Originally written by Anna Jordan on Small Business
UK SMEs have cost themselves £1,268 per second in lost productivity this year – the equivalent of over 16 days so far.
These startling figures comes from Sage’s second annual productivity tracker, which investigates the amount of time sacrificed to administrative tasks.
At an event co-chaired by Ed Vaizey MP, key industry figures talked about the issues affecting efficiency in business today.
Overall it seems that our productivity is getting worse. We’ve seen £40bn of lost economic value in the UK in the past 12 months, an increase of 0.9pc compared to the year before.
Sabby Gill, Sage MD for the UK and Ireland, said: “With less than a third of those small businesses surveyed in the UK currently using cloud technology for administrative tasks, compared to one in two large businesses – there is a clear gap that must be closed, so that the benefits can be felt by all.”
The economy has grown 3.3pc in the past year while productivity has grown by less than 1pc. “If you could automate admin activities, it would contribute to that 3.3pc,” said Gill.
Businesses say that the admin tasks which take most time are accountancy, generating invoices and human resources.
Productivity