Large as well as small organizations across the world are quickly realizing the importance of online presence for increasing their business operations. It is indeed a pain in the neck for a small business to build a traditional office as investing in the same takes a lot of time, maintenance and investment.
Post-recession, it is imperative for organizations to reach out to more customers while increasing their business volume. The fast paced globalization has indeed led to the birth of virtual offices. Small organizations can really compete even with the larger ones by expanding their outreach with minimum cost.
The major advantages of virtual offices are listed below:
1. You can work from anywhere:
The concept of virtual offices allows the management to recruit skilled workers from any corner of the globe and that too at an affordable cost. These workers can work from the comfort of their home. Thus, their travelling cost as well as time is saved while working in such offices.
2. Reception services:
Virtual officers usually have an in-house receptionist who is responsible for taking care of in-calls, responding to faxed messages, answering to queries over calls and emails etc. This sends a strong message to your clients that you indeed take customer care service quite seriously.
3. Phone and mail services:
You can receive emails and phone calls of your clients directly in your phone even when you are out of office. You can customize the mail receiving and sorting services as per the requirements of your business. Thus, delay of communication is almost non-existent.
4. Stylish and comfortable conference rooms:
Such rooms are usually well equipped with projectors, speakers, internet facility, scanner, printer, Xerox machine etc. and are indeed perfect to conduct business meetings. Meetings with our clients and brainstorming can be done in such conference rooms.
5. Business address:
Virtual offices come with a physical address at a prime location of the city. This is crucial as it adds to the authenticity and reputation of the business. Clients nowadays usually find it difficult to trust businesses located in remote locations. A strong impression is created in the minds of the clients in case of a prime location address. It is to be noted that these are the softer aspects of your business and plays an important role in building lasting and sustainable relationships with your clients.
You should keep in mind that even virtual offices are also not without any disadvantages. A few major ones are listed below:
1. Difficulty in monitoring:
It is quite difficult to monitor the daily activities of your employees working in virtual offices. Employees may have the tendency to procrastinate their responsibility as there is no boss around. Unlike a traditional office, it is more difficult to instill professionalism and discipline among employees in case of virtual offices.
2. Decentralization of the workforce:
Though virtual offices allow you to work from any corner of the world, the workforce is quite decentralized and makes it difficult to conduct face to face meetings. There is a complete lack of personal touch which is never in the case of a traditional office.
Developing a business from a scratch used to be extremely hard in the past. Thus, virtual offices are expected to play a key role in this age as it cuts the unnecessary investment costs of businesses by a large margin.
Jennifer Chen is a business writer who lives and works in Bangkok, Thailand.
Increasing Popularity Of Virtual Offices
