The hidden cost of repetitive administrative tasks

In most small and mid-sized businesses, some of the most valuable work — the work that truly serves clients — is held back by another kind of work: repetitive administrative tasks. Entering data, sorting emails, producing the same reports… These actions seem harmless, but together they add up to a real cost.

Nearly a quarter of the week, lost

According to a Smartsheet survey on manual work, more than 40% of employees spend at least a quarter of their week on manual, repetitive tasks. The activities that come up most often? Managing emails, gathering information and entering data.

In other words, over a five-day week, that’s the equivalent of more than a full day spent on tasks that bring no direct value to your clients.

40%+of employees spend at least a quarter of their week on it

1 day+the equivalent lost every week, per person

~50%of work activities are technically automatable

30%of hours worked could be freed up by 2030

A largely untapped automation potential

This lost time isn’t inevitable. McKinsey research estimates that nearly half of today’s work activities are technically automatable with existing technology. And in roughly 6 out of 10 occupations, at least a third of the tasks could be automated.

Most jobs don’t disappear with automation: it’s certain tasks, within those jobs, that can be automated.

McKinsey goes further: with the rise of AI, automation could free up the equivalent of up to 30% of hours worked by 2030.

Automation potential, according to McKinsey

Automatable activities~50%

Occupations with ⅓+ automatable tasks6/10

Hours freed up by 203030%

What this waste looks like in an SMB

The culprits are rarely dramatic. They’re small actions, repeated dozens of times a week:

Re-typing the same information from one piece of software to another
Manually sorting and routing incoming emails
Producing the same report by hand every week
Following up with clients one by one for a payment or a check-in
Searching for information scattered across several tools

Taken individually, each one seems trivial. Added together, they eat up hours — and energy.

Reclaiming that time, without turning everything upside down

The good news: you don’t need to transform the whole company overnight. The most effective approach is to start with one or two high-volume tasks that are easy to automate, then measure the time regained before going further.

That’s exactly the logic of a gradual adoption journey: an assessment, a few quick wins, then scaling up at the company’s own pace.

The real point: what you do with the time you reclaim

Automation isn’t an end in itself. The time you regain is time your teams can reinvest where they make a difference: serving your clients, improving your products, developing new business opportunities. That’s where your competitive advantage is built.

So the question isn’t “can I automate?”, but rather “how much time am I willing to keep losing?”

At DramisInfo, we help businesses spot these time-consuming tasks and automate them simply — with or without artificial intelligence.

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