[Jtsummers]

Offices used to offer some of that protection (not extending to the home/personal life) to their employees by having a secretary/admin attached to individual teams. At my last office, they experienced a sharp decline in productivity as things like business travel, writing/tracking memos, scheduling meetings, etc. was shifted increasingly to the technical staff and individual workers.

Ostensibly, the travel site was more efficient, but only in the sense that they dropped a 5-person travel office that had previously handled things. But the site was so hard to use correctly that they hired another 5-person travel office and a 10-person finance team to help manage travel and the use of corporate cards for the office.