New Zealand small businesses are wasting $334 million a year on digital tools they are not using, according to accounting software firm MYOB.
Small businesses invest more than $500m a year in digital services and software. Photo: 123rf
A survey by the firm showed small businesses invested more than $500m a year in digital services and software but about two-thirds of that has been spent on applications the firms do not use or cannot get to work properly.
MYOB's chief sales and support officer, Daniel West, said as a result of the 'bad digitisation' increasing numbers of business had software installed which they were not using but still paying subscriptions on.
"It's subscription overload for businesses. Many consumers are cancelling subscriptions amidst rising cost-of-living pressures, and it's an optimum time for businesses to also assess their subscription overheads, especially if some are sitting there unused."
In addition an overwhelming number of businesses surveyed said they were wasting time on manual tasks or having to duplicate jobs, such as entering information from one system to another, checking for consistency across the platforms, and more than a third were having to fix errors or editing data after information is transferred between systems.
"Now is the right time to shift their focus from simply digitising more, to choosing tools that offer multiple services in the one place, or only paying for the features they really need," West said.
He said that could save businesses money and ease stress, but firms needed to be careful not to turn their back on suitable tools.