August 6, 2021
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — August 05, 2021 — A leading concern for entrepreneurs is time management, as they are often juggling several tasks simultaneously in order to maintain smooth operations for their business. Despite having started their own business to create their own freedom, they are in fact experiencing the opposite. New research conducted by Ontraport highlights this concern and reveals that half of entrepreneurs that own small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) believe that their business would be at a standstill in their absence, even if they were to leave for just a week.

The research also reveals just how many tasks that SMB owners are handling on their own, rather than automating or outsourcing to colleagues or third party providers. These tasks include responding to customers and prospects, setting up appointments, reviewing and storing leads, sending and confirming payments and refunds and tracking business statistics.

Key Data Insights

Business owners are bogged down by daily tasks: Most (40%) of respondents reported spending between one to five hours weekly on tasks that can be automated, while 13% spend a staggering 20+ hours a week on these tasks. What would business owners rather be doing with this time?

  • The general consensus is that they would put that time back into their business (62%).
  • The percentage of respondents that would reinvest time saved into their business is higher among men (66%) and extroverts (67%)
  • More women and introverts would use that time to spend with family.

Owners want to simplify their business through a single platform: Sixty-four percent of survey respondents said they use between two and five software tools to manage their marketing, sales and overall online presence, while only 32% use a single platform. An overwhelming majority (84%) said that they would switch to a single software platform if it was capable of performing all of the functionalities they needed. Despite this majority, the survey revealed some interesting outliers.

  • Those making under $100K were the least likely amongst all respondents to dedicate time to finding a single platform for their needs, indicating that they are spending far too much time on daily tasks to dedicate their time to research elsewhere.

Based on these findings, Ontraport, which offers business owners a no-code automation platform to manage their business online, believes systemizing and scaling through automation is the answer for faster growth and fewer headaches for SMB owners.

“With the right technology, business owners can earn back valuable time to focus on the bigger picture,” said Landon Ray, founder and CEO at Ontraport. “Automation does the job of multiple employees, handling tasks that entrepreneurs typically take on themselves. The burden of day-to-day tasks should not fall on their plates when their time and energy is better served elsewhere.”

Ontraport’s solutions remove the burden of daily tasks and technology by providing everything an owner needs to run their business in an easy-to-use and centralized platform. With Ontraport, a business owner can manage their sales and customer relationships, marketing automation, website pages and forms, payments and more without having to leave a single interface.

“The power of automation is in providing the freedom for small business owners to step away from working as employees inside their businesses and into the role of CEO,” Ray said. “With the right technology, business owners can save as much as twenty hours a week handling sales and marketing tasks all from a single platform. The right software solves these frustrations and limitations resulting in more growth with less work.”

Methodology
The national survey of more than 500 small and medium-sized business owners, ages 18 and over, was conducted in June 2021 by Propeller Insights on behalf of Ontraport.

To learn more about Ontraport and how it can help SMB owners better manage their business, please visit www.ontraport.com.

About Ontraport

Ontraport is a no-code business software that empowers service businesses to systemize and scale. Ontraport manages and automates the entire buying cycle, resulting in faster growth while freeing up business owners and teams to deliver more customer value. Ontraport’s full set of marketing, sales and business operations features include CRM, automation, payments, sales pipeline, web apps, tracking, email and SMS, landing pages, membership sites and more. Service providers of all kinds — including consultants, agencies, coaches and advisors, attorneys, physicians, spas and more — trust Ontraport to achieve more growth with less work. For more information, visit www.ontraport.com.