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Spotnana Powers Travel for Brex’s T&E Solution

March 22, 2023
By Sarosh Waghmar
Categories News

When Spotnana was created back in 2020, we set out to modernize the infrastructure of the travel industry. This is our mission and reason for being. However, the technology we’re building is only a piece of our story. Equally important is who we’re building it for.

From the very beginning we decided that our approach to building travel technology would be different. Rather than building higher walls and closed systems to keep others out, we decided to create an open platform and invite everyone in. By giving everyone a seat at the same table, we believe we can learn from one another and innovate at a much faster pace. 

We also decided early on that we would do everything in our power to be the best in the world at one thing and one thing only: travel. It takes single-minded focus and determination to be the best at anything in this world, and this is especially true for something as complex as building the technology that enables billions of people to travel around the world.

We are grateful and honored that others have embraced our strategy and chosen to build their businesses on our platform. Today we are excited to announce that Brex has selected Spotnana’s Travel-as-a-Service Platform as the core infrastructure powering Brex travel, a new Travel & Expense solution that is built into Brex Empower. Through our partnership, Brex has created a unified spend management experience that includes card, expense management, and travel all in one app.

Modernizing Travel and Expense

Launched in 2022, Brex Empower has experienced rapid growth, onboarding hundreds of thousands of users globally. Additionally, Brex has begun migrating all current customers to Empower, since the platform is designed to serve the spend management needs of companies from enterprises to startups. 

Through Spotnana, Brex was able to quickly add travel bookings and corporate travel management capabilities to Empower, while reducing development costs and accelerating time to market.

Brex Empower customers now benefit from comprehensive travel booking and management, powered by Spotnana, with unbiased global inventory, self-service trip changes, and 24/7 agent support. The new travel functionality is built seamlessly into both the Brex dashboard and mobile app.

 

 

Brex was able to build its next generation travel solution from the ground up on top of Spotnana’s modern, cloud-based travel platform at a much faster pace than building an entirely new travel solution. A deep integration was possible due to several aspects of Spotnana’s architecture including:

  • Open APIs and microservices – make it easy to interface with specific components of Spotnana’s platform, such as profiles, trips, and analytics.
  • Embeddable user interface components – accelerate deployment by providing developers with the flexibility to use white labeled UI components, build a custom UI from scratch, or take a hybrid approach.
  • Extensible data infrastructure – enables partners to store and retrieve data elements that are essential for multiple systems to operate as one, such as customer and user profile data.

Spotnana’s open travel platform offered Brex the flexibility to fully customize the user experience, so travel is completely merged with the card and expense management capabilities of Brex Empower at all levels including profiles, policies, automated workflows, and reporting. At the same time, Brex is able to benefit from Spotnana’s continuous release of new travel features and enhancements. 

“Spotnana brings next generation travel experiences to customers inside the Brex Empower travel and expense platform,” said Henrique Dubugras, co-Founder and co-CEO of Brex. “Empower users gain access to the unrivaled travel options, easily see their travel policy on the mobile app at the time of booking, and enjoy automated receipt collection, memos, and approvals on trips.”

Live budgets allow Brex Empower customers to proactively provision and track spend in real time, keeping everyone accountable and on budget.

In addition to serving as Brex’s exclusive travel platform, Spotnana is operating as the travel management company (TMC) for Brex Empower customers, who receive 24/7 access to experienced travel agents via chat, phone, and email. Spotnana’s agents use the same tech stack as Brex Empower customers and deliver personalized service to any traveler in the world from any location.

The power of building together

It’s always been my experience and my belief that in life we can achieve more together than we can ever achieve alone. Partnering with the exceptional leaders at Brex to deliver on our mission has been a true pleasure, and we have learned and grown so much along the way.

This has been my experience with all of our partners, including Solutions Travel, who was the first TMC to announce they are using Spotnana as the core infrastructure powering their business.

Words cannot express the gratitude I feel to Brex, Solutions Travel, and the other trailblazers who are partnering with us today to bring truly exceptional experiences to travelers everywhere.

To learn how Spotnana’s Travel-as-a-Service Platform can help you quickly add travel sales to your business, please take a moment to reach out.