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How Much Time Is Your Team Losing to Admin Work?

Written by Mason Switzer | Apr 19, 2026 5:17:31 AM

Most industrial teams don’t think of admin work as a major problem.

It’s just part of the job.

  • Filling out forms
  • Logging inspections
  • Reporting incidents
  • Tracking maintenance

But when you take a step back, a different picture starts to form.

Admin work isn’t a small task.
It’s a significant part of how operations run day to day.

The Hidden Time Drain

According to Asana’s Anatomy of Work report, employees spend up to 60% of their time on “work about work” such as searching for information, updating systems, and coordinating tasks.

Research from IDC also shows that teams lose 20 to 30% of their time to inefficiencies tied to fragmented systems and data handling.

In industrial environments, that often shows up as:

  • Re-entering the same data in multiple places
  • Searching for the latest version of a report
  • Following up to confirm something was completed

It’s not one major issue.

It’s a hundred small ones, every single day.

What Admin Work Actually Looks Like

Take a simple example: an inspection or incident report.

  • A form is filled out by hand
  • It’s set aside or passed along
  • Someone scans or uploads it later
  • Key details are manually entered into another system
  • Follow-ups are handled separately

At each step, there’s room for:

  • Missed or incomplete data
  • Delays in visibility
  • Duplicate entry
  • Lost or hard-to-find records

Now apply that same process across:

  • Routine inspections
  • Incident reporting
  • Maintenance logs
  • Safety observations

This isn’t just admin work.

It’s inefficiency built directly into the process.

The Risk Isn’t Just Time, It’s Accuracy

Manual and disconnected workflows don’t just slow things down.
They increase the likelihood of errors and gaps.

According to Deloitte, poor data quality and fragmented systems are major contributors to operational risk and compliance challenges.

And when it comes to standards like ISO 9001, documentation matters.

If information is:

  • Inconsistent
  • Hard to retrieve
  • Stored across multiple systems
  • Dependent on manual entry

It creates unnecessary pressure during audits and recertification.

Not because the work wasn’t done,
but because the proof isn’t clear or accessible.

Why “Digital” Doesn’t Always Fix It

Many teams have already tried to solve this by going digital.

But the workflow often becomes:

Fill → scan → upload → re-enter → store

It looks modern.
But it’s still fragmented.

The issue isn’t paper versus digital.

It’s whether your systems actually work together.

What Changes with a Connected System

When admin work is built into a connected system, everything becomes simpler.

  • Information is captured once
  • It’s instantly available across teams
  • Follow-ups can be triggered automatically
  • Data is structured and easy to search
  • Reporting and compliance happen in the background

No scanning.
No re-entry.
No chasing information.

From Admin Work to Insight

This is where the real shift happens.

When your data is centralized, it becomes usable.

You can:

  • Identify trends across inspections and incidents
  • Spot recurring equipment or process issues
  • Track activity and accountability across teams
  • Prepare for audits without scrambling for documentation

Instead of asking:

“Where is that report?”

You’re asking:

“What is this telling us?”

Where BOMS Fits In

BOMS is designed to remove the layers of admin work that slow teams down.

By bringing inspections, incident reporting, maintenance, and permitting into one system, teams can:

  • Capture information once
  • Access it instantly
  • Keep everything centralized and searchable
  • Maintain clean, audit-ready records

It also provides visibility into:

  • Who is doing what
  • What’s been completed
  • Where trends or issues are developing

So instead of managing systems, teams can focus on improving operations.

It’s Not the Work, It’s the Way It’s Done

If your process still relies on filling, scanning, uploading, and re-entering information, the issue isn’t effort.

It’s structure.

And structure is what determines how efficiently your operation can actually run.