With close to one hundred% internet coverage in the UK and the proliferation of increasingly potent computers in the house, possibly it’s not surprising that persons in secretarial and admin jobs have come to realise that a great deal of their perform could effortlessly be performed from dwelling. A tiny number of these have taken the idea additional and basically started operating for themselves performing precisely that.
Witness the birth of each the VA (Virtual Assistant) and the term Virtual Workplace Services. It is nonetheless predominately the domain of ladies, with a significant proportion of mums preferring this strategy to operating in an workplace. By equipping themselves at household with a rapidly internet connection, phone, Pc and printer they can very easily give a basic secretarial service: phone perform, diary management, typing and more. And, they have flexibility in how and when they perform.
But who are these individuals who ask you to trust them with your company admin?
The Virtual Assistant
VAs are a specific breed. It is hard sufficient just setting up on your personal with no also putting oneself in the firing line with demanding clientele. So it is not surprising that quite a few give up. But these that stick with it are typically experienced, resilient, resourceful and capable people who know their job inside out.
Having said that, being a VA brings with it an array of challenges:
The Boss is now a “client” … who can be just as demanding
Their IT gear is now their duty to manage and maintain
They have to cope functioning alone and with flexibility comes the have to have for self-discipline
Most VAs are fantastic communicators and have expertise of handling demanding customers, but the conflicting priorities can be a headache and managing client expectations has to be a core talent.
The technologies is a different matter even though. The VA wants IT assistance to maintain the operation going. This is frequently provided on an ad hoc basis by a companion or a buddy, which can leave them vulnerable It’s worth checking out their circumstance first, so you do not uncover oneself stranded. If you need to have your VA to use your technologies – ranging from Microsoft Exchange and Groove to iCAL and other on the web calendar or file sharing tools – then they’ll require to be IT-savvy enough to cope or have access to far more professional support.
Working alone has its own set of difficulties. VAs will normally take methods to break their isolation and have moral support close at hand, but being the only person in the small business can again leave them vulnerable to workload peaks and illness … not forgetting, absolutely everyone wants a holiday some time too.
My guidance to someone searching at making use of a VA is to ask them about these challenges and satisfy oneself that the trade-off in dangers Vs benefits is acceptable to your business enterprise.
Virtual Workplace Solutions
This tends to describe the wider array of solutions supplied by a small business that is a lot more than just a individual VA, maybe a business that’s grown with a handful of VAs or an organisation that has secretarial and admin staff giving chargeable VA solutions to clientele. Typically, they will have greater office facilities – this can be a physical workplace or a virtual office setup – and you can expect their IT systems to be superior to that of a VA. This enables them to provide far more sophisticated services just as if they have been “inside your organisation” but with all of the flexibility and expense advantages of a VA.
The sorts of IT you may well anticipate to come across them working with incorporates:
A internet site by way of which they take instructions, track perform and manage clientele
A net workplace for document management, calendar sharing and time recording
Collaboration tools such as immediate messaging and tele/video/web conferencing
VOIP telephony technique for call handling and virtual internal extensions for VAs
Not quite a few persons like becoming forced to use somebody else’s IT systems if they can help it. Most web-site applications will force a new way of functioning on consumers that’s alien and burdensome, so appear for an individual who can also accommodate some of your a lot more vital working practices.
If you make significant documents or use digital voice dictation, emailing big files will be not possible and you’ll need to use a file transfer service, a WebOffice or another collaboration tool. This is frequent so understanding the solutions for file transfer is essential from the commence.
The variety of solutions that the Virtual Office Solutions provider can offer you will be far higher than a VA largely for the reason that of their technology. You need to also uncover that their IT know-how and even their IT help men and women can be particularly helpful in helping you to understand how to get the most effective from your personal IT systems and may perhaps even help you to solve IT challenges as well.
Apart from making refreshment and welcoming guests, virtual workplace services can cover quite nicely most of your office admin and secretarial activity. These can include:
Virtual PA
Virtual Receptionist
Mail Handling & Scanning
Digital Typing Services
Transcription Services
Database Management
Promoting Admin Assistance
Sourcing and Purchasing
Book Keeping Services
General Office Admin.
In reality, offering they have the proper technology, the range of solutions is only restricted by the abilities of individual VAs. Surprisingly, virtual office solutions can extend into the most unexpected regions, such as tele-marketing and advertising, language translation and even house management as you will see from the following client examples.
www.flexyvo.com manages new create shopping centres and housing developments. The owner is often traveling and operating web-site meetings, so he makes use of his VA mainly for typing solutions. He has a Digital Pocket Memo for dictating letters, minutes and reports, and also utilizes it to record live meetings. The voice files are downloaded to his laptop and then sent through email to his VA who emails the completed Microsoft Word documents the subsequent operating day.
Medico-Legal Pros
A clinical psychiatrist specialising in childcare instances has a heavy case load which means she is continually interviewing customers and preparing reports for solicitors and nearby authorities. She uses her personal digital recorder to dictate multiple reports simultaneously and her VA utilizes templates to compile individual reports. Her VA also handles client calls and uses her preferred procedures of functioning to track enquiries through a spreadsheet and book appointments on the net through iCAL.
Management Consultancy
This niche consultancy is an established virtual organisation, with everyone being house based to retain overheads low. It was therefore all-natural for the MD and other Director to appear for a virtual PA to handle their calls and prepare reports. Reports are frequently huge files with complex graphics and they rely on their VA to compile these and resolve technical difficulties in Word, Excel and Adobe. Initially, they utilised their VA’s WebOffice for file transfer just before realising that it was best answer for their virtual organisation – now their VA utilizes the company’s own WebOffice.
Property Management
A effective home developer whose busy life was limiting the quantity of offers he could manage turned to a VA for support. The VA offers with a lot of private and routine office admin, as effectively as handling phone calls, which releases time adequate to double his deal rate. He soon realised that his VA was capable of additional. She now manages a small property portfolio of 10 flats for significantly less than the expense of a property management corporation, which requires managing lettings, deposits, rents, VAT reporting and creating decisions on day-to-day management issues with tenants and tradesmen.