How a Virtual Assistant Can Help You

You may be wondering what a Virtual Assistant is and how one can help you.  Well, a Virtual Assistant is essentially a PA/Administrator/Secretary who works from a different geographical location.

Recently, I have realised that there are many small businesses that would like some assistance with various office duties but in the current economic climate would prefer not to employ someone.  This is where a virtual assistant can help.

Services which a VA can offer  include:

  • Helping you with your to-do list
  • Deal with all your admin and paperwork
  • Secretarial services
  • Take orders, bookings & enquiries
  • General office duties

It might be that you just want a couple of hours help a week while you catch up on other things.  It might be that you are finding all the paperwork too much to fit in.  Whatever your reason, we can find a solution.  So, if you would like to spend less time on boring paperwork, free up some time to develop your business or have extra support around the office then a Virtual Assistant may just be the answer your looking for.

Clare Axon-Saunders is an an experienced, versatile and friendly Virtual Assistant based in St. Albans, Hertfordshire.  If you are a small business in need of an extra pair of hands, then contact Clare at clare@onlineva.co.uk to see how she can help.

Clare is particularly interested in assisting small businesses within the local area.  She is also keen to work with people involved with animals, holistic & alternative therapies, yoga & pilates.

www.onlineva.co.uk

Spend More Time at Home – Hire a Virtual Executive Assistant!

The Problem

Entrepreneurs want to spend their time making money and building value. However, they often find themselves spending a disproportionate amount of their valuable time and energy on administrative tasks and other routine responsibilities. That leaves less time for relaxing with friends and family and friends, as well as opportunities for increasing revenue.

While entrepreneurs and small business owners may one day have a revenue stream and volume of business that justifies an executive assistant, most are so overwhelmed with administrative issues that they are not even able to grow their business to this point. Hiring an Executive Virtual Assistant (EVA) is a cost effective solution. When paperwork, logistical arrangements and an endless to-do list block growth and progress, Executive Virtual Assistants provide a low-cost solution.

What to Expect from your Virtual Executive Assistant

Executive Virtual Assistants typically charge anywhere from $10 to $75 per hour, depending upon their experience and skill set, which can be considerably less than hiring an in house employee. It is now possible to find EVAs who are native English speakers from top American and European Universities with experience at Fortune 500 companies. Quality companies that offer Executive Virtual Assistant services conduct comprehensive screenings and then thoroughly train their Executive Virtual Assistant.

The Benefit of Working With a Virtual Executive Assistant

Whether your Executive Virtual Assistant works around the corner or across the globe, you may never actually meet them face-to-face. While this can initially be daunting, it is not only viable in the 21st Century business environment, but also has its perks.

1. By having an Executive Assistant who works remotely, you are not responsible for overhead costs, such as office expenses and other HR costs.

2. Through the application of a range of Internet tools, your Virtual Executive Assistant can work, as if they were sitting right outside your office. This isn’t limited to scheduling or making calls; it can include sending hand written notes to clients, helping manage your household and more.

3. Having someone in a different time zone has its benefits. While there are certain hours of your work day that your Executive Virtual Assistant may not be available, think about how great to it would be to wake up to an clean email box and a memo offering an breakdown of your schedule and to do’s for the day.

4. Your Virtual Executive Assistant is there only when you need them. You don’t have to pay someone for hours you do not need, nor do you have to deal with having someone around all the time. This can be a real cost savings for people who work from home offices.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Virtual PA

Business managers and owners are devoting all their time and energy these days to protecting themselves against the global economic downturn. This has an overall effect on their lifestyle because they are spending the majority of their time working towards the success of their company, resulting in no time for themselves. There should be a balance between your professional and your personal life, which could mean that business owners need a helping hand with some of their basic business activities.

A Virtual PA (also commonly known as Virtual Receptionists, Virtual Assistants or Remote Receptionists) is an excellent way forward in helping you receive that extra help in day to day business activities. Virtual PAs will meet deadlines, complete all the work in the office, arrange appointments at your convenience, or cancel appointments at your beck and call, thus leaving you at total ease knowing you can now dedicate all your time concentrating on achieving your business goals and objectives.

There are some tips that will maximize the benefits of your Virtual PA, these will be discussed shortly. You should develop an understanding – a working relationship with your Virtual PA, this way you can ensure that you extract the maximum benefits from your virtual assistant. Don’t forget that your virtual assistant will perform the majority of tasks for you on a daily basis which will cover all aspects of your business.

These tips will maximize the benefits of your Virtual PA…

Select a Virtual PA that meets your needs

It goes without saying that you will need a Virtual PA that will suit your business needs and ticks all the boxes in relation to meeting your company’s requirements. You will need to ensure that you approach a company that employ skilled PAs or receptionists from various fields.

Effective Communication

Even though your Virtual Assistant is not physically present at your office, they will still be assessable at all times. You must ensure that the communication lines between you and your Virtual PA are always open and accessible. If anything arises you must ensure you are able to contact your Virtual Assistant there and then.

Give detailed, clear instructions to your Virtual PA

In order to gain perfect results from your Virtual PA it will be a good idea to meet with them in person or over the phone once you have selected them. During this time it would be beneficial to provide your Virtual PA with clear instructions of what you expect from them, and clear instructions on completing different tasks. It is important not to assume that your Virtual Assistant will know actually what is expected from them. They can then be responsible for these duties and tasks that you have assigned to them.

A Virtual Assistant can provide a consistent means of contact for your customers which doesn’t tie you up on the telephone. They will ensure you never miss another call, they can transfer important calls straight to you based on your specification and can perform a range of tasks at your request. Your small business will look instantly bigger with a Virtual Receptionist and you will find the cost very reasonable compared to hiring your own member of staff – and less stressful too!

14 Tasks a Virtual Assistant Can Assist You With

A virtual assistant is unlike a full-time employee, a VA can save you from office space, equipment, taxes, insurances, medical benefits and so much more. Since a virtual assistant only charges on the hour inputted into your business, you will also save on holiday and sick leaves. A VA can lighten your workload so you can once again have a balance between work and your personal life. Outsource your repetitive task such as paperwork, administrative and bookkeeping to a VA.

A VA only charges on the hours consumed on the time required to do such work. Except for the general administrative task such as general work processing, a VA can help you on the following 14 tasks to make your business run smoother and lighten your workload.

1. A VA can produce eye-catching templates such as business cards, newsletters, brochures and email campaign using desktop publishing software.

2. When you have a recording of a meeting or an interview, your virtual assistant can help you transcript it into a document.

3. Writing, whether it is writing business letters or writing up articles to submit to directories to expose your business, a VA is ready to do the job.

4. Database Creation & Management, organizing a contact list for your business, such as vendors, customers and competitors.

5. A VA may handle bookkeeping task for your business such as generating and sending out invoices to your clients, keep track of payables and receivables and even paying your bills.

6. A VA can help you answer phone calls and act as your customer service and answer inquiries on your business’ products and services. Your VA may even offer off hours phone answering service, making you a 24 hours customer service hotline.

7. Website maintenance, keeping the content of your website up-to-date with fresh content and even Search Engine Optimize your website and submitting your website to search engine directories.

8. Your can leave your email behind to your VA when you are on business or personal trips worry free. Your VA can organize your emails and prioritize the importance of the email and contact you only on emergency cases.

9. Have your VA proofread or edit the documents you have written to check for grammar or formatting mistakes.

10. Translation Service, your VA may speak more than 1 language, that advantage of that and help you expand your business overseas.

11. Computer training or tutoring, to run a business, you will need to acquire skills on various software applications. A VA can pass on their knowledge of the software on a day to day operation.

12. Meeting & Event Planning, in some occasions you would like to host an event for gathering with your clients or even for personal matters such as parties and weddings, your VA can help you organize a guest list and send out invitation, organizing a venue, arrange accommodations, and co-ordinate with any catering services.

13. In most cases, small business owners has a busy schedule and may be hard to co-ordinate by his/herself. To keep your life organized and running smoothly, a VA can co-ordinate with your daily schedules. To ensure you arrive on time on meetings or events, a VA can also provide reminder services. Other reminder service may include reminder of client’s birthday and send out cards.

14. Social Media Marketing, social media has dominated the internet and the power from social media to build a public relationship with your clients or potential clients. A VA can maintain your blog, setup a Facebook Fanpage and a Twitter account for your business and gain exposure to your business.

May Wong is a virtual assistant specialized in internet marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, administrative, secretarial and translation support. Visit http://www.virtualassistanthk.com for a free consultation today!

Virtual Assistant Services For Your Company

When running a business, there are a lot of time consuming tasks that you wish you can do without. This is why outsourcing has been a big trend in the business world these days. The hiring of virtual-assistants and acquiring their services has helped businesses big or small to make significant profit by lessening their expenses and earning at the same time.

Virtual assistant services are an instant hit due to the fact that they can help you save money. If you compare the salaries of a regular full time employee and a virtual-assistant, there is a big difference. You pay for a regular employee for the whole day regardless of what that employee produces whereas when it comes to virtual assistants, you only pay for the hours of work he or she used to finish your task or you pay an agreed amount once the work is done.

Aside from that, virtual-assistants work from their own offices therefore you do not have to worry about additional office space or providing them office equipments since they will use their own. You can have a virtual-assistant working for you on the other side of the planet. Communications with them are usually done through e-mail, fax, telephone or instant messaging. All files are sent electronically as well.

You will find that most virtual-assistant services are administrative and secretarial. Having a virtual-assistant acting as your secretary can help give you more time and less pressure especially during busy days at work. You can assign them to deal with paperwork and other tasks that would be too consuming for you to handle in regards to your time.

Another virtual-assistant service that you can get is to have people answer calls and act as receptionists for you. That way, you are able to continue and maintain your business even if you are busy. Virtual-assistants under this specialty can manage all your calls properly and give special assistance or customer service as well. They can also call your clients and verify appointments for you. You do not want to miss any connections with potential clients and business partners so it is vital that you have someone live to connect your business to them. Other virtual assistant services would include transcription, book keeping and proofreading.

No matter what virtual-assistant services you are looking for, you can be assured that virtual assistants will work efficiently and will do their best to give you accurate and rapid results that are of high quality. You can be assured that all significant information will be confidential and will be given security by the virtual assistant.

How Can a Virtual Assistant Help Your Business?

Otherwise know as Virtual Receptionists, Virtual PA’s, Virtual Secretaries etc., Virtual Assistants are the cost effective answer for small business owners who need clerical support but do not want the commitments that are linked with employing a full or part-time member of staff.

The Virtual Assistant operates from a remote location, there are no initial cost to pay in hiring their services, compared to a temp agency. The company will simply be invoiced for the actual hours the Virtual Assistant has spent working on the required tasks.

No matter how big or small the company, the Virtual Secretaries services can amplify the company productivity and help reduce the wage bill at the end of the month; not to mention reduce the National Insurance contributions, sickness and holiday pay, over-time costs. Whilst still receiving that high level, professional and loyal service you would from a full-time employee, if not more so. They are self-employed, therefore they are dedicated in providing a satisfaction guaranteed service, as it is their business reputation that is on the line.

Virtual Secretaries should offer support in the general admin duties, such as word processing, scanning, telephone answer service, call forwarding, and diary management, travel and accommodation arrangements; not to mention more specialised fields, such as web design, marketing and gift sourcing can be completed by the Virtual Secretary, saving the company time and money, whilst allowing the business to focus on what it does best.

A Virtual Secretary will be professional, offer a high level of ability, customer focused, driven, reliable, and have a wide range of competencies. They can execute tasks that are within the remit of any member of the admin team.

Firms do not have to pay a salary when using the services of a Virtual Assistant. They charge an hourly rate on a pay-as-you-need basis; you will only be invoiced for the time spent assisting you and your business.

Virtual Assistants offer a high level administrative capacity; they can be relied upon to give a professional, quality, high level service at an affordable price.

Watch this space to find out more about CML Admin-Solutions

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Maxine_Lee

 

Online Assistant – A Boon to Businessmen

Do you always find yourself running out of time completing all your workloads on-time? Are there times that you feel so fatigue but can’t help it? If you are a business person running an internet-based business or you are a website owner, then you most probably need an online assistant. Today, there are many competent online assistants that can provide quality service.

An online assistant is described as an in-person service provider working virtually. Generally, they provide services such as customer care services, secretarial services, data entry jobs, and some other online services of the same category. For many business owners who run internet-related businesses, Aside from the fact they provide affordable quality services, they are usually time-framed service providers.

Once you have outsourced an online assistant, you would notice no disparity in the outcome. Actually, this is the good thing about hiring online assistants. More than that, all the resources to be utilized will be theirs – equipments, electric bills, efforts, and rents, all of them is within their accountability. This ensures a huge saving. Now, wouldn’t that sound good?

Also with their presence, you don’t need to work under pressure. In short, you can work to your very own convenience at your own pace. In view of this fact, you are allowed to do more things worth spending of your time and of more importance to the growth of your business. In addition to that, you can devote more time to your family and friends.

Now, all you have to make sure is to hire one for your loaded business venture. So don’t get left behind, hire your workload partner now!

Virtual Assistant – Is It a Necessity

As explained on wiki, A Virtual Assistant (typically abbreviated to VA, also called a virtual office assistant) is an entrepreneur who provides professional administrative, technical, or creative (social) assistance to clients from a home office.With a full range of options to choose from, you can customize your remote receptionist service to meet your exact needs. Your calls can be screened, announced and seamlessly connected to you or your employees anywhere. They usually work for other small businesses, brokers and consultancy groups. It is estimated that there are as few as 5,000-8,000 or as many as 35,000 Virtual Assistants worldwide; the profession is growing in centralized economies with “fly-in, fly-out” (FIFO) staffing practices.

Then, what’s the benefit of a virtual assistant?

Yes, we can hire a secretary to handle all the daily trivial things, which is very common and convenient. However it is not wise to expect all the skills that you need on merely one person. You may need a professional PPT designer when you have a presentation to prepare, you may need a note dictator who writes fast when you have a meeting to hold, you may need a clerk to write your report when you don’t have the time to do it yourself… but how can one possesses all this skills, and if we take a step back, assuming you finally find one, how much would you like to pay for such a virtual secretary?

So, sometimes it is necessary to hire a virtual assistant, and outsourcing all the vital yet trivial things to a team of reliable professionals. Leave the specific work to specialists; hire a team at the cost of hiring one ordinary secretary.

Better still, you can avoid all the unnecessary cost by hiring a virtual assistant. You don’t need to worry about the insurance, the farewells, this may not mean that you can save money on that, but it means you don’t have to keep an eye on that. You save the energy. You usually have to pay your assistant when they deal their personal problems during working hours, as often the case when you hire a human assistant. While you can avoid this cost by hiring a virtual assistant for you, because you only pay them for the time they spend on your task, not anything else.

You even save the time and money on supervising them. If you enter the phrase “virtual assistant” in Google, you can get nearly 5 million results within a second; this indicated the emerging of this industry, and the intense competition among the number of enterprises who provide this service. In this way every enterprise has to keep an eye on the quality of the service they provide to their customers, so as to keep their quota in the market. In this way you leave your burden of supervising your staff to the market which is most just and efficient.

Employ Personal Virtual Assistant Services For More Efficient Results

Internet has enabled people to get their work done all across the globe and this has also given birth to numerous other facilities, such as, virtual assistance service. This is in actual an online incarnation of personal assistance service, which lets you get your administrative tasks, social, creative and technical tasks done easily. This is the service which helps you in focusing more on your business without spending loads of amount.

Employ a personal virtual assistant and enjoy a celebrated business status, as it helps you in concentrating more on profit quotient of your business with following benefits -

  • Achieve your deadline, even if it is a last minute project – You got an assignment just at the closing moment and now wondering, how to do the same. Instead of getting worried, you can relax at the point in time and can ask your VA to do the same. Your and your VA combined effort may work wonder and you can get the assignment completed much prior to the deadline.
  • Save Money as well as time- Normally personal assistant service providers offer their service on hourly basis. Hence, you can hire a virtual assistant for limited hours and pay accordingly. Since, this payment is made on contractual basis; you can get a better service. This helps you in saving not only time but also money.
  • No tension of Office Space – VA service is provided via phone of online; hence, this eliminates your worries of office space and other official nitty-gritty. You can avail service of your personal virtual assistant sitting home, as all you need to do is guide your VA online or via phone and get the task done.

 

Hiring a personal virtual assistant in such a global marketplace, where cutthroat competition is on, is the one of the most effective things to do, if you are intended to get accurate service saving money and time. Other than above mentioned benefits, it also keeps you away from recruitment tensions, as nowadays, there are many professional personal assistant service providers, who have made team of well-educated and well-trained.

Written by Stella Ferrero, a staff writer for VAssist247. VAssist247 provides virtual assistant services and personal assistant for small businesses and working professionals, services include appointment scheduling, telephone answering, internet research assistance, calendar, travel, document, presentation, spreadsheet, crm, blog and email management.

Virtual Assistant is a creative idea of providing practical solutions to business houses as well as individual professionals. In the present scenario, Virtual Assistants have become the need of almost every entrepreneur or organization, as they promise to offer the service anywhere and everywhere. These assistants are playing a great role in increasing the profitability of a business.

Hire a Virtual Assistant from VAssist247 a team of professional and dedicated VA’s.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stella_Ferrero