How a Medical Device Leader With Thousands of Travellers Cut Per-Trip Costs 15% and Reclaimed 5 Hours a Week in Admin
The Challenge
Straumann USA — the North American arm of the Swiss dental implant and digital dentistry group — managed thousands of business travellers across its distributed sales and clinical field teams. The previous travel management company offered limited booking flexibility, locked finance out of real-time spend data, and could not customise travel policies to match Straumann's operational requirements. Reporting was a manual process: finance and procurement had no self-serve access to travel spend analytics, making cost management reactive rather than proactive. Duty-of-care oversight was limited, with no centralised view of traveller locations during active trips. HR system integration required manual data handling, adding administrative overhead to an already complex programme.
The Solution
Straumann USA migrated to Navan Business Travel and Navan Travel Payments, onboarding thousands of travellers with support from Navan's implementation team. Flexible policy configuration replaced the rigid rules of the previous provider — Straumann could now design policies matching its operational structure without vendor involvement. Real-time spend dashboards gave finance and procurement self-serve access to travel data, eliminating manual reporting cycles. Integration with Straumann's HR systems automated traveller data synchronisation, removing the manual processes that had consumed approximately five hours per week. Mobile adoption enabled field-based employees to manage travel from any location.
The Outcome
Per-trip costs fell 10–15% through a combination of flexible booking options and automated policy controls that surfaced cost-efficient travel choices. Over 13,000 trips were successfully booked through the platform, demonstrating programme adoption at scale across the distributed workforce. HR system integration eliminated approximately five hours of manual administration per week — a figure the team described as representing "real dollar savings." Traveller satisfaction reached 94% CSAT and a 4.7 out of 5 satisfaction score, with 84% mobile adoption confirming that field-based staff were actively using the platform.
Strategic Takeaway
In field-intensive industries like medical devices — where sales and clinical teams are constantly travelling to hospitals, dental practices, and training events — travel is not a discretionary cost but a core operational input. The 10–15% per-trip saving is therefore not a marginal efficiency gain; for a programme of 13,000 trips, it represents a meaningful reduction in the cost of revenue generation. The less visible saving is the five hours per week recovered from HR data synchronisation: in large travel programmes, the administrative overhead of keeping traveller records accurate across systems is a persistent tax on the HR function. Navan's HR integration converts this from a manual task into an automated background process. For medical device companies where field team productivity directly translates to customer access, any friction removed from the travel experience compounds into more time in front of customers.
- In field-intensive businesses, per-trip cost savings scale directly with travel volume — a 10–15% reduction across 13,000 trips has a materially different financial impact than the same percentage applied to 200 trips.
- Self-serve travel analytics shift cost management from reactive to proactive: finance can identify spend patterns and adjust policies before overspend accumulates.
- HR system integration in large travel programmes is not optional — without it, traveller record maintenance consumes disproportionate administrative time as the programme scales.
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