The report, which surveyed almost 500 UK businesses and was carried out in conjunction with T-Mobile, found that SME founders spend a staggering 10.7 hours a week travelling. Commuting is the largest single factor, but bosses of such businesses also find themselves wasting vast swathes of ‘dead time’ on their way to meetings and waiting for connections at train stations and airports.

Unsurprisingly, T-Mobile’s Simon Ainslie argues that all of this transit time needn’t be wasted, however, as using mobile devices such as PDAs can make travelling time more worthwhile. Respondents to the survey admitted to spending around one day a week responding to emails and, says Ainslie, ‘anything SMEs can gain back from dead time has the potential to greatly increase work options and productivity. The ability to access email on your own terms, wherever you may be, offers a means of managing workload and freeing-up time,’ he concludes.