is now a new business trend that’s becoming popular among small businesses and entrepreneurs—VIRTUAL ASSISTANCE, a remote professional administrative service.
How Can It Help You?
Hiring the services of a virtual assistant can take significant amount of workload from your shoulders and shave off hours from your workweek. In addition to that, it can help you cut costs because the rates are generally cheaper, plus you won’t have to deal with the expenses of hiring and employing regular office staff—you don’t have to pay fringe benefits too or acquire equipment for a new member in your team or firm.
What Are the Tasks You Can Outsource to VAs?
Knowing what tasks to delegate to your VA can be tricky and should, therefore, be thought out carefully. Here are guide questions to help you decide what tasks or business processes you should outsource:
What are my “core competencies”?
This refers to the main strength or strategic advantage of your business. For example, if your firm is specialising in providing IT solutions and computer hardware troubleshooting, repair, and maintenance—then NEVER outsource any of these tasks for these are your “core competencies”.
What are the areas I’m NOT good at but others are?
Take the above example, for instance, solving IT concerns is obviously your specialty. Now, how about Internet marketing and SEO solutions? If these areas are not your core competencies, then you can outsource them to a virtual assistant. By doing so, you can focus more on the core functions of your business and leave back-office tasks in the hands of the experts.
Do you trust your VA?
The kind of tasks you can outsource also depends on how much you can trust your remote administrative assistant. Building trust, as you would a permanent staff, is essential in this business because your VA becomes a team member of your company. This is especially true since you will be sharing critical business information with him/ her.
Selecting what tasks to outsource to virtual assistants is all about knowing your core competencies, how the experts can help you, and how reliable they are. To know what specific tasks you can leave in the hands of a Virtual Assistant, check out the second part of this article.