PayFit makes 13% savings on hotel and flight spend with Navan

If there’s any company shaking up Europe’s payroll software market, it's PayFit. The payroll management specialist is on a mission to simplify HR processes for SMEs and has established itself as an industry leader since it was founded in 2015. After opening offices in Paris, London, and Barcelona, the French tech unicorn saw its travel volume increase and began encountering problems with its previous travel provider. In early 2023, it decided to partner with Navan, a choice made easy by Navan’s close cultural fit and shared passion for relentless innovation. The result: a winning partnership that has seen PayFit simplify its travel programme, cut travel costs, and improve the user experience.

Before Navan—the problem

Limited inventory, platform leakage, and manual processes

Before partnering with Navan, PayFit used a travel management solution with a limited travel inventory, particularly outside of France, and poor user experience.

As a result, many bookings were made off platform, particularly in Spain and the UK, which meant account admins had incomplete travel data and were unable to optimise the company travel programme. Budgeting accurately was difficult and admins lacked information on traveller whereabouts, limiting their duty of care capabilities.

The booking platform was unintuitive and required significant manual work, whether to validate employee bookings, process travel data, or build accurate, usable reports.

Why PayFit chose Navan

Julien Lachowski, FP&A Director at PayFit, recalls that the following factors were decisive when choosing Navan as PayFit’s new business travel management solution:

• Broad travel inventory
• User-friendly platform
• Customisable travel policies
• Dynamic policies that boost savings potential
• Powerful reporting and real-time data
• Streamlined expense management process

After onboarding, the team at PayFit was quickly impressed by Navan's user-friendly platform, intuitive dashboards, and in-depth data reporting.

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“Since implementing Navan, we've saved a lot of time managing employee travel expenses. I've been able to concentrate on other, more valuable tasks.”

Julien Lachowski

FP&A Director

The Navan effect

Enhanced traveller experience and time savings

Switching to Navan gave PayFit travellers access to a much larger travel inventory that meets the needs of its employees in France, Spain, and the UK. Employees enjoy the intuitive user experience and how easy it is to modify or cancel a trip directly in the mobile app. 

With platform adoption having increased markedly, admins are better informed of traveller whereabouts, boosting their duty of care. Travellers, meanwhile, benefit from 24/7 travel support.

Thanks to the real-time data available in the Navan platform, accounting and HR teams can pull reports with ease, giving them more time for tasks that add greater value to the company.

Customisable policies that boost savings

"One of the many benefits of Navan is how customisable the platform is," Julien says. PayFit has established different travel policies and spending limits depending on a range of factors including employee seniority, destination, and trip type. 

These policies are automatically implemented in the platform, which helps create trust and transparency across the company. Managers no longer have to check and approve every booking, while employees have greater autonomy.

In addition to being customisable, spending policies in the Navan platform are dynamic and adjust according to the median price in each destination. This ensures spending limits are reflective of the market rate at the time of booking and allows PayFit to make considerable savings.

Features to support PayFit's sustainability strategy

Sustainability is an important topic for PayFit, and Navan quickly proved itself an effective partner in reducing the environmental impact of PayFit’s travel programme.

When booking a trip on the Navan platform, travellers are encouraged to travel by train rather than plane for viable routes thanks to the train over plane feature which prioritises lower emitting options. The impact is already being seen — the number of journeys made by rail has risen significantly compared to last year, while air travel has fallen.

PayFit also benefits from detailed sustainability reporting in the Navan platform, which enables admins to analyse its travel policies in detail. Admins can calculate carbon emissions reports per trip, department, or for the whole company. This capability means PayFit can now study its carbon footprint accurately and with granularity, and identify ways to reduce its emissions.

The benefits PayFit is seeing

Within the company, many teams are benefitting from Navan's user-centric solution:

Finance team:

• Sees all spend in real time
• Gets accurate insights on programme performance
• Focuses on higher-impact tasks

Travellers:

• Self-book travel in a few clicks 
• Access a vast travel inventory
• Get travel support directly in the mobile app
• Book cheaper options thanks to dynamic policies

HR team:

• Gets real-time visibility of all employee travel
• Saves precious time with automated policies and approval processes

Sustainability team:

• Uses real-time data to track carbon emissions against company targets 
• Encourages more sustainable options with customisable travel policies

Looking ahead

Having already achieved excellent results since onboarding, PayFit travel admins are now working hand in hand with their dedicated Navan account manager to optimise the company travel programme.

The platform’s integrations and automation capabilities are helping PayFit streamline its internal workflows and save employees across the company time. 

Meanwhile, the numerous NDC connections on the Navan platform are giving PayFit access to cheaper airfares and generating higher savings.