A Better Virtual – USA Virtual Offices

Davinci Virtual Office Solutions is one of those companies that is proving over and over again what a strong demand there is for virtual offices, virtual receptionists, virtual assistants and the like. The company just keeps expanding.

Davinci points to a single significant driver for the spike in demand for virtual office space: rapidly changing work patterns. What is driving those rapidly changing work patterns? As Davinci sees it, a challenging global economy. So while many other business models suffered through the economic downturn, virtual office providers like Davinci actually benefited.

Indeed, virtual offices are one of the fastest growing segments of the office industry. Instead of renting a traditional office space for hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month, a start-up can start up with a virtual office space for as little as $50 a month. This is an amazing value proposition.

“Demand for virtual services has been so strong since the beginning of 2011 that we have been forced to relocate to larger office ourselves so that we can bring in more staff to handle the volume of enquiries and continue to deliver what we’re known for, an exceptional and consistently high quality end customer experience,” says Steve Golding, Davinci’s UK General Manager.

Golding says he’s seeing a growing number of dynamic start-ups coming onto the scene, as well as changing work patters among larger organizations looking to deal with staff commuting problems in the face of rising fuel prices and train fares.

“Increased flexibility in working hours and locations are also being implemented by organizations worried about the implications of impending changes to legislation covering parental leave, where the temporary loss of key staff could have a major impact on small businesses,” Golding says.

Golding represents Davinci’s UK operations, but there is a similar story in the U.S. Davinci Virtual recently opened a new headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah to accommodate its growth stateside. In all, Davinci has more than 750 virtual office locations in its worldwide network.

If you want to know how virtual offices work, some vendors offer a free trial. Others offer a set-up fee that makes it prohibitive to try their service. So, again, be sure you understand all of the restrictions and contracts before you engage with a virtual office provider. All that said, virtual offices are a dream come true for many entrepreneurs because they can offer convenient services, a professional image and cost-savings that brick and mortar competitors can’t match.

You’ve heard of the cloud, but what about cloud virtual offices?

That’s the phrase Pacific Business Centers is working to turn into a virtual office industry buzzword. Pacific Business Centers is offering these so-called cloud virtual office services to companies large and small in cities like San Mateo.

So what is a cloud virtual office?

An on-demand office solution for mobile workers, telecommuters, home-based entrepreneurs—with a hosted model. Essentially, the services are delivered from the cloud.

“It is no surprise that our concept of virtual office productivity enhancements is meeting such enthusiastic response in large enterprises, but the economy is obviously giving our business an additional boost as lower cost coupled with maximum flexibility is exactly what businesses need in these very challenging times,” says Pacific Business Centers CEO Laurent Dhollande.

As Dhollande sees it, with office space costs rising it is hard for companies to justify the cost of having a high-priced office, especially when many employees can be just as productive from home. Virtual offices let companies maintain a presence throughout the country and still keep operating costs at a minimum.

Although shared office space is still popular and isn’t going away, the corporate world is more and more often turning to virtual office space to meet the officing needs of some workers. Virtual office space gives companies the best of both worlds, letting them rent conference rooms on demand if a physical meeting is needed.

At Pacific Business Centers, the average full-service virtual office space costs about $200 a month. By contrast, even a small office in an out of the way location will cost over $1,000 a month. When you rent a virtual office space from Pacific Business Centers, you get access to physical office space for client meetings in five California markets for one price.

While Australia avoided the worst of the global financial crisis, a string of interest rate increases has contributed to continued caution amongst businesses.

What’s more, historic floods and now a cyclone are adding stress to companies of all sizes.

For all these reasons and more, Gordon Executive Centre says many home offices and expanding businesses alike are turning to virtual offices in Sydney.

“A virtual office address with Gordon Executive Centre makes it easy to quickly create the impression that your business is well established in Sydney, without the commitment and expense of setting up and operating office space,” says Grant Mason, director of Gordon Executive Centre.

Here’s what you get with Gordon Executive Centre’s virtual office space: a premier business  address, mail forwarding services, packages signed for, couriers arranged and faxes e-mailed. You also have access to a boardroom or meeting room. Mason recommends businesses put their Sydney virtual office address and contact numbers on all business collateral, including e-mail signatures, Web sites, business cards, brochures, and letterhead.

“Potential customers often feel more comfortable and likely to contact a company knowing that a business is up and running in their area,” says Mason. “However, for interstate or international businesses it’s not always cost-effective to run separate regional offices.”

Gordon Executive Centre charges $10.40 a week (plus GST) for virtual offices in Sydney. That’s half the going rate for many serviced office providers in the Sydney Central Business District. Gordon also has suburban Sydney addresses and NSW Australia virtual offices at lower rates.

You’ve heard of Davinci Virtual. You’ve heard of Phone.com. But you may not have heard of eoffice2go. That’s because eoffice2go is a brand spanking new online portal that targets a different slice of the virtual office industry.

eoffice2go paves the way for businesses to share files and folders safely with online clients and staff. It’s sort of like Dropbox. I couldn’t try it out for myself because they haven’t flipped the sign up switch yet, but the screen shots are available and it appears similar to online file services that are already on the market with a few tabs like News, Weather and Social Networks that give eoffice2go its own twist.

“This is a massive step forward for businesses everywhere, especially those with workers who work remotely and who are sometimes therefore ‘let out of the loop’,” says Neville Langston, Managing Director of the software developers, Dreamscape Design. “This online portal provides businesses with a simplified alternative to what is already out there, which tends to be complex and can require hours of training. What makes eoffice2go so effective is that it can be integrated into your business simply and efficiently with minimum fuss.”

In a nutshell, eoffice2go gives you and your team members access to the latest project files, company news and important announcements no matter where they are or where they are going. This is a virtual office in the sense that it’s like a file drawer in a virtual world. The screen shots show a user-friendly interface that lets you upload and download documents.

From a security standpoint. eoffice2go makes big promises. Uploaded documents are instantly “locked” making sure they are secure and are reassuringly backed-up remotely. The site uses logins, safe SSL encryption and minimum password requirements. The company says your personal information is securely wrapped in “online bubble-wrap” and is protected securely 24/7.

Dreamscape Design is launching eoffice2go at the Airline & Aerospace MRO & Operations IT Conference in Singapore on the 26th & 27th October 2010.

I read an interesting article in Forbes magazine today. The title: “How Virtual Assistants Have Evolved.” The author: David F. Carr, Forbes’ columnist on technology for small to midsize businesses.

You’ve really got to check out this article on the evolution of virtual office assistants. He talks about how he got the revelation that a virtual assistant can be “more than an Internet-enabled secretary.” He gives strong examples of virtual assistants who add real value to their clients. And he specifically points to companies such as A Virtual Assistant 4 You and Daily Administration.

“As a category in the labor market, VAs seem to have emerged in just the last few years, with the rise of the Internet and the proliferation of freelancing. But essentially they’re just offsite administrative contractors,” Carr Writes. “Although there are all sorts of Internet collaboration applications VAs can use with their clients, often the work gets done over e-mail and an occasional phone call.”

Carr also talks to people who have actually used virtual assistants to get their insights. And guess what? There’s no virtual assistant horror stories in the article. I’ll admit. I’ve had my fair share of virtual assistant horror stories. That’s why it’s so important to vet your virtual assistant, hire a company that vets them for you.

Companies that employ large numbers of virtual assistants with various specialties are emerging as popular choices for some entrepreneurs because it gives them the flexibility to tap into more than one skill set. For example, you may need a virtual assistant who can design newsletters, check e-mail, set appointments and handle social media efforts. But you might not find one person who excels in all those areas. Team work makes the virtual assistant dream work.

It’s good to see publications like Forbes’ publishing articles about virtual assistants, virtual offices and other virtual technologies. It lends credibility to the concept—a concept that has earned credibility. Virtual assistants have definitely evolved over time and continue to be a valuable addition to the small business owner’s labor pool.

What do you get when you cross a white hot business trend with a poor economy and an innovative business model? A winning company called Davinci Virtual office solutions.

The business world is taking notice. In fact, Inc. magazine just announced its 29th annual Inc. 500 ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the country. Davinci Virtual, a leading provider of global turn-key virtual office solutions, ranks number 141 on the list. I suspect Davinci could climb even higher in next year’s list.

“We’re thrilled to have been named by Inc. magazine as one of the nation’s top 500 entrepreneurial companies. It represents tremendous validation of the consistent hard work, innovation and relentless commitment to customer service,” says Davinci Virtual’s CEO Bill Grodnik. “We’ve experienced continued significant growth over the past five years and we are on track to double revenues again this year.”

Davinci Virtual posted an amazing three-year revenue growth of 1,899.5%. The complete Inc. 500 list will be available in the September 2010 edition of Inc. Magazine. Davinci Virtual provides virtual office solutions to over 7,000 companies and entrepreneurs throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Central America, Asia and Australia.

“The 2010 Inc. 500|5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2006 through 2009. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by June 30, 2006,” writes Jim Melloan as he explains the methodology behind the Inc. 500. “Additionally, they had to be based in the United States, privately held, for profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2009.”

Davinci Virtual provides turnkey virtual communications and virtual office solutions. Davinci’s virtual offices and services include local or toll-free telephone and fax numbers, digital voicemail, electronic fax, email, online command center, unified messaging, voice and video conferencing, voicemail to email, fax to email, professional live virtual receptionist services, virtual office assistance, live call answering, screening and forwarding, find me, follow me, surveys, live web chat, outbound calling, customer service, appointment scheduling, order taking, and much more.

“It is great to see Inc. magazine recognizing our company,” says Martin Senn, COO of Davinci Virtual. “We continue to launch new services, exceed our milestones and expand our presence. This award is a great tribute to our hardworking staff.”

Listen up Garden City, New York. Your virtual office world just expanded—all over the world. That’s because two leaders in their respective industries have just inked a partnership that will give you freedom to travel from city to city without skipping a business beat.

Champion Office Suites announced it entered into an affiliation agreement with Davinci Virtual. Davinci Virtual is the leading virtual office provider, with more than 750 locations around the world. And Champion Office Suites clients can now freely roam from Davinci virtual office location to Davinci virtual office location, using virtual office services, day offices and conference rooms.

Davinci Virtual clients also get something out of the deal: the opportunity to use Champion Office Suites’ facilities in Garden City, New York. This gives Davinci Virtual two different Garden City locations. The other one is at Garden City Office Suites at 1225 Franklin Avenue. Davinci Virtual customers now have one more option in Garden, while Champion’s clients have hundreds of new options around the world.

“This is a great opportunity for my clients,” says Roger Kahn, owner/founder of Champion Office Suites, formerly an Intelligent Offices franchise. “Now I can offer my clients the ease and convenience of quality offices and conference rooms on an hourly basis all over the world. Business travel just became easier and more profitable for Champion Office Suites’ client base.”

According to Kahn, the deal is already bearing fruit for both Champion Office Suites and Davinci Virtual. He points to an out-of-town company needed an office in Garden City for a meeting. That client rented the office space from Champion Office Suites. Davinci Virtual has also benefited, Kahn says, from a client who was thrilled that she could use Champion in Garden City while her partner in Cincinnati could use an affiliated facility hundreds of miles away.

This deal is an example of how Davinci Virtual continues to build out its network: one serviced office operator at a time. Davinci Virtual doesn’t limit itself to executive office suite partners that have multiple facilities, but embraces high-quality single-facility operators as way to expand its coverage all over the world.

I’ve taken a much too long hiatus from my weekly virtual office wrap up, partially from laziness, partially from focusing on other things and partially from trying and failing to find interesting things to write about. It drives me crazy that half the google alerts for “virtual office” are spam blogs and article writing sites. Hopefully, A Better Virtual will start showing on Google’s alerts consistently to bring some high quality, original articles to the alerts.

First, in case you haven’t checked out Office Pioneer, you should go take a look. They’ve got a nice take of the executive suite version of the virtual office model, with the added virtual accounting services. I’m sure it will take them a while to get some traction, as it does most new entities, but I believe they’re in it for the long haul.

If you’re looking for a virtual PBX, there are a number of good comparison sites. All of them are affiliates, so they’re making money if you actually end up buying from the PBX they refer. But you can trust them to a certain degree because all of the PBX options will typically be affiliates so they’re not necessarily trying to push one over the others. Here are a few:

• http://www.virtualphonesystemreviews.com/
• http://www.pbxcompare.com/

Cloud Virtual Offices is a new site in the virtual office market. It’s a company that’s an affiliate of the highly regarded Pacific Business Centers group. The site is nice looking and quite comprehensive. I’ve been watching it over time and they’ve really done a nice job of making improvements. The business behind it is solid, so if you’re a company looking for a virtual office, and especially if you’re in the Bay area, definitely give them a call. Check them out on Twitter and on their blog.

Nothing like a prosperous customer to make you look good. RingCentral is putting Profit Sense Innovations, a small business development firm—and one of its customers—in the spotlight.

As RingCentral tells the story, Profit Sense Innovations relies on a distributed workforce of nearly 30 people to offer services to its business customers from coast to coast—and that distributed workforce relies on the telephone to provide those services.

Profit Sense Innovations uses RingCentral Office as the backbone of its communications system. The cloud-based virtual PBX system lets the company scale up or down as needed as it expands or contracts its staff. But Profit Sense Innovations isn’t contracting by any means. With so many new business start-ups, the company is growing.

“Because most of our business is done on the telephone, communications is essential to our business. Poor quality communication directly impacts our revenues,” says Jerry Khemraj, owner of Profit Sense Innovations. “With RingCentral Office, we never have to watch the meter and we have so many features that surpass what you would expect from a Fortune 500 phone system. The small business phone system is easy to set up and use, no technical wizardry required, and we can plug the phone in wherever we are and be in business.”

What are those features you would expect from a Fortune 500 phone system? One of them is the ability to place calls from any phone using the office number ID. Another is unlimited nationwide calling and faxing. RingCentral Office also offers end-to-end call handling control.  You can use RingCentral IP phones or your existing phones and fax machines. Customers never get a busy signal because RingCentral answers all calls and faxes. You also get multiple local and toll-free numbers. The list of features in this virtual PBX system goes on and one.

Profit Sense Innovations couldn’t use a legacy on-premise office phone system if it wanted to. Not because of the cost, even though it is much more costly than the virtual PBX system the company uses today. But rather because the legacy on-premise phone system couldn’t deal with multiple locations effectively. RingCentral specializes is virtual PBX systems for the distributed workforce.

“Our clients are able to call a single number and RingCentral Office can connect them with any staff member, independent of where they are located, and even to their mobile phones. This enables us to provide a professional, consistent service no matter where the call is placed or answered,” says Khemraj. “In addition, as our firm grows, I can instantly add employee extensions without any technical help. RingCentral Office makes running a distributed business so much easier—I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”

I wrote yesterday about Virtual PBX and how one of its customers, Genoa Business Forms, is lowering costs and increasing productivity by using the service.

Now, Virtual PBX is working to make cost savings even greater with its latest offering: free conferencing on all its service plans. With Virtual PBX’s audio conferencing service you can launch a conference call at any time—at no extra cost.

“We’re pleased to offer our customers this feature at no cost,” said Greg Brashier, COO of Virtual PBX. “In today’s economy, free services can be a big help and, together with the low cost of our service plans, all our clients get a lot of PBX power for a very low price.”

Here’s what’s cool: When you sign up for Virtual PBX, each extension in the system has its own private conference room that employees can use any time they need. That does away with the annoyance of shared conference lines where calls run over and the next group of meeting attendance interrupts the last group.

With Virtual PBX’s free conference call rooms, you don’t have to log into an online service to book a time to hold your conference call. You don’t have to send out PIN numbers to people you have invited to attend your conference either. However, you can decide to put password protection on your conference if you feel the need to secure the line. You can even monitor the activity of each conference so you can see how many people are on the call, who they are by caller ID, when they called in and if they dropped out.

Even if you only hold conference calls occasionally, being able to host the call can make a good impression on your clients. Since it doesn’t cost you anything, you can have that tool on hand as part of your Virtual PBX account for as little as $10 month.

“Virtual PBX gives my clients that ‘big company feel’ even though all extensions ring to a handful of employees at home in their pajamas!” says Andy Potter, founder of Hand it to Mom. “The conference call bridge further extends the mirage that our company is huge and has an IT department—we even have a conference bridge!”