Navan Events SVP & GM Galen Grady discusses...
BoomPop Acquisition
Balance between AI automation and human expertise
Competition to merge travel and events tech
Next steps with integration
Navan's recent acquisition of AI-powered meetings and events platform BoomPop builds on its push to bring travel, expense and events into a "unified platform." The company plans to fold BoomPop's brand, technology and staff into its Navan Events platform, which it launched in June following an initial integration with the AI startup.
Galen Grady, senior vice president and general manager of Navan Events, spoke with BTN's Lauren Arena in October about the rationale for the deal, the balance between automation and human expertise and the next steps for integration. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Business Travel News: Navan moved from integrating with BoomPop to acquiring the company within months. What did you learn from the initial integration that convinced you the opportunity was big enough to bring BoomPop fully inside Navan?
Galen Grady: We've seen that a lot of the work of managing [meetings and event] spend, organizing it and being able to report on it is falling onto the travel manager. They've got this additional workload, but they don't have a great integrated system to manage it.
For us, we saw the opportunity to become the one-stop shop for travel, expense and events together. The partnership with BoomPop was going really well because it was helping bring an online experience, and an online platform, a lot of technology around M&E. We thought, if we acquire BoomPop, we can accelerate the roadmap, bring the Navan resources in, take the best of their technology and combine the people that we have.
BoomPop also had an events management studio with professional event planners. Pair that with Reed & Mackay [which Navan acquired in 2021], and the outcome for a customer is this all-in-one experience where it's all going through Navan. They can get their events planned and managed using this [self-serve] tool or using our event planners.
BTN: Was the acquisition primarily about technology, or was bringing in BoomPop's customers also a factor?
Grady: The primary focus for us was the technology and being able to integrate this directly into the Navan platform. It's going to be a better experience out of the gate because we're building it directly into Navan's code stack, and it's going to let us accelerate the technology roadmap as well. That was the primary decision.
It helps land Navan as that central point for your travel, your expense and your events... You're going to be able to centralize all that reporting, data and spend.
BTN: What are your priorities for the product roadmap?
Grady: We're making a concerted effort to give customers a unified experience, whether they want to use self-service or managed services [for those larger, more complex events]. If they want our event planners to assist, we're investing in making that a seamless experience for the customer and the [Navan] event planner to interact and co-create through the Navan platform.
That's been a major focus because we recognize that sometimes you don't want to self-serve and sometimes you need event planner support.
BTN: What does that co-creation look like in practice?
Grady: It's definitely consolidated data. We work together with customers to create this shell of an event together. Then, as the customer, I can start seeing the RFPs that went out. You have visibility into all the actions going on.
We've agreed we want this venue – lock it in. I've got the spend consolidated within that event shell, and then I'm adding the fireworks vendor, the flower vendor, et cetera. You can start adding all these items, and it's visible. The [Navan] event planner is doing the work on the other side, negotiating with vendors, but you're seeing the outcomes directly in the application.
The event planner puts the comparison options out there for you. You can say: "I don't like this one. I love this one." You make that decision directly in the tool. That's how you're co-creating and working together.
BTN: Where are you applying Boompop's AI capabilities and where do you draw the line between automation and human expertise?
Grady: It's more around enabling and doing the grunt work. Let's take planning an event. If I have to do an event in San Francisco and I want a Western theme, maybe I don't know what places are good for that. I can use the AI to say, "I want a Western-themed or winery-themed offsite with 20 people in this location." The AI can figure that out and provide suggestions and options, and then you can shortlist them.
Today, it's just a recommendation. It's helping with that discovery and ideation phase. It's still up to you to select which ones and issue the RFPs.
Let's say the RFPs come back in a slightly unstructured format. We can use AI to give you that side-by-side, apples-to-apples comparison: This is the room rate, this is the venue cost. It's helping simplify something that in the past you would have had to put into a spreadsheet and compare yourself.
We also offer AI negotiation tools, where we can say: "You should propose this when you're responding to the proposal." We're not going ahead and executing for you. We're doing the work and presenting what it should look like. Then we give you the decision-making capability.
BTN: The meetings tech landscape has become increasingly crowded with new "AI-native" entrants and transient travel platforms including Spotnana, Perk and Kayak for Business adding group and event capabilities. How do you view that competition?
Grady: Part of it is validating that this is really important. The whole industry is recognizing that events is an important part of your T&E program, and they shouldn't be viewed as totally separate things. You should look at these things holistically.
Take a supplier: If you have a contract to do a certain amount of spend, you want to be able to report, "This is the event spend, this is the transient hotel spend." Having one system of record should help you do that.
It's a competitive marketplace, but one thing Navan has always done really well, and why BoomPop was an exciting acquisition, is that we're so focused on the user experience. By making this such an easy-to-use tool, users are going to want to use it. They're not going to go off platform because it's just easier.
BoomPop had the same ethos: Make the experience of booking and managing an event so easy and simple that you want to use the platform. Then adoption will come, which benefits travel and procurement teams.
BTN: Do you expect further convergence of travel and meetings management?
Grady: I do. That's part of the bet we're making. We see these things coming together more and more. I hear it from customers. I'll talk to travel managers, and it's, "I've taken on this meetings team," or "I'm now responsible for this meetings spend." I think it's a natural convergence of travel and events.
BTN: Navan CEO Ariel Cohen described M&E as "an enormous category" in the company's latest earnings call. How prominent a role will this play in your investment strategy moving forward? And are future acquisitions on the table?
Grady: It's definitely a key focus area for the company. Boompop was a big acquisition for us. We announced it at earnings. Ariel is talking about it, and when he's talking about it, you know it's important for the company.
It's cool to see the company embracing this as a core part of our strategy and offering going forward. As far as future acquisitions, it's always no comment on those things.
We're really focused on making this integration go well, getting this built into Navan, getting all the people integrated and making sure we can start delivering the platform and services together for our customers. We're focused on the integration right now.