Paving the Way to Outsourcing Administration

If dealing with administration is eating up a considerable amount of your time, leaving you with little to focus on managing your business effectively, but you cannot afford to employ a permanent or even temporary member of staff, or purchase extra office equipment then you need a Virtual Assistant.

The ‘virtual assistant’, or ‘VA’ as it is known in the field, is a growing phenomenon and an alternative career move for a growing number of established PAs, who would like the flexibility of working for themselves.

A virtual assistant is an independent entrepreneur who provides business support to their clients from their own fully equipped office. Typical clients who benefit from using VAs are new start up businesses, small businesses, business coaches, entrepreneurs, consultants, executives, salespeople, journalists, secretaries who require extra help and international business.

The term virtual assistant is a relatively new concept. Its increasing growth in popularity is due to the popular expansion of Internet usage, where it is now possible, due to technological advances, to work remotely. There are also growing needs for individuals to work in a more flexible working environment.
With the growing trend in outsourcing business services such as HR, Finance, Call Centre functions and so on, businesses may also consider using VAs to outsource administrative services. The more traditional approaches and even a status symbol of having a PA or secretary for some managers and executives is now being challenged by entrepreneurial businesses who recognise the benefits of using a VA.
Charlotte O’Neill, the Director of Think PA, a business support service providing pa, administration and secretarial services to businesses, and a VA herself, explains these benefits,
“If a company is willing to outsource core activities to save costs then the virtual assistant provides an instant solution. Substantial savings can be achieved by small and even large organisations.

Clients only pay for the time taken to complete each task so the business will make savings in relation to both full time or temporary agency staff. Through employing in-house administration the company will invariably incur costs in relation to annual salaries or agency fees, national insurance contributions and pension costs. However, the business generally fails to see other costs involved in the process such as idle time, holidays, sick-leave, insurance, office space, workstations, recruitment, training, utility expenses and so on which can be a considerable capital investment or strain on cash-flow for any business.

The benefit of outsourcing your administration function is that as the VA generally works from a home office therefore greatly reducing overheads that are added into hourly rates charged to clients, this removes capital expenditure costs through not having to purchase workstations and office furniture for the business, and as there are no national insurance contributions, pension costs, recruitment and training costs through having an employee the on-going working capital of the business is improved.

VAs can especially help small businesses take the weight out of their ever-increasing workloads and help to present a professional and larger image to the outside world.

The benefits to the VA is that we choose which hours to work, we do not bear the cost and time of commuting to an office each day and above all we are our own boss – a perfect combination”!
Charlotte goes on to explain "It is a very efficient way of delegating work, a virtual assistant is a very specialized and professional person who genuinely wants your company to succeed, and to therefore keep you as their client. Because this field is relatively new it is hard to let the business world know that we are offering this service, but I believe it can be of real value to businesses and the VAs themselves”.
Should you require further information regarding services offered please do not hesitate to contact Think PA by visiting the company website www.thinkpa.com or alternatively emailing enquiries@thinkpa.com.