Brake for the middle class

Over the past three years, the digitization of business processes has become an ad hoc project for many SMEs.

The slow reopening of the world brought a whole new set of challenges in 2022. What innovations continued to be put on the back burner by supply bottlenecks and price increases? Concur's 2022 midmarket survey results show progress in digitization, but clearly indicate continued employee frustration with manual and bureaucratic processes. The question of how employees in the midmarket can best communicate with each other is gaining new importance. It has not yet been answered digitally.

For those surveyed in 2022, the greatest potential for frustration was poor coordination with colleagues (33 percent). One reason for this is the choice of communication tools: Even if digital collaboration tools support communication, personal contact on site cannot always be digitized in daily coordination. For example, 55 percent of respondents say that digitization and virtual meetings can maintain business relationships remotely, but they do not replace business trips and the associated face-to-face exchanges. SMEs have already readjusted their IT hardware and software: While 23 percent still felt thwarted by IT hardware in 2022, this figure was 32 percent the year before. SMEs have also taken a leap forward when it comes to updating IT software.