Card-first, real-time travel and expense management

Center serves more than 1,600 mid-market companies, having grown rapidly from its early days as a corporate card and real-time expense management provider to now offer a card-first travel and expense management solution that includes travel booking and management, powered by Spotnana. 

With most travel managers expecting travel spend to grow over time, it’s important for them to have a real-time, accurate view of travel spending and behavior however a trip is booked.

In order to bring its vision of real-time visibility to life for travel managers and finance professionals, Center needed to offer robust travel management service through its solution in a way that integrated natively with its card and spend management capabilities. Travel represents a high volume of corporate expenses, and streamlining the expense process for employees and administrators is crucial to Center’s mission.

Center partnered with Spotnana to add corporate travel booking and management capabilities to its offering because Spotnana’s open Travel-as-a-Service platform provides a seamlessly embedded and deeply integrated travel experience with comprehensive content for travelers and strong policy controls for travel managers.

“Our vision is to deliver a card-centric travel and expense solution that meets the elevated expectations around technology and user experiences, driven by the consumerization of buying,” said Naveen Singh, Co-Founder and CEO at Center. “These shifts have reshaped both travel and company purchasing decisions. Our partnership with Spotnana is focused on meeting the needs of today’s environment and providing increasing value to our customers.”

Seamless integration

Rather than settle for a basic SSO integration, Center worked with Spotnana’s APIs to build a deep integration across profiles, policies, expenses, and the overall user experience. Center’s integration with Spotnana delivers:

• A single solution to manage card, expense, and travel with comprehensive inventory and modern selection, improving the traveler and traveler manager experience.
• Real-time reconciliation of itinerary and receipt data, improving the expensing process⁠.
• Centralized application of travel and expense policy, streamlining the booking through to the general ledger (GL) workflow⁠.
• Enhanced visibility into travel spend and traveler behavior⁠, providing insights for better decision-making and supplier negotiation.

Spotnana is seamlessly integrated into Center’s user experience.

“Spotnana has been an incredible partner,” said Singh. “Their technology is easy to integrate, they deliver an exceptional experience for both travelers and admins, and their pace of innovation is only accelerating. With Spotnana, we feel well positioned to deliver increasing value to our customers and continue to scale our business.”

Center viewed the opportunity to partner with Spotnana as a way to bring a product to market more quickly than if it had built a travel solution itself.

“Partnering allows us to leverage Spotnana’s specialized expertise and modern travel booking capabilities, accelerating our time to market and delivering a superior, comprehensive solution to our customers more efficiently,” said Singh. “Building from scratch would require significant time, resources, and investment, potentially delaying the benefits we can offer. By collaborating, we combine strengths, foster innovation, reduce risks, and provide immediate value with a proven solution.”

Since launch, the feedback from Center customers has been overwhelmingly positive due to the value unlocked by this deep integration.

Singh said Center customers love:

• The travel booking experience, particularly the breadth of content and intuitive shopping display.
• In- and out-of-policy flags that clearly indicate compliance, making it easier for travelers to stay within company guidelines.
• Self-service features, including in-app trip changes and travel profile updates.
• A centralized platform for administrators to manage card, expense, and travel, as well as the streamlined approval processes.
• Administrator features like unused ticket management, flexible policy management, traveler safety, preferred vendor configuration, and the ability to add supplier discounts and loyalty programs.

Continuous improvement for customers

Center’s commitment to continuous improvement is key to its ongoing collaboration with Spotnana. By leveraging user feedback and market insights, Center regularly enhances its integrated travel and expense management solution to better meet the needs of customers.

The partnership’s success is reflected in the growing satisfaction of mid-market companies that benefit from streamlined processes, improved visibility, and cost savings.

“We gauge the success of our partnership by measuring the number of customers using our travel and expense solution, the volume and cost of trips booked on and off platform, and overall customer satisfaction,” said Singh. “So far, we have nearly 200 travel and expense customers, and we’re on track for integrated card, travel, and expense customers to make up more than a quarter of our base by 2025.”

The partnership between Center and Spotnana continues to evolve, with both companies committed to refining their integrated solution. As Center expands its customer base, it’s focused on adding features such as AI-driven analytics for travel budgeting. These innovations aim to further streamline the travel and expense management process, providing mid-market companies with tools that simplify complex practices and enhance the experience for users.

“We are excited about the partnership because it allows us to combine our strengths and deliver unparalleled value to customers,” said Singh. “It also enables us to expand our reach by leveraging our integrated technology stack to work with other TMCs in a scalable way. We look forward to our continued collaboration driving significant productivity and efficiency gains across an expanding range of applications and use cases.”