Sage revealed an economic report highlighting that the world’s business builders currently spend an average of 120 working days per year on administrative tasks. This accounts for about 5% of the total manpower for the average small and medium businesses.
According to the ‘Sweating the Small Stuff: The Impact of the Bureaucracy Burden’ study, complying with administrative and regulatory requirements has a significant impact on businesses, both in terms of manpower that must be devoted to the tasks and actual cost to the bottom line. The study covered over 3,000 business builders globally with over 250 of them based in Singapore.
So, even though the survey does not offer numbers from Malaysia-based businesses, the findings resonate strongly amongst local business builders. The study also showed that Singaporean SMEs spend 168 working days on these tasks, costing them RM480,000 (S$160,000) a year, far higher than the average of RM240,000 spent by SMEs globally.
The research also indicates that an increase in productivity of as little as 5% in Singapore could lead to an increase in GDP of S$8.7 billion (RM26 billion). This could be partially achieved through the reduction of time spent on business administration.
Robin Chao, Vice President and Managing Director of Sage Asia commented that the time has come for all business builders in Malaysia, be it big or small, to take action by either digitally automating or streamlining the administrative work that needs to be done.
