One of the more positive aspects – perhaps the only positive aspect - of COVID disruption has been the movement away from fixed systems to more flexible systems to cope with the changing demands of lock-down.

Who would have predicted a year ago that many of us would grow accustomed to working from home plus having to deal with economic and medical challenges in our attempts to stay financially viable?

There is hope that vaccines will gradually reduce the incidence of coronavirus and we can get back to normal. But is that assertion the most likely outcome?

A new challenge enters the ring as the UK transition away from Europe completes and many businesses across the UK will need to take a hard look at their supply chains; how will they be affected?

Whilst many of us may have no customers or suppliers based in the EU it is highly likely that our customers and suppliers will have direct or indirect EU links. Accordingly, none of us can be totally free of the disruption that is likely to follow. Even if this turns out to be a short-term problem do we wait for disruption to occur, and then deal with it, or should we be encouraged to get into a predictive mode and start contingency planning now?

In a further article posted to our newsfeed we have set out how UK businesses could use our hyper-connectivity - via the internet – to reduce the downside risks of future challenges. In this way, we can make positive use of the experiences of the past year to act on future challenges before they impact our balance sheets. Moving away from fragmented controls towards a more resilient networked attitude may be our best option if, as is likely, supply chains become stressed in 2021.