Virtual Assistance Services: Boosting Your Project with the Help of Remote Assistants
Most companies have a lot of administrative tasks and other behind-the-scenes duties that need to be tended to keep their operation running smoothly. The truth is many of these tasks are boring, repetitive and time-consuming but are essential to the business. Rather than assigning these tasks to in-house staff, one alternative is to use a virtual assistance service. Here are some of the ways using dedicated virtual assistants can benefit your company’s projects.
- Skills and experience: when you use remote assistant services the specialists you hire are skilled professionals with experience performing the tasks you need them to. As they have an expertise in the area, tasks will be completed faster and you won’t have to spend time with training. An added bonus is they often have access to the latest technology in their specialty field.
- Reduce expenses: a big advantage when you outsource to a virtual assistant is a reduction in costs. Salaries are generally less for virtual assistants than for in-house staff and you will only pay for the work that they do. Many associated expenses such as office space, equipment, insurance, training and others are also eliminated so the overall savings can be substantial.
- Flexibility: when outsourcing VA specialists you can scale up or scale down depending on the current volume of work that you have. Qualified virtual assistants can be quickly added to your team as needed without spending a great deal of time looking for somebody with the right skill-set. If the workload goes down they can be released and rehired again as necessary. They can also be hired on a full-time, part-time or per-project basis depending on your requirements.
- Managed risk: a lot of time and expense is invested when hiring an employee. There are recruitment expenses, on-boarding and training to name a few, and if the employee leaves the time and money invested is lost, not to mention that it will disrupt your operations. When you outsource to a company with virtual assistants for hire, nothing is lost and your operation will continue with little or no interruptions.
- Improve productivity: outsourcing tasks to a remote personal assistant will free up your in-house staff to focus on other important duties. Not only will the outsourced tasks be performed more efficiently by a VA with expertise in the area, but in-house staff can focus on your core business such as product development, production and sales.
Overseas Virtual Assistant vs In-House Employees
There are positive and negative aspects to using virtual assistants as well as for hiring in-house employees. The following table shows a comparison between using virtual assistants versus in-house employees.
Criteria | Virtual Assistants | In-House Employees |
Expenses | Your expenses will be less using an overseas virtual assistant. Salaries for a VA are lower and you only pay for the work performed. Costs like office space, equipment and training are assumed by the provider and will be eliminated | It is more expensive to hire in-house staff. Salaries are higher, you will have to provide space and equipment as well as pay the costs involved in recruiting and training new employees |
Skills and Experience | With a remote VA provider you will gain access to better-qualified specialists. They will have the necessary skills to perform the tasks they are hired for and will also be experienced. | Finding local employees with the qualifications you need is difficult, if not impossible. You will need to invest time and money into training new hires to get the necessary skills |
Flexibility | A dedicated virtual receptionist is more flexible and is only paid for the work performed. | In-house employees receive the same salary regardless of the current workload and adhere to a strict schedule |
Replaceability | When you lose a VA the provider will quickly replace them with somebody equally qualified with little or no loss in productivity | If an in-house employee leaves operations will be disrupted until they can be replaced which could take weeks and will be an additional expense. |
Communication | There can be communication issues, sometimes due to language but also because of differences in time zones | You can communicate with in-house employees face to face on a daily basis |
Confidentiality | Sensitive data may have to be shared with the VA | All sensitive data is kept in-house |
Level of Control | You will have less control over the tasks that you outsource to a virtual administrative assistant. | It is easier to track productivity and quickly address any issues with employees who are physically present |
Choosing which option is the best for you will depend on your particular needs and requirements. However, in general outsourcing to a virtual assistant is more cost-effective and better for productivity than hiring in-house staff.
About Our Remote Assistant Services
We are a reliable recruiting back office provider in Europe that offers an array of dedicated remote specialists who can handle your day-to-day business processes. Our company has access to a large pool of skilled and experienced specialists with expertise in a wide variety of back office and administrative tasks.
Efficient and timely completion of your administrative and day-to-day business processes is essential to keep your business running smoothly. We are aware of this and can help you assemble a team of specialists that can handle all these important tasks for you.
No two companies are alike which is why we customize our services to meet the specific needs of our clients. We will tailor a team of back office professionals that is well suited to meet your particular needs. Should your requirements change we are capable of adjusting to ensure your needs continue to be met. When you need exceptional service that you can depend on, our agency is the best place to find virtual assistants that fulfill all of your requirements.
Outsourcing VA Services Our Staff Can Provide Clients
Our specialists can provide your company with a full range of business processing services. The following are the services our virtual assistants can provide.
Data Entry Services
Companies today are inundated with an ever-increasing amount of data that is necessary for business operations. With large volumes of data, some of which is time-sensitive, it makes sense to outsource data entry through our service. We can provide skilled and experienced data entry specialists who will handle all your data entry requirements quickly and accurately. These data entry specialists can perform a wide range of tasks such as survey data entry, invoice data entry, Excel spreadsheet data entry, offline data entry, product data entry, raw data conversion and data input, and other data entry duties. In addition image data entry services are available such as image keying and indexing, creating database files from images and image storage and retrieval.
Data Processing Services
Data processing is the collection of information from different sources and formatting it so that it can be more easily used and understood. When you outsource data extraction services through us our specialists can search a variety of databases using data mining technology to get the information you require. Our data processing outsourcing services use skilled and experienced specialists who can handle your data processing tasks such as validating data sets and converting your data into a machine-readable form. The specialist will be responsible for the collection, conversion and organization of your data. This will include storing data in a format that you can easily use and understand and which can be retrieved whenever you have need of it.
Content Moderation Services
To protect your brand image as well as your business you may require content moderation services. Our content moderation specialists will monitor user-generated content on your business website and social media channels and review it using a set of rules to determine if it is allowed. It is the specialists’ responsibility to eliminate profanity, copyright infringements, spam, pornography and all other user-generated content deemed undesirable and detrimental to your brand and business reputation. Social media monitoring services are available on multiple platforms 24/7. Image and video moderation, forum moderation, profile moderation, profanity filtering as well as community moderation and management are among the services we offer to help protect your business.
Image/Photo Editing and Cropping
Businesses often use photos for marketing, advertising and other purposes. However, images sometimes need some adjustments to make them suitable for your purposes. You can outsource photography editing services through our company to ensure your images are exactly as you want them. Cropping and editing photos is often necessary to get the proper dimensions required or to remove unwanted elements from images. Additional photo editing outsourcing services our specialist can handle include photo enhancement services to adjust contrast, sharpness, brightness and saturation of images as well as photo retouching to correct any flaws or improve clarity. Photo manipulation like photo blending and photo morphing as well as 360-degree panorama stitching are other photo editing services our specialists can provide.
OCR Services
Optical character recognition (OCR) is a data entry method that is used to convert paper documents into a digital format. Even in today’s digital world many businesses generate a lot of paper documents and converting them into a digital format makes them easier to store and edit. Our optical character recognition services can convert any type of paper documents such as receipts, invoices, forms and contracts to a digital format for you. The OCR processing specialist will scan your document and convert the OCR data into the desired file type. In addition, we provide OCR cleanup services when needed. This is sometimes necessary due to the content on the paper document not being clear which can result in an error during the scanning process. Misread characters are corrected during cleanup by manually comparing the original document to the OCR file so that 100% accuracy is assured.
Document Formatting and Conversion Services
Our file conversion services use skilled and experienced professionals to change your existing files to any format you prefer. Converting older formats to more recent versions is not a problem and basic text formatting will remain. The specialists we hire can also provide PDF conversion services, converting non-PDF files to PDF and PDF files to other formats. In addition, we offer document formatting services that can include content formatting, document type formatting, page layout formatting, document data rephrasing and styles and font editing. Some of the document types our formatting specialists work with include Word, PDF documents, Excel, image files, HTML documents and others. Professional appearing documents are assured when you use our formatting services.
Remote Administrative Support Services
The need for remote administrative support can vary from company to company but covers a broad range of tasks that occur regularly throughout the day. Our virtual secretary services can assume all these administrative responsibilities for you including tasks like drafting letters, scheduling appointments, preparing documents, taking phone calls, responding to inquiries, responding to emails, maintaining records, basic bookkeeping and a host of other administrative duties.
Backlog Management Services
At its most basic a backlog is a to-do list that prioritizes various activities that need to be accomplished before other activities can be completed. Our backlog management specialist will make the necessary adjustments and changes to your backlog to ensure the highest priority items are completed on schedule. A well-maintained backlog will ensure an efficiently run operation and help you avoid work stoppages and shutdowns. Using your requirements as a guide our specialist will make sure your backlog is well organized, up-to-date and that the most important tasks are prioritized.
Customer Order Management Services
Customer order processing covers the entire order fulfillment process from the time a product is ordered until it has been successfully delivered. Our order management services include accepting order details and entering them, tracking stock levels, processing the order for delivery, coordinating with third-party logistics providers to have the order shipped to the customer and tracking the shipment until it is delivered. The specialist can monitor every stage of the process and ensure your customers receive timely delivery.
Knowledge Base Creation Services
A knowledge base is basically a library of information about your product, service, a particular department or something else. It is a useful tool for answering both customer and employee inquires. Our knowledge base creation specialists can assist you in building a knowledge base for your service, product or any other purpose. We will work with you to determine the best approach for creating and operating your knowledge base and build it for you following your guidelines and requirements.
Document Digitization Services
Document digitization is the conversion of paper documents like books, images, documents and others into a digital format. With our document scanning outsourcing services, you can have all you documents scanned and saved as an image file. The image file is then scanned using an OCR system to convert the image into text files. Text files are manually checked for errors to ensure accuracy. Our document digitization services will provide you with the files in any format you require.
Market Research Services
Gain insight into your target market by outsourcing research through our company. Our market research outsourcing services include customer satisfaction surveys, brand awareness research, competitor analysis, market profiling, market segmentation, product effectiveness analysis and questionnaire design to allow you to market your products and services more effectively.
Other Back Office Support Services
In addition to those discussed we provide a number of other back office support services. These include PowerPoint outsourcing to assist you with your PPT presentations and invoice process outsourcing to help you monitor and keep up with your accounts payable. We also offer data enrichment services to ensure only useful information is included in your database, and database administration outsourcing for maintaining and managing your company’s database.
Remote VA Specialists We Can Hire for Clients
We can recruit many types of specialists to perform business processing tasks for you. Some of the types of specialists we can provide include:
- Data entry clerks
- Data processing analysts
- Data processing managers
- Data management specialists
- Content moderators
- Photo/image editors
- OCR specialists
- Digital processing specialists
- Document analysts
- Document processors
- Backlog management specialists
- Database Administrators
- Data extraction specialist
- Data enrichment specialists
Our specialists have experience in diverse industries. Some of the industries we serve include but are not limited to:
- Marketing and advertising
- Agriculture
- Healthcare
- Manufacturing
- eCommerce and retail
- Telecommunications
- Automotive
- Logistics and transportation
- Information technology
- Banking and financial services
- Travel and hospitality
How We Find Dedicated Virtual Assistants
Our process for hiring virtual assistants for clients is simple but effective.
- Fill out the contact form and we will contact you back by email initially.
- We will go through your specific requirements with you to define your needs and expectations from the staff that you are looking to recruit. We will ensure that we fully understand your expectations.
- We will source virtual specialists that meet your specific needs. Each will be vetted to ensure that they meet your requirements before you are given the final choice to select who will be hire for your team.
- Contracts are signed as well as defining roles and responsibilities for your team in full.
In addition to providing virtual assistants for business processing, we offer RPO staffing services and HR outsourcing services.
Why Partner With Our Company for Your Remote Personal Assistant Needs
With many different companies offering virtual assistant outsourcing an outsourcing agency needs to stand out from the rest. Here are some of the reasons your company should partner with us for your virtual assistant needs
- Flexible service: every business has different requirements and we can adapt to fit your specific needs. The team of virtual assistants we assemble for you will be customized to fit your specific requirements. Virtual assistants are available on a full-time, part-time or per-project basis.
- Highly skilled specialists: the virtual assistants we hire are skilled professionals with experience in many different industries. All specialists are screened to verify qualifications and only the best are recruited for client’s teams.
- You save money: salaries for our virtual assistants are significantly lower than those in North America and Western Europe for an equally well qualified specialist. Expenses such as equipment, office space and other associated costs are assumed by our agency.
- Able to grow quickly with you: your team of virtual assistants can easily and quickly be scaled up or down depending on your current volume of work.
Our company is based in Ukraine which for several years has been increasing in popularity as an outsourcing destination. Some of the reasons Ukrainian specialists are in demand include:
- Available when you need us: the time difference between Ukraine and most of Western Europe is only 1 hour and working hours in Ukraine also overlap with those in parts of North America. This makes communication between you and your team much easier.
- Well educated pool of talent: Ukraine is home to many excellent universities and colleges that have been producing graduates in different fields for years. This has created a large pool of skilled and well educated specialists in diverse industries.
- Easy to find staff that can fit into your way of working: the work culture in Ukraine is similar to that in most of Western Europe and North America. As Ukrainians share the same work values, finding people with the qualifications you need who are also a good fit for your company is easy.
- They speak your language: the majority of professionals in Ukraine are fluent in English. In addition many of them are proficient in other languages as well.
- You save money: salaries in Ukraine are considerably less than those in Western Europe and North America for the same level of skills and experience which provides a great cost/quality ratio.