A Better Virtual – USA Virtual Offices

Demand is growing for virtual offices. So says an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Inquirer staff writer Diane Mastrull explores the world of virtual offices in an in-depth feature story that not only explains what virtual offices are, but gives strong examples of real-life people who are actively using virtual offices.

Here’s how Mastrull defines the virtual office: “A virtual office is shared work space – meeting and conference areas, reception desks, copy rooms – used on an as-needed basis, at a cost that could be considerably less than rent under a conventional multiyear office lease. It includes shared support services, too. Depending on the provider, that could mean a receptionist along with a team of administrative assistants to help develop marketing plans, create business cards and brochures, even assist at trade shows.”

Mastrull chose to feature American Executive Centers in her story because she believes it’s the largest locally based virtual office provider, with seven facilities. American Executive Centers also rents executive office suites. But the company now officially has more virtual office tenants than physical office space tenants.

American Executive Centers’ virtual offices in Philadelphia target companies of all sizes, whether it’s a small business that wants to enhance its image, a medium-sized business looking for business support services, or a large firm looking to expand into Philadelphia without much cost.

American Executive Centers offers personalized telephone reception services, a prestigious corporate mailing address at one of its seven greater Philadelphia area locations, preferred access to private offices and conference rooms in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, use of business support services, and, of course, a dedicated phone number and voicemail.

Mastrull also mentioned Intelligent Office, The Office Works,  and Executive Office Link. Although both companies are present in the region, Regus and Davinci Virtual were not mentioned in the article.

Looking for a virtual assistant? VirtualAssistant.org wants to be your provider of dedicated business support services.

Brought to you by the same folks behind Receptionist.org, this company offers virtual assistants that work from offices in Southeast Asia. That spells cost savings for U.S. companies. Instead of charging $35 an hour, you can tap into a virtual assistant for an average of $7 to $18 an hour.

VirtualAssistant.org sells its VA services in packages based on task and price, which is an interesting approach. For general tasks and administrative work, you can get a virtual assistant for 40 hours a week at $6.97 an hour. But if you want a virtual assistant for SEO work, that will cost you almost twice as much.

The only issue I see with the business model is this: Some companies are going to want a virtual assistant that can do a little SEO project here and there, perhaps some general tasks most of the time, and maybe even some accounting and financial tasks (another service area the company offers). With this model, you can’t really mix and match and still get the best price. You’d seemingly be forced to use a 10-hour plan for SEO, a five-hour plan for financial, etc. So you aren’t getting the cost-efficiencies of the 40-hour plan. Still, compared to the cost of a virtual assistant who lives and works in the U.S., these are good rates.

The next question, of course, is quality. Can you get the same quality of work from a virtual assistant in Southeast Asia as one who speaks English as a first language and understands the culture? VirtualAssistant.org has a pre-screening process and monitoring software that it says assures a professional, productive experience.

You may think virtual offices are a new trend. But the truth is the media has been covering this cost-effective alternative to traditional office space for more than a decade.

Indeed, I just ran across an article dated August 1997 – that’s nearly 13 years ago – that offers the headline, “Benefits of the ‘virtual office’.” The article first appeared in Rough Notes, a print and online magazine company that produces articles of interest to independent and captive insurance agents.

The article focuses on how the virtual office can be a tool to retain clients. In the article, the author chronicled the experience of an insurance agency owner who was grateful for virtual office technology because it helped him avoid missing important calls from the road. The virtual office also improved his office efficiency. The insurance agency owner even noted how the virtual office could be used as a recruiting tool.

Of course, the story isn’t talking about a virtual office in the same sense that we think of many virtual office providers today, i.e. a telephone number, mail pick up, and a prestigious business address. But the story was hinting at the future of the virtual office industry and does a fine job of discussing virtual office systems that need to be put in place even if you leverage a Davinci Virtual or a Receptionist.org.

It’s interesting to see how the concept of virtual offices has evolved over the years. The benefits are all the same – and even greater today – but virtual office providers make it much easier for companies to tap into those advantages by laying the technological groundwork. In fact, today’s virtual offices are much more sophisticated than they were back in 1997 thanks to technology advances.

What will the virtual office look like in another 13 years?

Do you want to meet the last receptionist you’ll ever need to hire? Well, Receptionist.org believes that if you work with them, then you won’t have to worry about hiring and training another receptionist ever again.

Receptionist.com peddles live remote receptionist services. The company taps into advanced fiber optic technology to deliver virtual receptionist services to small-and mid-sized businesses. That means you don’t have to have a receptionist on site. Your calls can be answered and routed to wherever your offices are.

Here’s what you get with Receptionist.org:

• Live phone answering
• Live call screening and call forwarding
• Appointment schedule
• Customized greetings
• Flexible call routing
• Messaging taking
• Order taking
• Voicemail services

Receptionist.org promises the lowest prices in the industry. The company offers a free 30-day trial so you can try out the concept for yourself and decide it if provides value to your firm. If you aren’t sure you even want to go that far, the company will arrange to have one of its virtual remote receptionists call you so you can get an earful of how professional and friendly they are.

What’s it going to cost you? The company offers virtual receptionist services in Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum packages. The Bronze package offers 100 minutes for $109. The Platinum package offers 1,000 minutes for $849. There are also pricing options in between.

Even at the highest minute volume, you are still paying much less for a virtual receptionist than you would pay a full-time receptionist you hire – and you don’t have to worry the phones on sick days because Receptionist.org has back ups in place to make sure your phones are always answered.

We’ve looked at how several different organizations define the virtual office in previous columns – and we’re not quite done yet. It’s interesting to see the various definitions of a virtual office and even how the definition has evolved over time.

This week, we’re going to look at how the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Center for Coordination Science defines two terms in the virtual office world: virtual company and virtual office.

Virtual Company: A company that does not have a physical location. Rather, it is more like a collection of individuals that work from their home offices. (We may want to add the term “Virtual Team” to capture the essence of the companies like Reuters that create a team of people who are actually employed by other organizations but are brought together on a specific project.)

This is well stated and I found it interesting that MIT also calls out the virtual team. Virtual teams are more and more common as larger companies hire vendors as independent contractors to complete assignments. A virtual company may or may not use virtual offices, but companies that use virtual offices often have virtual teams at some level.

Virtual Office: The company has a physical location, but employees have no assigned offices. Employees may have lockers and “check out” a desk for the day, they may set up an “office” in their hotel, etc. This term is distinct from “Virtual Company” which refers to companies that have no one physical location at all, no collection of inventory that’s held by the company, etc.

This is halfway true as we understand it today. A company that has a physical location could use virtual offices for their employees. But in today’s virtual world, more often we see entrepreneurs using virtual offices so they can get a prestigious business address, a phone number and other services. Companies may also use virtual offices as a means of low-risk expansions into new markets. And large companies may use virtual office technologies for regional offices where there is only a handful of employees.

Need more proof that virtual office space is catching on? Look no further than this week’s Dallas Business Journal. Web reporter Kerri Panchuk penned an article entitled, “Is the virtual office the future? Regus report suggests so.”

The article talks about a Regus-sponsored survey that reveals employees more than ever desire workplaces that offer flexibility for them to be productive. Specifically, the survey found that 59 percent of participants said, “working fewer days in the office” would make a positive difference on staff retention.

“They are looking to be as close to home as possible,” Jeffrey Doughman, a regional vice president at Regus, told the Dallas Business Journal. “Youthful workers are looking for more work-life balance — that has been fairly consistent in the past four or five years.”

Why would Regus promote virtual office space when it has serviced office facilities all over the world? One reason is because virtual offices are the hottest trend in alternative workspaces nowadays and Regus knows it.

We’ve posted lots of different takes on what a virtual office is on A Better Virtual. You can find some of those links below. In a nutshell, a virtual office is a set of technologies and services that lets businesses work remotely.

A virtual office from Regus or Davinci Virtual gives you a prestigious business address, a telephone number, mail pick up, the ability to rent a conference room or a day office to meet clients and more for a fraction of the cost of a traditional office space.

With a down economy, more small companies are exploring the concept of virtual offices. In the Dallas Business Journal article, Doughman also noted that virtual offices aren’t just for entrepreneurs anymore. Companies that are downsizing or expanding into new markets can also benefit from the low cost and flexibility of a virtual office.

PBX+ is making waves in the virtual PBX market with free PBX service and hosted IVR solutions that target small and medium sized businesses. Available in 40 different countries, PBX+ offers a laundry list of features that could make it a compelling choice for your growing company.

On the numbers front, you can choose a toll free, local or vanity number. You can tap into number porting, Google Voice, third-party support from Vonage, Skype and others, and more. PBX+ offers unlimited extensions, sub-extension trees, announcement extensions and extension confirmation. If that’s not enough, you can also leverage a dozen different forwarding options, including call forwarding, follow-me, screen calls, call whisper and live call transfer.

Then there’s the greetings features. You can automatically schedule day and night greetings, weekday and weekend greetings, holiday greetings, text to speech greetings and so on. Need an auto attendant? PBX+ has you covered. You can use a virtual receptionist, select day, night, weekend, and holiday rules and more.

Of course, no virtual phone system would be complete without a plethora of voicemail options. PBX+ lets you play text or speech or audio files for your voicemails, receive voicemails to your specified e-mail address, get voicemail alerts on your pager, via your text message or e-mail and more. There’s also call recording, click 2 call, audio conferencing, call logs, eFax and the list goes on and on.

PBX+ has all the bases covered. Want even better news? It’s free. That’s right, you can get a free U.S. and UK number with 150 minutes of inbound calls and 50 minutes of outbound calls. Or, if you don’t want to share a number you can get a toll-free or dedicated number with unlimited inbound calls for only $19.99 a month. This could be a game changer in the virtual PBX market. Check it out for yourself and let us know how you like it.

If you ask 10 different people what a “virtual office” is, you might still get 10 different answers. Although virtual offices are gaining momentum in the world of entrepreneurs, the industry still needs to educate the market about what a virtual office is – and what a virtual office isn’t.

In our ongoing quest to offer accurate explanations of a virtual office, we turn to TheFreeLibrary.com for some additional insight. The Free Library is sort of a Wikipedia spin off, but it’s not an encyclopedia. It offers full-text versions of classic literary work, as well as periodicals from various industries. But it also offers user-generated content on topics – including the virtual office.

So what does The Free Library have to say about virtual offices?

“Unlike the typical working environment, virtual officing does not need a physical location. The employees who will work for you will be based on remote locations. Thanks to the advanced technology, the employers and their employees can share information and even have a good communication as well. This would help them work in a non-constrained environment, without too much supervision as well as stress. Therefore, you should only get people who are competitive, highly trained, and professional.

There are many things that can be used to define virtual office. An employer may opt to use mobile workers, telecenters, or even teleworkers to be a part of the team. But one of the most essential people that your virtual team could have is the person that would take the calls for you and your business. Whenever a potential partner or customer would call and became interested to deal with you, it would be the customer service representative who will be representing you.”

This describes the concept of virtual work more so than virtual offices. But it gives us yet another perspective on this growing trend and touches on the tools and technologies that make up virtual offices from providers like Davinci Virtual, Intelligent Office and Office General.

I came across an up and coming virtual phone system company this week called Grasshopper. The name intrigued me and so did the company’s messaging: Sound Professional & Stay Connected.

You might say Grasshopper is a virtual phone system designed by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. The company promises to empower entrepreneurs to succeed. They must be doing something right on the virtual phone system front. The company has been featured on CNN, Fox Business, and found its way on the Inc. 500 list, among other places.

Here’s how it works:

1. Pick a plan. The prices start at $29 a month and that gets you 500 minutes. The Grow program costs $49 a month for 2,000 minutes and the Max program gets you 10,000 minutes for $199 a month.
2. Pick a number for your business. You can pick an 800 number or a local number in any U.S. city.
3. Record your custom main greeting.
4. Add departments and employees.
5. Get calls instantly anywhere.
6. Get voicemails and faxes.

Features? Plenty of them. You can read your voicemail, get a true 800 number with live call transfer, conference calling, enhanced call reports and more. Grasshopper doesn’t hook you into long-term contracts. This is a month-to-month service that lets you upgrade as you grow. And there’s no risk. The service comes with a free 30-day money back guarantee. If you need help, they even offer 24/7 live U.S. support.

This is a pretty cool company with low-cost service and great marketing. Worth checking out.

I was surfing the Web when I found a blast from the past in the form of a Boston Globe article about virtual offices. The headline declared, “Virtual office is what you make it.”

That piqued my attention, so I read on with the understanding that the article is more than three years old at the time of this writing. In other words, the well-written article about virtual companies was written in the boom times, before the real estate market crashed and before the stock market followed suit.

Here’s an excerpt from the article, which chronicles the impending virtual office explosion that we are now witnessing:

“While everyone was watching for the telecommuting trend to explode, something else exploded right next to it: The virtual company. The business with no office to telecommute from. These companies give new opportunities to entrepreneurs to get started with no money down. But a virtual business also gives people the opportunity to create the personal life they want. ‘The future is likely to be the age of virtual businesses,’ writes Anita Campbell, founder of Small Business Trends. ‘Forget three guys in a garage — that was your father’s startup. Today it’s three people spread out across the country or even across continents, each in their home offices or back porches with laptops, mobile phones, and WiFi’.”

That captures one of the drivers of the virtual office pretty well – the distributed workforce. The article goes on to list four factors that were leading us to where we are today. Those factors include:

• Workers looking for more work-life balance.
• The rise of telecommuting.
• Technology that makes it inexpensive to telecommute.
• Virtual businesses that can be run on eBay or Amazon.com

It’s interesting to look back to 2006 and what reputable journalists were writing about virtual office space at that time. In a future post, I’m going to try to look back even further so we can see the incremental rise of virtual offices and what drove us to where we are today.