Breitling

How Breitling eliminated shadow work in travel and spend

The hidden burden slowing Breitling down

Breitling has been setting the standard for Swiss watchmaking for more than a century. Innovation kept Breitling’s products ahead of the market, but inside the company, its finance and travel processes were still stuck in the past.

For finance and travel management, everyday work was slowed down by invisible admin no one wanted to do, but everyone had to deal with. This is what we call shadow work — the tasks that never make it into a job description but show up everywhere: chasing receipts, fixing duplicate invoices, waiting on approvals, or handling trips gone wrong. At Breitling, this hidden work was part of almost every journey and every report. It drained time, left employees frustrated, managers distracted, and finance without reliable data.

The real cost of shadow work

The cost went beyond wasted hours. Shadow work delayed decisions, weakened compliance, and forced teams into constant reaction mode. For a global company, relying on manual fixes and outdated processes made it impossible for finance and travel to play the proactive role the business needed.

If Breitling wanted to continue growing, they had to change this. Not by adding another tool to the stack, but by choosing an all-in-one platform that could bring travel and spend together, run the admin in the background, and give both finance and travelers confidence that compliance and data would simply take care of themselves.

One platform for travel and spend

That’s why Breitling chose Perk. With Perk, employees can book their trips quickly, with policies built into the system so approvals happen automatically. Receipts and invoices are captured digitally, and reimbursements don’t get stuck in back-and-forth emails. If plans change, Perk’s 24/7 support team handles it directly with the traveler, so managers don’t have to step in.

For finance, Perk cuts out hours of manual work. Expenses are matched automatically, reporting is easy to run, and compliance is built in. Instead of waiting for end-of-month reports, finance has a clear view of company-wide spend. The team processed expenses worth more than US$1.7 million in the last year. By automating these processes, they increased efficiency by 180% and achieved an ROI of over 200% compared to the annual license fees.

As CFO Dr. Lars Kästle explains:

“Perk meets all our requirements. As an extremely innovative solution for key processes, it takes away the manual burden we had before.”

For travel managers, Perk removes the firefighting that used to come with every trip. Policies are embedded in the booking process, bookings flow seamlessly into expense management, reporting is straightforward, and flexible travel options make cancellations and changes less of a burden.

In one year alone, Perk helped Breitling save more than $230,000 (USD) on company travel.

Time back for what really matters

Hours of invisible admin that once dominated the day are now handled quietly in the background, leaving Breitling’s teams free to do the work that really matters.

As Dr. Kästle puts it:

“We now have a single source of truth with unmatched data quality for the audit trail. That gives us exactly the level of transparency we need for future-oriented business planning and forecasting.”