Here’s What’s Up In Corporate Spend

Corporate spending habits are in flux. New research reports find the good news and bad news in those changes. Wasted spending, for instance, is on the rise — in one area of the enterprise in particular. On the other hand, electronic invoice use is also up, so corporates may also be increasingly encouraged to spend digitally. Corporate demand for working capital similarly rose, according to some reports. So, whether companies are spending wisely or not, their plans to pay haven’t faltered.

$28 billion is wasted by businesses on enterprise software in the U.S. alone because companies will download software without actually using it. New reports from software firm 1E in its Software Usage and Waste Report 2016 also uncovered high instances of software waste among businesses in other nations, with global enterprise waste currently at 38 percent. The U.S. and U.K. combined spent $34 billion on software never used by businesses, researchers added. The report’s co-author, Buffi Neal, said software waste occurs across all industries. “The inability of organizations to reduce average waste levels suggests that they remain unaware of the underlying cost-saving opportunities,” she added. The most commonly downloaded-but-never-used application? TechSmith Camtasia Studio, followed by SAP Crystal Reports and Adobe InDesign.

252 million eInvoices were sent across the EU in 2015, most of which were B2B or B2G, according to new data from the European E-invoicing Service Providers Association. It represents a significant increase in the adoption of electronic invoices for Europe, said the association’s chair, Esa Tihilä, which is leading to “significant efficiency gains and cost savings,” not to mention a more paperless way to conduct business. The EESPA numbers represent a 27 percent growth over 2014 volumes, attributed to increased adoption of digital invoices, as well as heightened membership in the association.

40% of SMEs say their working capital needs have increased since last year, and that’s for businesses across the U.S., U.K., Germany, Italy and France. The figure, provided by the C2FO Working Capital Outlook Survey, also found that the majority of SMEs (55 percent) cite cash flow as their biggest challenge for growth. Even so, Brexit and the U.S. election have only had minor impacts on small business expansion plans.

30% more money was lent to U.K. small businesses in the last year compared to the year before, an impressive figure considering political uncertainty in the market. The National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers said SME lending reached a new high of nearly $28 billion between July 2015 and June 2016, a nearly 30 percent increase. SMEs in the U.K. have also surpassed lending levels seen pre-recession. Traditional financing has seen a steady increase, analysts said, but alternative lending has seen a slowdown.

2 nations are ahead of the U.K. when it comes to facilitating entrepreneurship: the U.S. and Canada. That’s according to a Thomson Reuters Foundation poll of experts across 45 top economies in an effort to explore which markets are most supportive of entrepreneurs working for social causes. While third place isn’t bad, the rankings did cause concern for the U.K., finding that Brexit could harm its position as a top entrepreneurial market. “While there is no blueprint to know what will happen after Brexit, we can expect there will be less government support, financially and in terms of policy, because there will be some economic contraction,” said Social Enterprise U.K. Chief Executive Peter Holbrook in response to the rankings.