What can I do?
Many companies face growing general and administrative (G&A) costs—a trend the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated. From 2008 to 2015, G&A expenses grew less than revenues (41.8 percent versus 61 percent). Since then, the trend has reversed, with G&A expenses rising faster—15.4 percent compared with 6.0 percent revenue growth.
To reverse course, companies need to launch a tech-enabled rapid reduction of G&A costs using digital and automated solutions. They might want to start by optimizing procurement practices, where experience shows they can achieve the biggest absolute impact due to its high spend baseline. The use of sophisticated digital and analytic tools can significantly reduce spend for products and services. The categorization, analysis, and optimization of spend can unlock huge potential cost reductions in all procurement areas.
Likewise, other G&A functions like finance, human resources (HR), and IT can benefit significantly from cost and quality advantages, since the repetitive nature of their processes typically make them highly automatable.
