New research has revealed that while 68 per cent of UK businesses found the Coronavirus lockdown transition to remote working easy, 32 per cent found it difficult or very difficult.

The pandemic has caused a fundamental shift for businesses: travel restrictions and mandated social distancing have meant - in a short space of time - huge swathes of the UK economy have restructured to completely different ways of working. SAP Concur commissioned YouGov to survey 804 organisations - 403 smaller businesses, 401 enterprise size, across public and private sector - finding that companies cited IT, infrastructure and communications as the biggest problems during the shift.

In order to make the remote working change, 14 per cent of businesses implemented new financial technologies after UK lockdown began, with 32 per cent again finding implementation difficult or very difficult.

The research also found that 11 per cent implemented some automation of financial processes. Specifically examining automation, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) had very little plans to implement automation, with nearly half (47 per cent) saying they wouldn’t. In comparison, only 23 per cent of enterprises had ruled it out. This is despite enterprises leading the way in already having automation in place (47 per cent) in comparison to SMBs (29 per cent).

This could indicate smaller businesses lack flexibility in their current set up, are unsure of its importance, or have not been properly advised on how to undertake this change. Enterprises (47 per cent) were also far more likely than SMBs (29 per cent) to already have automation in place, suggesting SMBs perhaps feel these tools are suited to larger companies.

Though only 14 per cent of businesses have adopted new financial technologies since the lockdown began, SAP stated that overall, the pandemic has caused an acceleration of wider digital transformation for many companies. Whether it’s online tools, unified communicated or automated systems offering visibility into cash flow and valuable data – many companies have taken the opportunity to future-proof their business.

The research asked two questions regarding how businesses saw the future; how long the financial function would take to get back to normal, and the same question in regard to general working practices.

For finance functions, 38 per cent said it would be straight away, but the net response was 54 per cent saying it could take between one and 12 months. For general workplace practices, the time to get back to 'normal' was more pronounced; only 20 per cent think this will happen straight away, and 73 per cent said up to 12 months.

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