Industry overview
The Office administrative, office support and other business support activities sector across Netherlands comprises approximately 9,892 enterprises employing about 36,685 people and generating €4.1 bn in net turnover in 2013. The average enterprise size is – employees per firm. This is a useful yardstick when assessing whether your own operation sits within the typical scale band of the sector.
Profitability
With a healthy operating margin of 14.6% of revenue in 2013, the sector reports €597 M of gross operating surplus (Eurostat's EBITDA-equivalent, before depreciation). This figure provides the headline benchmark against which an individual operator can sanity-check their own bottom line, values significantly below indicate cost or pricing pressure, those above suggest competitive advantage worth defending.
Cost structure
The Office administrative, office support and other business support activities cost mix is reasonably balanced: cost of revenue at 57.2%, personnel at 29.8% and energy at – of turnover. Without a single dominant cost driver, margin management requires attention across the full operating envelope rather than focus on any one line.
Trend & trajectory
Over the period 2008 to 2013 the operating margin moved from 16.6% to 14.6% (-2.1 percentage points), a deteriorating trajectory that warrants attention. Sectors with stable or improving margins tend to reflect successful pass-through of input costs and disciplined capacity management; declining margins typically point to either over-supply or a structural cost squeeze that warrants strategic review.