Digitization in German companies has experienced a boost due to the corona pandemic. However, medium-sized businesses still have some catching up to do with the digital office. Half (51 percent) of medium-sized companies with between 100 and 499 employees see themselves as laggards when it comes to digitizing business and administrative processes.

There are just as many (51 percent) in small companies between 20 and 99 employees. In the case of large companies with 500 or more employees, however, only a third (32 percent) consider themselves lagging behind. This is shown by the results of a representative survey of 502 companies in Germany, which was commissioned by the digital association Bitkom. “The digital office has ensured better work ability and collaboration in the hybrid working world, especially in the past few months. But we see in medium-sized companies that there are concrete backlogs in the digitization of business processes. This is mainly due to structural digitization deficits that have existed in medium-sized companies for a long time, "says Nils Britze, Head of Digital Business Processes at Bitkom.

Willingness to invest in medium-sized companies is rather low

Only 39 percent of companies with 100 to 499 employees state that they will have invested in the digitization of their business and administrative processes in 2020. The same number (39 percent) are investing in the current year. The willingness to invest in the digitization skills of the workforce has even fallen to a pre-Corona level: As in 2018, 60 percent stated that they invested specifically in the further and advanced training of employees for the digital world of work. In 2020, in the initial phase of the Corona crisis, just under three quarters (72 percent) did so. At the same time, the qualification level in the companies also decreased: In 2020, three quarters (75 percent) of medium-sized companies stated that they had the necessary employees to advance digitization. Now only 6 out of 10 (60 percent) say that - and thus even a little less than in 2018, when it was 62 percent.

The digital office is characterized by low-paper processes

Medium-sized companies made great progress in this area in 2020: Whereas in 2018 the business processes of 29 percent of companies were largely paperless, the value rose to 40 percent. Now, however, companies are seeing a small decrease to 36 percent. There are similar tendencies in the use of digital solutions: Almost all medium-sized companies (95 percent) use digital solutions such as CRM, ECM or ERP. However, it was 98 percent in the previous year and 96 percent in 2018.

Medium-sized companies lack resources, standards and data security

Small and medium-sized enterprises see the greatest hurdles in digitizing their offices as the need for high investments and the lack of time for digitization projects (70 percent each). 67 percent lack sufficient standards. "Especially in medium-sized companies, digital business processes should be seen as an opportunity to use scarce resources efficiently and to increase performance in the long term," says Britze. The requirements for IT security (60 percent) and the fear of data loss (59 percent) also play a major role in medium-sized companies. “The high data security requirements can only be implemented through the use of the most modern digital technologies. With the right design, the digital office becomes a competitive advantage for medium-sized companies.