Wish I could upgrade. My company will only book the cheapest fare (X or lower), which ....
This is actually a core part of the problem - as companies switched to this policy of Cheapest-Fare-Only, and only looking at the immediate costs (and not extras, like luggage, meals, oxygen etc), airline companies got into a race to the bottom in costs (services etc per passenger) without any profitable group to help offset their bottom-line; business customers used to be good money for the airline companies when they traveled Business or First class.
So now we have a setup where the immediate ticket price is the only thing that matters (try getting approval for a route that costs 20USD more while taking 30 minutes less); Service, well-being, flight-time/route and other things that the traveler might be interested in have gone away, and if you're scheduled to meet a customer it is your own fault for looking like shite after 5-6 hours squeezed into a painful, static sitting "position".
The airline companies are giving their largest customers (i.e. companies) exactly what they want: a seemingly cheap flight for some employee.