.”

“Navan is the ideal kind of platform,” said Holloway. “I don’t even have to think about it — it just works.”