Operating a company on your own is difficult. Your company goal is quickly overshadowed by mountains of time-consuming, hidden responsibilities. You end yourself bouncing from one activity to the next, feeling stressed and losing focus on what really matters: expanding your company.
When you initially begin, you may be able to manage everything on your own for many months or even years. However, not everyone excels at or loves doing every sort of business duty. By employing a virtual assistant, you may expand your company more quickly and devote more of your time to its most critical aspects.
Virtual assistants are remote employees that assist with a variety of chores and services for businesses. They may be responsible for administrative responsibilities, accounting, or even marketing.
Regardless of the assistance you need, virtual assistants are a cost-effective method to reduce the stresses you have as a company owner and allow you to maintain your focus on building your firm.
Recognizing your need for assistance and agreeing to engage a virtual assistant is the first step toward company expansion. There are number of platforms to help you out and one such platform is IREKROOT, which pairs you with Highly Trained and Dedicated Top Talent. Business expansion on demand. Generate more leads, service more clients, and unleash exponential growth.
Who is Virtual Assistant?
Simply said, a virtual assistant is an assistant who works remotely. As technical improvements in the 1990s delivered dependable internet to more households, companies realized they did not need to send an employee into the office to do tasks; this led to the emergence of the first virtual assistants.
Virtual assistants are in high demand among entrepreneurs and online firms that want assistance but do not wish to invest in office space for workers. Nevertheless, many small and medium-sized firms rely on virtual help, particularly for specialized duties such as social media management.
Theoretically, a virtual assistant can do every task that might be performed by support workers. There are constraints, but technology is progressively providing means to circumvent them. For instance, they may not be able to bring you coffee in the morning, but they may make an order for coffee or lunch with a meal delivery service.
Virtual support roles extend beyond administrative responsibilities. They may provide support with marketing, web design, accounting, and a variety of other services. Some virtual assistants specialize in a certain skill set and do only tasks relating to that skill type. Other virtual assistants are industry-specific, such as a virtual assistant who specializes in aiding real estate agents. IREKROOT specializes in Management, Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, and Finance positions across all industries. There is a non-exhaustive list of industries they are serving in.
Advantages of employing a virtual assistant: Why You Need A Virtual Assistant
Three Excellent Reasons
Today, virtual assistants are ubiquitous. Increasing numbers of people are turning to them, and it seems that they are here to stay. Here are the reasons why you should employ your own.
1. Better Utilization of Your Employees
Suppose a middle-level or senior-level employee had to pick between the following two alternatives:
- Participating actively in driving growth initiatives or
- Daily preparation of standard reports.
What choice would they make? Most likely, they would choose option 1. Why? It is more engaging and seems more vital. However, this does not imply you should ignore basic responsibilities such as email and banking. Your company would fail without this tedious, repetitive labor. So how can you keep your internal workforce happy while yet completing monotonous tasks? Using virtual helpers. They are able to do the majority of these monotonous distant jobs. The outcome?
A full-time employee (particularly a senior or competent one) is able to remain focused on urgent tasks that must be completed in-person in the office.
2. Reduced Expenses
One of the primary reasons why entrepreneurs and companies outsource work is because it is less expensive.
- Saving Salary Cost
You might opt to outsource a modest task rather than hire a full-time staff for it. However, this is not the only way that virtual experts may help you save money.
- Saving Training Cost
A company owner may also save significantly on training expenses. Typically, organizations must teach their internal staff on tasks and responsibilities after the recruiting process. All of this requires time and money, which most businesses cannot afford. With virtual assistants, however, small company owners may engage specialists in their sector. Thus, the company owner does not have to spend time and money training them; they may begin working immediately.
3. Saves Time
Small company owners use virtual assistants since it saves them a TON of time. We are all aware that time is money, particularly in business. Consider, for instance, a tiny firm with no HR department. Your workers should not spend countless hours publishing job adverts, doing preliminary resume screening, and planning the interview process for an entry-level position. Why not forgo all of this and hire a professional instead to do specified tasks?
With virtual assistants, you will get the following:
- You’ll have instant access to vetted specialists you may employ.
- They save you time since you don’t have to train them. Since they can concentrate just on the duties you’ve hired them for, they’ll do the job faster than an employee juggling several responsibilities.
- It benefits all parties involved.
Virtual Assistant Qualification
Although there are no strict educational prerequisites for being a virtual assistant, many customers prefer virtual assistants with advanced degrees or specialized training. A few online businesses and community institutions provide virtual assistant courses and certification.
A virtual assistant should have a broad variety of computer abilities and a high degree of expertise with standard software and business applications. A virtual assistant who specializes in bookkeeping must be capable of doing fundamental accounting activities, such as account reconciliations and double-entry bookkeeping.
What does a virtual assistant do?
There are no predetermined duties that virtual assistants must do, and their responsibilities vary based on their employers. Here are some of the most frequent responsibilities assigned to virtual assistants:
1. Administration duties
Virtual assistants are often employed for administrative tasks. This involves arranging meetings, reserving flights, managing calendars, and answering phones over a connected line. Personal and professional calendar management is one of an entrepreneur’s toughest concerns. Virtual assistants may make your life easier by offering reminders and arranging appointments. They could:
- Schedule and coordinate calls and appointments: This alone saves owners around 10 hours each week and prevents them from doing these unpleasant duties. The idea is to provide your helper with regulations about who and when. In addition, VAs arrange calls for certain team members.
- Confirm engagements: The ideal practice is to provide the virtual assistant with a list of appointments to confirm, including those for the next day. This reduces the time wasted when the other party forgets or cancels at the last minute.
- Provide reminders for phone calls and scheduled appointments: Occasionally, you may forget to make a phone call, particularly if you are out of the office or in a series of meetings. A few minutes beforehand, the virtual assistant may contact or text you to guarantee you don’t forget.
- Reschedule phone calls and meetings: Despite your best efforts, it is occasionally necessary to postpone. This can be handled by your VA.
- Provide others with notice of scheduling changes: The virtual assistant will also notify the other party and confirm the new appointment time.
- Protect your time: It might be difficult for company owners to refuse a request to “catch up” over coffee. The VA may serve as the bad guy.
- Send a “pending list” and keep it: Each week, virtual assistants may provide you a list of individuals who have not replied to requests to schedule a meeting or phone conversation, so that you know when you need to take action.
- Inform important persons of your upcoming absence: As part of the travel procedure, the VA sends significant others a calendar invitation with the dates of the trip and information on the airline and lodging. This maintains their knowledge.
2. Bookkeeping
Managing money is vital to operating a thriving company, and virtual assistants may aid with budgeting, making purchases, and tracking spending. Do you despise keeping the books or sending out invoices? Why not has your VA do these tasks?
- Keep the books in order: Virtual assistants may analyse and match transactions and do monthly reconciliations with no training.
- Create and distribute invoices: A virtual assistant may generate bills and distribute them to customers using templates.
- Chase down payment payments: Every business should have an accounts receivable system. Virtual assistants are able to adhere to this procedure and collect A/R. When appropriate, the procedure may include escalation to the company owner or another individual.
3. Personal assistant
Virtual assistants may help coordinate non-work-related chores in addition to their regular obligations. Reserving vacations, planning a schedule, and buying presents for loved ones are some of the most usual personal responsibilities. You have a personal life as well. It takes time to make meal reservations and mail presents. However, they are crucial for preserving your personal connections. And you’re meant to manage a company simultaneously? Get assistance from your virtual assistant.
- Make personal restaurant bookings: Armed with personal preferences and login information for booking services such as Open Table, VAs are able to make restaurant reservations and then invite visitors.
- Purchase items: Sometimes, not even Amazon offers what you need, and the buying procedure is too lengthy. A virtual assistant may shop online to get the items you need.
- Research and deliver presents: When a gift card will not enough, your helper will search for and get a unique present.
- Manage the logistical aspects of your pastime: Whether it’s locating and reserving a studio for your garage band or coordinating the specifics of your book club, a virtual assistant may relieve you of the boring details so you can continue to rock (or read).
- Locate problematic orders: When an order does not come on time, a virtual assistant may wait on hold, investigate the issue, and keep you informed.
- Manage the family’s schedule: Another small personal activity that your virtual assistant can do for you.
- Organize medical appointments: With birthdates and insurance information, a VA may arrange medical appointments and begin filling out those tedious papers.
- Pay personal bills: A virtual assistant may pay the bills for those merchants you do not routinely purchase from or who do not accept online payments.
- Call local retailers for information: Whether you are searching for a difficult-to-find bottle of scotch or a present, a VA will make the necessary phone calls to locate the shop that carries the item.
4. Customer support
For businesses that provide a product or service, virtual assistants may serve as the first point of contact for clients seeking support with issues or a means of providing feedback. Virtual assistants may solve fundamental, habitual issues or deliver instruction. If they are unable to assist a consumer, they may escalate the issue to the appropriate corporate employee.
5. Data entry
Virtual assistants may perform a vast array of activities, including data entry, which do not all fit under the umbrella of administrative labour. A virtual assistant may simply generate data, verify its correctness, and remove unneeded entries in this capacity. This is particularly advantageous for patient registration, invoicing, postal work, and administration of the schools
6. Social media production
Despite the fact that many businesses recognise the significance of online connection with prospective consumers and clients, the responsibilities of social media management may at times seem limitless. In addition to replying to comments and connecting with followers, virtual assistants may also manage a posting schedule and analyse account statistics. Today, no respectable business can ignore the influence of social media. You must take your social media management responsibilities seriously. Delegate the administration of your social media accounts to an experienced virtual assistant if you lack an in-house social media professional.
They will be responsible for the following tasks:
- Producing content for your social media profiles
- Planning posts Interacting with your fans
- Examining statistical data and reports
7. Content management
If you employ editorial material to generate traffic to your website, raise brand recognition, and attract prospective consumers, then you are undoubtedly aware of the enormous amount of labour involved in operations. A virtual assistant may aid in the management of a production schedule, the organization of writing materials, and the facilitation of other publishing process aspects, allowing you to concentrate on expanding the content programme. In recent years, content authoring has risen to the top of the digital marketing hierarchy. There is a reason why huge organizations often publish blog articles. It helps increase their search engine optimization and website traffic.
Having someone manage this procedure might be a wise digital marketing option.
If you have a blog that publishes new blog articles often, you will: Have more people discover it through search engines; Have more of them click on it and visit your website; Have more people subscribe to your blog. Increase your conversion rate as a consequence. The issue is that content production is difficult. In addition to writing, there are a number of particular jobs, such as doing research, locating and editing photographs, posting blog posts, etc. It is advisable to outsource your blog postings to a virtual assistant for this reason. You may outsource just the auxiliary duties, such as uploading photographs, or the complete procedure.
For instance, a rising number of real estate agents and brokers are using virtual assistants for their marketing efforts, such as content development, open house organization, social media, etc. Outsourcing it to a single individual guarantees that each piece of material has a personal touch and that its quality remains consistent.
Future for Virtual Assistants is bright
The virtual assistant industry is still expanding quickly, which brings us to our first set of numbers:
According to Technavio’s most recent industry analysis, the size of the worldwide virtual assistant market is anticipated to increase by USD 4.12 billion during the forecasted period. The market for virtual assistants is expanding mostly due to consumer demand for improved customer service, while certain obstacles, such as technological issues, could restrain this expansion.
Every organization needs depend on research to guide its operations, whether it is market, customer, or performance analysis. Research may also be a product to offer to customers. Even with devoted resources, research may be a time-consuming task; thus, some businesses use virtual assistants to help with the compilation of this material. Because these jobs are often more manual, they are best suited for data analysis-focused virtual assistants. According to Technavio’s most recent industry analysis, the worldwide virtual assistant market is anticipated to increase by USD 4.12 billion, registering a CAGR of about 12% between 2021 and 2025. According to our research, the widespread spread of the COVID-19 pandemic had a mixed effect on the application software industry.
For many small companies, the idea of employing and delegating certain chores to a virtual assistant is intimidating. Some business owners may believe they do not have the funds or time to use a virtual assistant. Nevertheless, just as you cannot establish an empire on your own, you cannot manage every area of your company on your own.
