Why Hire a Virtual Assistant?

Have you ever thought about hiring a Virtual Assistant (VA)? Now might just be the time to do it. A Virtual Assistant could be the secret weapon you need for controlling your costs in uncertain times, while a good VA partnership can also be your fast track to business growth. We interview Nikki White, owner of Scribes to tell us more about how a VA can drive your business forward.

“Virtual Assistants (VA) are entrepreneurs who provide professional administrative, technical or creative (social) assistance to clients from a home office…Common modes of communication and data delivery include the internet, e-mail and phone call conferences, online work spaces, and fax machine. Professionals in this business work on a contractual basis and a long-lasting cooperation is standard.” Wikipedia

Virtual Assistants can be a logical answer to getting urgent (non-core) things done while saving $$$ on payroll costs which can be upwards of 100% of salary. This doesn’t even take into account the money you pay for “wasted” time which is inevitable with permanent staff. The VA is making more sense than ever, what with the economy the way it is, we’re looking to more ways to save money while still moving the business essentials forward.

To get to the bottom of how business is utilising Vas at the present moment, I spoke with Nikki White, Head of Scribes who I utilise for a number of outsourced virtual personal assistant activities. Scribes has a pool of virtual talent on tap.

Nikki described the rise of VA services in three areas:

• The Virtual Personal Assistant
• Document Reformatting; and
• Transcription Services

The Virtual Personal Assistant (PA)

Tim Ferris, author of the 4-Hour Work Week advocates outsourcing and automated everything you can to drive personal and business sanity and success. You may have also heard of Loral Langemeir – AKA “The Millionaire Maker”. Loral holds the distinguished record of having created over 1000 millionaires through an individually- tailored, strategic and medium term approach to wealth creation. One of the first strategies she advocates for entrepreneurs is to acquire a virtual Personal Assistant at their earliest opportunity. This is to enable leaders to grow their business by focussing their efforts on the tasks which add the most value, and outsource a myriad of lower value yet essential administrative tasks like diary management, client contact, meeting organisation, typing and other specialist skills like marketing, accounts payable depending on the individual PA’s background experience.

Here is a more expansive list of reasons why you could consider hiring a virtual personal assistant:

• Grow Your Business. Free you to focus on the high value activities you should be doing to fast track the growth of your business. Yes - even if you are a one-woman or man – band.
• Meet Peak Demand. In small or even large corporations, demand peaks and troughs. Personal Assistants can cover off these periods without the administrative overhead that temps incur. And Nikki confirms that even public sector organisations have been coming on board with virtual assistants to cover peak demand or periods of leave.
• Save $$$$. Cash flow is king – and queen and everyone else during the current economic times. A Virtual PA means that you don’t pay for training, for non-productive time, for additional office space, for technology or for facilities.
• Leverage the latest technology. A good supplier of Pas is likely to have more advanced document management and communication technology Control Your Budget. Only budget and pay for what you can afford
• Access to a network of expertise through one point of contact. Access the most competent skill set within the PA firm’s network, while maintaining the continuity of one point of contact. You don’t pay for training on the job, which is highly likely with a temp position.
• Time Zone Flexibility. If your business is located in multiple locations across different time zones, hiring a virtual assistant, say in Australia, if you are located in the US means that work submitted in your evening, could be on your desk completed by the time you wake up in the morning.

What about Document Security?

A good Virtual PA firm is likely to have state of the art document security and encryption services in place. Nikki cited Doctors, Lawyers and Government Departments and even a Private Investigator amongst her clients.

Document Reformatting

Nikki also describes an increase in the number of people requesting that Nikki’s firm re-work draft documents, proof read them and reformat them to create a more professional look with consistent styles and templates. While many people in business have a working knowledge of applications like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, Virtual Pas are professionals with a far deeper knowledge of these applications.

Transcription

As a writer, I find that loads of potential time can be lost hand-writing or even typing when the creative juices are flowing. Our mind always moves faster than our hands, so voice recording is the ideal solution to this dilemma and has been used for some time by some authors, journalists, CEOs and many doctors, lawyers and PHD students.

For access to a comprehensive range of Virtual Personal Assistant Services, contact Nikki White from Scribes on 02 9402 5783 or at www.scribes.net.au.

For a huge range of other virtual services, like IT, document writing, research etc. you could try the online virtual marketplace - www.elance.com