How to reduce shadow work: a guide for Operations Managers

Operations leaders are hired to make systems work better.

You’re responsible for overseeing day-to-day operations and ensuring resources are used effectively to drive performance. That can mean improving processes, aligning cross-functional teams, managing budgets, introducing new tools, or identifying ways to increase efficiency and reduce waste. When something slows the business down, it often lands on your desk.

But not all slowdowns are isolated issues. Across most organisations, an invisible layer of friction drains time, energy, and focus from every department.

It’s the endless stream of non-core tasks, the work behind the work, that keeps the company running while pulling people away from higher-impact responsibilities. We call this shadow work.

Shadow work isn’t just frustrating. It’s measurable and expensive.

For Operations leaders, some of the most visible (and solvable) sources of shadow work sit in three interconnected areas:

• Business travel

• Expenses

• Group travel and events

In this guide, we’ll look at how shadow work shows up across these workflows — and how consolidating them into one intelligent system can reduce friction across the entire organisation.

The challenge: operational friction across the business

When systems are fragmented, friction compounds.

Travel sits in one platform. Expenses in another. Financial data somewhere else. Event logistics in spreadsheets. Approvals flow through Slack. Policies live in PDFs. Reporting happens in Excel.

Each tool may work independently. But together, they create gaps.

For Operations leaders, those gaps show up in four recurring ways.

1. Disconnected travel workflows

Business travel touches nearly every team: revenue, leadership, recruiting, customer success.

But when booking, approvals, policy enforcement, and reporting aren’t embedded in one system, travel becomes reactive.

You end up with:

• Inconsistent policy compliance

• Approval bottlenecks across departments

• Limited real-time visibility into who’s traveling and why

• Manual reporting at month-end

• Disruption handling that escalates internally

• Frustrated travellers who don’t know where to book, what’s in policy, or who to contact — leading to support tickets, Slack messages, and leadership feedback landing back with Operations

Even when a company has a travel solution, if it isn’t integrated with spend, card payments, or reporting systems, data still has to be reconciled manually.

Travel doesn’t just create cost exposure. It creates operational drag.

2. Expense fragmentation

Even when companies have a strong travel solution and a strong expense platform, the gap between them creates friction.

Employees book travel in one system. They submit receipts and manage expenses in another. Finance teams reconcile transactions separately.

Each trip can trigger multiple manual steps:

• Uploading receipts

• Matching bookings to card transactions

• Categorising expenses

• Routing approvals

• Reconciling travel costs at month-end

When travel and expense systems are not connected, Operations and Finance spend time stitching data together instead of working from a unified view.

This creates:

• Delayed visibility into travel spend

• Duplicate data entry

• Approval slowdowns

• Reporting inconsistencies

Individually, each step seems minor. Together, they add measurable friction to every trip.

3. Event coordination without centralised control

Events sit at the intersection of travel and spend — yet they’re often managed separately.

Whether it’s an offsite, leadership summit, or company-wide meeting, organising group travel and logistics frequently involves:

• Venue sourcing across multiple platforms

• RSVP tracking in spreadsheets

• Separate travel bookings

• Budget tracking in disconnected files

• Post-event invoice reconciliation

The result is duplicated effort, inconsistent data, and limited oversight across the full cost of an event.

For Operations, that means managing complexity across tools instead of designing simplicity into the workflow.

4. Tool proliferation and the integration gap

The research shows most employees use multiple tools to complete shadow work — and only a small percentage report having a well-integrated tech stack.

Each additional tool introduces:

• Context switching

• Integration gaps

• Data inconsistencies

• More manual reconciliation

As companies grow, the tech stack grows with them.

Without consolidation, Operations becomes responsible for connecting systems that were never designed to work together.

Instead of building scalable infrastructure, you’re maintaining workarounds.

The underlying pattern

Across travel, spend, and events, the pattern is consistent:

• Transactions happen in one place

• Policies are enforced in another

• Approvals happen elsewhere

• Reporting is rebuilt manually

The friction isn’t caused by one broken tool. It’s caused by systems that don’t work together.

Reducing it doesn’t require more effort from employees. It requires workflows designed to do the work automatically.

The solution: one intelligent platform for travel, spend, and events

Perk powers real work by reducing the shadow work that slows teams down. By automating workflows across travel and events, and integrating seamlessly with leading expense and spend tools, the platform gives Operations leaders the visibility, control, and simplicity needed to design smarter systems, not manage manual processes.

Just as importantly, it connects to the rest of your tech stack.

With pre-built integrations across leading HR systems like Workday, BambooHR, and ADP; ERP and accounting platforms such as NetSuite, SAP, Oracle, QuickBooks, and Microsoft Dynamics; and identity and communication tools like Okta, Slack, and Microsoft Teams, information flows automatically between systems.

Employee records sync from HR. Travel data appears directly in your connected expense platform. Notifications surface in the tools your teams already use.

Instead of acting as the bridge between disconnected tools, Operations operates from one connected system.

Here’s how that plays out across travel, spend, and events.

Travel: structured, in-policy, and visible

When travel sits outside your broader spend and reporting systems, it creates blind spots. Policies are enforced manually. Approvals slow bookings down. Data has to be exported and reconciled. Disruptions ripple back into internal teams.

Perk brings travel into the same operational framework as spend and payments by embedding structure directly into the booking experience.

With Perk, you can:

• Apply travel policies automatically at the point of booking

• Auto-approve in-policy trips while routing exceptions to the right approvers

• Track travellers in real time for full visibility and Duty of Care coverage

• Centralise reporting so travel data flows directly into your broader spend insights

• Provide 24/7 traveller support that resolves disruptions without escalating internally

• Use FlexiTravel so trips are 80% refundable when plans change, up to 2 hours before departure

Organisations using Perk see measurable impact. Fieldin has achieved nearly 100% travel policy compliance. Nortal reduced travel spend by 10%, while Outfittery cut 60% of the time spent on travel management. And beyond cost and control, the traveller experience improves as well. 

As Sarah Levitin, Travel and Events Manager at LUSH, explains: 

“We've heard so much great feedback from our travellers. We definitely feel this has made a giant improvement in our traveler experience.”

Because travel data lives inside the same system as expenses and payments, Operations gains a unified view of cost, compliance, and traveler activity without stitching together reports across platforms.

Travel shifts from reactive coordination to structured control, aligned with the rest of your operational systems.

Spend: connecting travel to your existing expense systems

In many organisations, travel and expenses live in separate systems. Employees book travel in one platform and manage expenses in another. Even when both tools work well independently, the disconnect between them creates extra steps, duplicate data entry, and reporting gaps.

Perk reduces that friction by integrating directly with leading expense and spend management platforms, so travel and expense workflows work together instead of operating in silos.

Through these integrations, you can:

• Seamlessly sync Perk with your existing financial setup through your integration of choice

• Automatically link every Perk travel transaction to the matching expense in your preferred spend partner, with the receipt attached and the cost category defined

• Keep your existing workflows the same while simplifying how travel expenses are viewed and managed

Perk integrates with widely used platforms such as BILL Spend & Expense, Ramp, Pleo, Spendesk, and Expensify, along with many others. This allows companies to retain their preferred finance tools while eliminating disconnects between travel and spend.

Organisations integrating Perk with their expense systems see immediate operational impact. At GMG EnviroSafe, reconciliation used to take days. “Before Perk, it took the accounting team days to reconcile expenses. Now, I can go through the reconciliation process in three hours, which is huge since much of our spending is travel-based. Perk has made it so much easier,” says Ryan.

Events: centralised, coordinated, and controlled

Group travel and company events often sit at the intersection of travel and spend — yet they are frequently managed outside both systems.

Venue sourcing happens across multiple platforms. RSVPs live in spreadsheets. Travel bookings are handled separately. Budgets are tracked manually. Invoices are reconciled after the fact. This creates complexity across tools instead of clarity across workflows.

Perk brings events into the same operational system as travel and spend, so coordination, visibility, and cost control happen in one place.

With Perk Events, you can:

• Centralise AI-powered venue sourcing, group travel, and attendee coordination in one platform

• Automate RSVP tracking and attendee communications

• Allow attendees to book travel within predefined policies and budgets

• Maintain full visibility into event-related travel and spend in real time

• Track event-related travel costs with centralized visibility

• Access dedicated event specialists who support venue sourcing, negotiations, and supplier coordination

For Toggl, that combination of technology and human support has significantly reduced manual effort. As Szokratesz Kosztopulosz, Events and Operations Manager, explains:

Instead of managing venue negotiations and logistics across multiple tools, Toggl operates with a structured, supported workflow that reduces coordination overhead and improves visibility.

Because events live inside the same platform as travel and expenses, there is no need to reconcile attendee travel separately from event costs. Operations gains a complete view of event impact, cost, and compliance without relying on disconnected spreadsheets.

Events shift from manual coordination to structured orchestration, aligned with the same operational backbone that powers travel and spend.

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From operational friction to operational clarity

Shadow work doesn’t disappear because teams try harder. It shrinks when systems are designed to do more of the work automatically.

Across travel, spend, and events, the pattern is consistent. When tools are disconnected, policies live outside transactions, and reporting requires manual reconciliation, friction accumulates. Visibility drops. Control weakens. Interruptions increase.

For Operations leaders, the opportunity is structural.

By centralising travel and events and connecting them with your existing expense systems, you reduce fragmentation across workflows and replace manual coordination with embedded automation. Policies are enforced automatically. Approvals follow defined rules. Data flows into reporting without rework.

The result is not just cleaner processes. It is regained capacity.

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Instead of maintaining workarounds between systems, your teams can focus on improving performance, strengthening controls, and driving measurable impact across the business.

Perk reduces the work behind the work so your organisation can focus on real work, with real impact.