Online Personal Assistant: Expertise at Lower Costs to Boost Efficiency

Shakespeare wisely said, “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

This statement is very true in the case of online Personal Assistants (PAs) as there are too many nomenclatures to describe Virtual Professional who deliver vital services through web 2.0 and other communication and connectivity tools.

This niche service helps businesses in attaining a new image, growth in productivity, boost in revenue and escalation of profits that will transform the destiny of thousands of small and online businesses positively.

Collectively known as Virtual Assistants (VAs) online assistants take up names as per the core specialization. Names apart, what is common about all these virtual service providers is an array of services they provide at the back-end to ease the pressures on a business owner and make the enterprise shift gears towards bigger business development and opening of more revenue streams.

As multi-taskers online PAs can handle any task. It can include secretarial, technical and creative tasks including data entry service, call and e-mail management; bookkeeping, writing, and technical services like website updating.

For a business owner, hiring Virtual personal assistants means tremendous cost-savings from the usual expenditure on hiring, retaining costs of on-site employees and other expenditure in areas like office space and equipments. Online Assistants are highly qualified and possess professional skills, expertise and experience in delivering multiple services to the clients.

Their lucrative services include word processing, desktop publishing, invoicing, mailing list management, travel arrangements, and bill paying.

Now the bottom line is---online Personal Assistants are economical vis a vis hiring a temporary hand or a traditional secretarial hand or support service. There is only a fraction of the cost incurred on Online Assistants compared to the actual costs incurred in hiring an employee. This is because Virtual Assistants possess own infrastructure and meet their overheads.

Online personal assistants do not demand monthly salary as they are paid only for the hours worked. Also the expenses like pension pay, holiday pay, sick pay, and training costs are off the moment a virtual employee takes over.

In terms of quality, the biggest boost is the availability of top class expertise at a lower price. When a small business starts using online Personal Assistants, it is accessing the same quality professional support that is enjoyed by large corporations. Definitely it is a win a win scenario.

Though the hourly rate of an expert online assistant may look higher, since the working hours worked are limited and equipment costs are not to be paid.

What and When of Virtual Outsourcing

Who is a Virtual Assistant? That question puzzles many business owners. A Virtual Assistant is someone who provides professional administrative, technical, or creative assistance to clients from its own home office.

A VA is not directly employed by any company on a permanent capacity. So the client is not responsible for any employee-related fees or tax. For the remote working professional, a client does not have to provide office space, equipments or software.

Providing professional assistance to clients, a Virtual Assistant  works only when a company requires the work at fixed hours. They can be hired on an hourly basis or project basis.

Hiring virtual services provides flexibility to a business and less pressure on the operational budget.
For small businesses a virtual assistant can give solid support by handling an array of tasks.   Partnering with a virtual assistant helps a business owner to reduce business expenditure. It makes the life of the business owner easier and less cumbersome.

Deliverables of a Virtual Assistant:-

More time: Outsourcing of time-consuming activity releases quality time in growing the business rather than sinking it.

Productivity: Creates new strategies, services and products.

Satisfaction: More time to focus on the core business.

Improved quality: Good experience in administrative tasks with knowledge and specialized skills in various domains.

Technology: Well versed in the latest technology

Reduced stress: Gives essential, flexible support

According to a PWC Whitepaper the basic premise of outsourcing is working smarter and letting go what is not possible and focus on the things that only you can do.

Logically speaking outsourcing makes more sense when all those activities that do not make money directly, are given out to another person who can do it in a better way.

Data Entry Services - A Needful Part Of The Business

The fast economy demands business to have consistent growth. Every department of business needs to get complete attention and valuable efforts to have high quality performance. Among so many business activities, data entry is the most time consuming task. However thanks to the data entry services which can save you from this repetitive and boring task.

Online data entry services are easy to approach and feasible. The services comprise of documentation, image enhancement, processing, photo manipulation, data conversion and many other things.

Though, data entry is a boring task but it requires every transaction to be processed and analyzed sincerely. The management makes different crucial decisions on the financial statements of the documents.

Being a vital aspect of the business, there is a huge demand for data entry services in the world. This has given birth to the outsourcing services in the field of data entry. This growing trend has generated huge possibilities for the individuals to get a job as a data entry assistant.

A Case for Hiring a Virtual Personal Assistant

For any business owner there comes a time when he has to ‘rush through’ things because there will be a cross-fire of time-consuming tasks. This trend of doing things post haste leads to colossal wastages and productivity loss.

As the situation worsens, there will be loss of customers as they run short of the delight and satisfaction in working with an unorganized business owner and his business.

So the business owner must see the writing on the wall and delegate clerical tasks to the right people who have the desired expertise and resources to do it in a cost effective manner.

For business owners in such dire straits an online personal assistant is very suitable as it can bring to table multiple skills and an aptitude for multi-tasking.

Undoubtedly a business will only prefer a staffer who can do multiple things than an employee who has only a single skill to manage a solo task.

The positive change from the induction of an online personal assistant will be felt in the expanding revenue base of the company in the short and medium term. The spurt in revenue will come as soon as the PA is able to streamline the processes.

To supplement the streamlining of processes the small business must also ensure appropriate visibility to stem the swelling competition.

The online personal assistant services can boost a small business or online business by discharging the following tasks.

• Content Marketing.

Submitting articles to article directories. When these articles are published the traffic to the business website will increase organically.

• Newsletters.

The online PA can also produce a well researched newsletter with the latest market updates pertaining to the sector and send it out to the stakeholders. It will serve as a great marketing tool and a platform for business development.

Mainstreaming of Virtual Assistant Services is here

Virtual assistant services have put the stamp in today's business environment as the services are becoming more main-stream now. Their value in business activities and processes are increasing as never before.
 
With its reach going beyond small business, it is evident that virtual assistant services are touching new base and helping organizations to deal with many vexed operations without losing sight of core competencies.

Is there any other reason other than cost-saving behind the main-streaming of virtual assistant services?  There is. One is the skill deficit and capital crunch faced by many start ups. Small businesses are basically fighting customer apathy and they need to add new customers. That takes lots of struggle. Getting the best talent is the answer for that.

So businesses are seeing a talent opportunity in virtual services as more innovative services are getting added its umbrella. Organizations are hiring virtual assistants’ as well virtual assistant services suited to the size of their wallet.

Services like word processing, content writing, social media and web maintenance are heavily outsourced both for their value and cost benefits.

Internet Marketing covering development of websites with shopping cart capabilities, email maintenance and online marketing is having an edge in terms of demand. The providers offer campaigns in article marketing, blogging, SEO, track backs, and monitoring forums. This is further aligned with Social Media Marketing.

The advantage is that when these routine functions are outsourced more time comes at the disposal of a business owner to focus on the organic growth of the business.
 
There is also a myth that by hiring virtual employee a business will stop hiring full-time employees forever. Though full time employees have their own value, when a virtual assistant comes into picture a restructuring can take place whereby full timers can be redeployed towards more business development activities.

Of Best Virtual Services and Virtual Assistant Companies

Why companies, especially smaller ones, seek outsourcing of virtual assistant services? Often the need arises when a businessperson gets into the clerical part of his business too much. That signals a problem for the entire business. Either he lacks a strategy to manage his resources or is too scared by the perceived prospect of losing control of the business.

But the fallout of such a “control scare” is that it will start hitting the business critical functions and may not expand his business and drive it to higher growth.  This syndrome is best addressed by outsourcing virtual assistant services such as

•    Personal Assistant Services
•    Newsletters
•    Bookkeeping
•    Email Campaigns
•    Website Management
•    Social Media Management

Virtual assistant companies are one stop solution for all kinds of virtual assistant services.

Across the world there are thousands of companies providing Virtual services, round the clock. For better results, a sustained relationship with the service providers will be ideal. A reliable virtual assistant company must have the following characteristics to be successful,

1.    Professional Commitment to service the client well
2.    Good talent pool of Virtual Assistants
3.    Well established Infrastructure
4.    Adequate experience in the relevant area to deliver effective services without any scope for embarrassment.
5.    Seamless communication with the clients
6.    Competitive tariffs or rates
7.    Positive and Constructive Feedback from the Clientele

Get a Personal Secretary through Virtual Assistant Services

The recent economic recession was like a mayhem for many small businesses. The damage caused is hard to compensate soon. However, in such times, they definitely can’t ignore the benefits of outsourcing. It became impossible for them to afford full time employees and invest in their training. Or perhaps their requirements are limited not even considering some part time employees.

Here, the virtual assistant services worked as a bang-on solution. You can get a personal virtual secretary who will take care of all the daily works which eat away all your precious time. The best part is that they are not hired on the payroll as in-office employees. Now think for a moment, is there any businessman who would not like to save his payroll and other benefits expenses? Of course not!!

The employees providing virtual services are known as virtual assistants or virtual professionals. These assistants are private or independent contractors who are competent and provide effective solutions. There are some special benefits from virtual assistant services which make them so popular-

·         No office space is required for as Sistants

·         No need to buy any extra office equipments

·         No payroll as they are not your full time employees

·         No sick leave, vacation, health insurance

·         Quality is assured as they carry excellence in their respective fields.

At times, it happens that your business is substantially affected through your travel and other activities. When you return back, you have mounds of work load. But if you will have your virtual assistant with you, you will never face such difficulties. May be at times you feel that you have lots of work but so less time. Sometimes, the bookkeeping work irritates you but you have to do just because it’s so important. No worries when you have personal virtual employee.

Your virtual secretary can efficiently handle your tasks like arranging for meetings, creating spreadsheets, preparing word documents, working on power point presentations, etc. All these works would always be ready for you as when you require. The increased popularity has also helped them to work in marketing, field, research field, designing, SEO/SEM etc.

So, hire appropriate virtual assistants and manage your social and online presence with great ease.