24 Oct Do you know what peers in your line of work spend the most admin time on?
This survey lets you know the most time-consuming admin tasks from Sales Managers, Marketers, and four other professions. We all spend a great deal of our working day doing admin tasks. Such tasks are necessary to run our business. But none of them are related directly to the core of our business. We do the admin tasks because they are necessary. However, It is time we do not spend on admin tasks that move our business forward. So, the less time spent on admin tasks, the more time we have to our business. But what exactly is admin time? Is it the same admin time that we do, no matter what job function we have, or is there a difference? We asked 42 professionals in 6 different job categories to rank their most time-consuming tasks and know what admin time means to them.
What are the top admin tasks?
We wanted to know which admin talks that take up the most of your time. So, we asked the group of professionals to rank a list of admin tasks, from the most time-consuming to the least. There are our findings:
The top admin tasks for all job types
What is on the list?
As you can see, the admin task that we spend the most time on is coordination and planning our daily work. Then follows a more classical admin task: to key data into one or more business systems. Then follows project status reports and e-mail correspondence with our team and colleagues.
The last part of the list consists mostly of tasks related to reporting and accumulating data in various ways.
Admin means something very different to us
We also split the analysis up into different job groups to see if there was a difference. And there was. Five of the nine areas were common to all job functions, but with very different importance. Search and conduct internet research is the highest-ranking admin task for marketing professionals but the least important for HR staff. Since marketing professionals need to survey market and customer information, HR has a dedicated internal focus. The fact shows that the term admin means a very different thing, depending on what job function we have. You can find the top 6 admin task per job function in the tables below, so you can see what admin tasks are the most common in your line of work.
HR
HR is per nature focused on internal matters. They have to manage many aspects of employee and management work life. This requires the use of many different online systems and quite a lot of reporting.
Sales Management
Sales Management has a very different focus from HR, but the top 4 on the two lists are the same admin tasks. However, they also need to collect data from customers or competitors, so here you find the category “Search and collect data online”.
Customer Service
Customer Service aims at providing excellent customer service at a low cost as possible. So in perspective, it is interesting that project reports and colonization are the most time-consuming tasks. You would expect numbers “Enter Data into business systems” and “Email correspondence” to rank highest.
Marketers
Marketers are data-driven and have a focus on what is going on with sales, competitors, and how your products perform. Such a view is also reflected n their top admin tasks. So it is no surprise that they share “search and collect data online” as their top tasks with Product Managers.
Finance Professionals
Finance professionals such as accountants, controllers, or even the CFO are often looked upon ad data-driven and very system-oriented in their mindset. So it is quite interesting that they actually look like they have to spend quite a lot of effort to plan and interact with their colleagues, as the list shows.
Product Managers
Product Managers have a particular focus on the products that you delvers. So it is natural that they need to search and collect data as their most time-consuming tasks. It is also no surprise that they spend admin time coordinating and planning (future activities).
