Business, Scale-ups; Start-ups, Soldo News
Mastercard’s ‘Get Britain Growing’ campaign: Soldo’s perspective
When Mastercard asked Soldo to take part in its ‘Get Britain Growing’ campaign, our thinking immediately jumped to productivity. Indeed, the term has been a popular topic in Westminster and policy circles for a few years now. And for understandable reasons.
As Rishi Sunak said in his 2022 Mais Lecture, “the most important thing was to rejuvenate our [The UK’s] productivity”. It’s been widely noted that the UK is in a productivity funk. During the 20th century, UK productivity growth steadily grew at 2.2% yearly.
Since the mid-00s, however, this figure has idled stubbornly below 1%. The reason isn’t that British workers are lazy. Instead, British businesses are plagued by an array of productivity killers.
And since Soldo helps businesses to manage their spending, we’re familiar with one of the big productivity killers: Expenses.
You can download the Mastercard ‘Get Britain Growing’ report here >
A prime example of a UK productivity killer
You can have an army of the most diligent, productive and committed workers. But they won’t achieve much if they are forced to apply their rigour to non-productive work. People are a resource – and they should be used wisely.
Let’s consider the specific example of expenses and expense management. If we’re being absolutely honest, can anyone defend the way this facet of business spend management has traditionally been done?
Businesses usually rely on traditional credit or debit cards from banks, petty cash or employees using their own money to make business purchases. Once a purchase is made, companies use Excel to manually conduct their expense management and monthly reporting.
And that’s only the first step: All these transactions must then be manually reconciled with your accounting software. It’s slow, offers low visibility of company money and the long waits for reimbursement damages employee morale and puts a burden on their personal finances.
Two-thirds faster expenses
A business spend management platform – like Soldo – offers a fix for the productivity losses of traditional expenses. Businesses can issue as many cards as needed and employees log expenses through a mobile app.
All transactions are near-instantly reconciled and categorised in the company’s accounting software. According to The Total Economic Impact™ of Soldo, a study done by Forrester Consulting, found that our platform reduced the time a finance manager spends on an expense claim by 62%.
This won’t singlehandedly reinvigorate the UK’s productivity. But it’s a powerful step in the right direction. UK businesses must now assess every single process. What can be sped up? And what can be automated?
The will to work is there. Now the mission now should be to strip away the myriad productivity killers holding us back. There’s too much admin and too much manual work. And with technology, we can solve the UK’s productivity puzzle. Once and for all.
You can download Soldo’s Total Economic Impact (TEI) report here. See how much time and money you can save with Soldo.
Get Britain Growing
‘Get Britain growing’ is a campaign calling on policymakers to harness digital payments technologies and innovation to create sustainable growth across the UK. The campaign comprises three papers, and Soldo features in the second paper.
