Business

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Why You Need a Virtual Assistant

Outsourcing in the Philippines / By

When starting a business, it’s understandable that you put in a lot of work to get your company off the ground. We all know being an entrepreneur is very challenging, and there will be times when you are better off getting help. Hiring a personal assistant eases the management of your tasks, as you can have someone else do half the work you are doing and allow you to focus on your priorities. But sometimes, business owners stray away from the idea of hiring additional personnel because an in-house personal assistant can cost you a lot of wages. Fortunately for us, a new trend is beginning to gain popularity among professionals: getting remote assistance through an offshore virtual assistant.

What is Virtual Assistance?
BPO companies now offer virtual assistants under their back office services. A virtual personal assistant is someone who can help you with administrative tasks such as responding to emails, scheduling meetings or booking travel tickets, accommodation and more. Any business-related task that could be done online can be delegated to your virtual assistant, and hiring one comes with several benefits that could help you save both money and time.

Virtual Assistants are a great investment
Unlike in-house personal assistants, VAs are twice or even three times as cheap which means you can hire more people with different specialisations to handle different tasks. Since you no longer have to allocate extra resources for office space and equipment, you can use the money you save on growing your business. In addition, labour rates are usually charged per hour of service rendered, and are commonly available on flexible schedules. This, in turn, can save you more money in the long run, as you don’t have to pay for your VA’s downtime. Most small businesses don’t have enough tasks to keep a full-time assistant busy, which makes hiring a virtual assistant ideal.
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Increase your productivity while avoiding burnout
Being a business owner can sometimes require you to be a one-man team, leaving you with too many responsibilities and stretching you out too thin. Hiring a virtual assistant is a great way to ensure you don’t get burned out from the daily grind–you can just focus on your expertise and core priorities while your VA can handle the rest. Since technical tasks like accounting, data processing, or market research can be done on a computer, you can easily outsource these responsibilities remotely to your offshore assistant. There are BPO companies that train VAs for different fields, but you can also opt to train your assistant according to your business process and standards.

Having a virtual assistant lessens the hassle
BPO companies make the process of hiring a virtual assistant faster and better. As compared to hiring in-house which can cost you a lot of energy and resources that could negatively impact your business. With outsourcing, you can opt for a BPO company with an interactive hiring process so you can monitor and screen the quality of candidates that your outsourcing partner will provide you.


Virtual Assistants can not only improve your productivity, having one also raises your quality of life. By allowing you to save money and time, you can then spend it doing more productive tasks or take a break to recharge and refresh your mind so you are better prepared for the challenges that running a small business entails.

Want to get your own VA? Check out our services or send us a message at [email protected] to see how we can help you find the perfect offshore work companion!

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Key Tips For Managing Your Offshore Team

Business, Offshoring in the Philippines / By

Already got a team abroad working on your operations? If this is your first time hiring an offshore staff, it can be a bit difficult to handle a whole team. You’ll eventually get used to it, but instead of finding your way in the dark, entrepreneur.com shares some vital tips on how to cater to your outsourced team.

One of the crucial things to consider when hiring an offshore staff is ensuring smooth communication. This includes choosing offshore employees with strong English skills and assigning a team leader that will help ease communication between you and the rest of your remote staff. Another way would be to visit your team abroad at least once a year, this is to strengthen your connection with your staff members and engage with them on a more personal level.

To learn more about these tips, you can read the full article here.

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IT Services: Why You Need To Outsource Today

IT Outsourcing Services, Outsourcing in the Philippines / By

Information Technology is an indispensable department in any company. IT teams are in charge of the creation, development and maintenance of systems regularly used by businesses around the world. Aside from these, tech support also varies in key responsibilities: Network Admins make sure that you have stable network functions, Developers are often in charge of the coding and programming aspects, while Designers create a comprehensive interface for programs to be used by your other employees or the website you present to your target audience.

Outsourcing IT eliminates other expenses

When hiring an in-house employee, you also have to consider other costs to accommodate your staff. Benefits packages, healthcare, and other cost factors such as a budget for training, sick days or leaves, and paid vacation need to be taken into account. Offshoring takes this off your hands, as the BPO company you’re in partnership with will be handling this for you. Usually, aside from the labour costs, you just have to pay a fixed seat fee or set-up fees to provide your offshore staff with the right equipment they need to perform their job well.

Outsourcing also allows you to access the latest technology that your offshore IT team needs, as paying regular seat fees and set-up fees will end up cheaper in the long run instead of buying new devices and other equipment.

IT person on his desk

Outsourcing makes hiring a full team affordable

As stated before, IT isn’t just one big job. You’ll need several people to perform specific functions in order to be more efficient. Since offshoring lets you save a lot of money on wages and equipment, you can then afford to hire more people and assemble a whole crew. You can even add multimedia artists and a dedicated QA (Quality Assurance) officer to work for you. Each of these roles is equally essential in making your IT team competent and more productive.

A full team of IT experts is also a great advantage when it comes to round-the-clock system maintenance, something you can achieve better when you outsource. You can opt to split your offshore team into two shifts and have the night shifts covered easily due to time zone differences.

Outsourcing improves disaster and risk management

Every department isn’t free from flaws, and sometimes networks or computer systems might fail. Having a team of professionals available 24/7 means there will always be someone on duty to assist you with any system problems you might encounter. Since your offshore team is composed of IT experts with more experience and technical skills, they are better equipped and trained in responding to network issues and system errors. The time it takes to fix a problem can be cut down significantly and improve your overall risk management.

 

Outsourcing your IT needs makes it easy to keep up with the world’s ever-changing demands. You don’t need expensive solutions to your business’ problems: just an efficient one. Hiring an offshore staff to handle IT tasks has many more advantages aside from the ones we listed here. Want to give it a try? Check out our services to see which staffing solutions can help you further develop your company.

business owner using tablet

Start-ups Helping Smaller Businesses Through Outsourcing

Business, Outsourcing in the Philippines / By

Small business owners wear many hats: taking on numerous roles in order to get their businesses off the ground. Outsourcing has helped enterprises of any scale manage their companies more efficiently, and a new trend is starting to arise in the online business community.

Sites and apps like TaskRabbit and Fiverr are steadily gaining popularity as it helps connect not just ordinary people, but businesses as well, to freelancers offering niche or specific services. By outsourcing tasks through a wide international platform, smaller businesses are able to get the job done without spending too much on labour. This system also favours freelancers who can now make a living out of their niche specializations.

To learn more about which online platforms can help you with outsourcing small tasks, you can view the full article here.

happy businessman

How to Effectively Manage Your Career

Careers, Human Resources / By

There are no shortcuts or a secret formula to success, no matter how many books and talk show hosts claim to say so. However, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t surefire ways to manage your progress. It’s all about self-improvement, discipline, and finding the right motivation. We’ve listed some tips that can help guide you through your journey to building the perfect career.

1. Choose your career path and define your goals

What do you do best and where do you want to be in five or ten years? These are some of the questions you need to reflect on. Before you start your journey, you have to pick your destination and the route you will take to get there. Assess your talents, where your passions lie, and what you need to achieve. This way, you get a clear picture of your end goal, and it will be easier to plan ahead. For example, suppose your best skill is in cooking and your dream is to be able to run your own restaurant–from there, you can get a better idea of how to proceed in achieving that goal. In the next five years or so, maybe you can strive to upskill yourself by working alongside professionals and saving money for your capital–and along the way you can pick up some knowledge on how to run and sustain a business. Let your goal be your compass.

2. Build a strong foundation

As mentioned earlier, you can upgrade your skill set by working your way up the food chain. Start small, gather resources and build a network: this applies to any industry. Say you are an aspiring artist, immerse yourself in the community and start by creating a name for yourself. Put your work out there–whether it be online or through joining galleries, go to conventions, meet people and market yourself. The stronger your base is, the easier it will be to push yourself forward. Take Walt Disney for example, currently the biggest name in entertainment history. Disney wasn’t born a billionaire, but he was born an artist. Even at an early age, he knew the value of entertainment and art–he drew pictures for his neighbours in exchange for money, made cartoons for his school newspaper, and after going through a rough jobless phase, Disney finally went into the field of advertising where he first started earning big. Disney’s venture into advertising served as a launchpad for his career in animation and that’s how he became the entertainment powerhouse we knew today.

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3. Brace yourself for challenges and changes

Life will always throw us curveballs that could leave us derailed, but the difference between successful people and those who aren’t is their ability get back up when they’re knocked down. This is always the hardest part, and sometimes it could seem like it never ends. If a job is starting to have more pitfalls than advantages, maybe it’s time to leave. Don’t be afraid of starting over, because as long as you carry on and learn from your mistakes, it still counts as a huge improvement.

4. Create your own definition of success

Success is such a relative term, that it could mean different things to different people. What is success to you? Is it monetary gain? Is it satisfaction? Sometimes we get so caught up in the daily grind that we forget to appreciate what we already achieved. Though it’s good to have a strong drive, it’s equally important to know when to stop pushing yourself. Reward yourself for all your hard work and efforts, and learn how to thank the people that got you where you are. Once you feel like you’ve found what success means to you and finally achieved it, you can help out others reach their own.

businessman in car

It’s not wrong to dream big, but if you don’t put in the efforts to make that dream a reality, it will only stay a dream. Believe in yourself and your own capabilities, that’s what will truly launch you forward!