The world as we know it is changing. Pandemic forced so many people to work from home or even stop working at all. What if you could work online? What if an online office was a perfect solution?
All businesses have the essential everyday background tasks to manage, but not all businesses need a support team with an actual physical presence to constitute ‘an office.’ For many years, innovative, forward-thinking business owners have been embracing the powers of the Internet and the positive working changes and opportunities that it brings and have preferred to operate with an online office. They realise using online systems and outsourcing tasks or entire roles within their business is simple, convenient, allows them to create their own freedom, and encourages business growth, whilst taking an almost non-existent business risk, making no long term commitment and receiving excellent value for money.
IT innovation is the fundamental driving force behind this change to working culture with the development of new secure platforms promoting and improving communication and collaboration. This transition to online working enables many kinds of workers, whether outsourced, employed, or entrepreneurial business owners to collaborate effectively and efficiently online.
Work Is No Longer a Place!
It used to be that you ‘went to work’. However, with these technological advances, work isn’t necessarily a physical location anymore, but an activity, a task… something you need to do, rather than somewhere you need to be.
Many businesses now find that there’s a financial and operational disadvantage to retaining a physical office premises with dedicated staff. As online offices prove themselves to be more efficient, more productive, and better value for money, they’re giving those operating online a competitive edge over their rivals.
The Perfect Solution? Oh yes – there is one out there for many businesses …
Two factors combine to work together and create the perfect solution in business support – online systems and virtual assistants.
Virtual assistants provide online business support across an astonishing range of roles and work with a multitude of online systems. Through reducing your workload and streamlining your processes by implementing an online office, your VA will positively transform your business and provide a scalable basis from which to build your success.
The incredibly intuitive, practical and efficient online systems available at little or no cost, cover almost all business support areas such as accounts, invoicing, payroll, customer service, document sharing and e-signing, project collaboration, communication, call answering, appointment systems, marketing, design and more!
Financial Benefit to Using an Online Office
The substantial savings in time and money by implementing an online office are clearly recognised. With an online office significant costs are immediately cut as there’s no rent, rates, or utility bills, and each worker provides their own working space and equipment. Whilst the online office systems themselves are well priced and the investment is well worth the regained time, the time savings allow a greater ability to focus on your clients, income generating tasks and business growth, leading to more sales and ultimately more income!
Among many other benefits, outsourcing to a VA provides you with professional assistance at a fraction of the cost of employing staff. It also secures a productive workforce, focuses on delivering specific tasks by agreed deadlines, and completely eliminates time wasted due to lingering office politics, or regular interruptions by colleagues. Ideas of tasks you could outsource to a VA a greater than you can think but I actually listed them in 10 groups. I wrote about the first two in more detail on my blog already and the remaining 8 will follow shortly.
- Admin tasks
- Social media
- Daily schedule
- Design projects
- Website development
- Multimedia projects
- Blog maintenance
- Financial record-keeping
- Content creation
- Project management
The individual worker experiences many benefits from working online, in both financial savings and positive lifestyle changes. By way of example, replacing that often horribly long commute with more time to productively spend on tasks or extra time to enjoy with family, being able to work from almost any location with Internet access, reducing travel and clothing costs as well as improvements in well-being, all lead to higher productivity!