Virtual Assistants (VA) exist for so many years around the world and, although there are some also in our country, I believe that their clients are still more often foreigners than domestic entrepreneurs. Is it time to change that too?
In recent years, and especially since we were ‘hit’ by this global pandemic that turned our lives upside down overnight, the need for online business and virtual collaboration has become a necessity and not a matter of choice. In a short span of time, we’ve witnessed the emergence of a large number of web shops and even of small agricultural producers who tried to reach their customers through new channels like Facebook. I believe we can now say that, in Croatia, we have finally adopted this global trend of running businesses online because, it seems, it can guarantee us to be our safest source of income for the time beeing.
Personally, although I’ve been working almost exclusively ‘online’ for a couple of years now, I did not identify myself with the term ‘virtual assistant’ until recently. I thought that the name was more appropriate for someone who deals with digital marketing, social media networks and similar. And indeed, virtual assistants are predominantly ‘masters of the web craft’, but to be fair, nowadays even with our own accountants we communicate more often ‘virtually’ (via email and mobile phone) than in person.
Therefore, as a start of my blog, I thought it could be a good idea to write a text on this topic.
Today, many entrepreneurs (solopreneurs and start-up companies) are wondering whether hiring a virtual assistant is the right solution for them or not. So, here I’ll mention just a couple of benefits that a collaboration with a virtual assistant can offer in terms of finances, flexibility and time.
From a financial point of view, this can certainly be a good decision because a VA costs less than hiring someone to work as an office secretary or an administrator, for example. This is because they work with their own resources and within their own spaces.
It’s a good decision also in terms of flexibility because you can arrange the same services (except for a coffee) on a smaller scale (per project or per hour). In other words, you can adjust it to your current workload.
Furthermore, this is always a good decision to hire a VA if you want to focus more on growing and developing your business rather than dealing with tedious administrative tasks that we can’t avoid even now when anti-epidemic measures have forced us to work from home or from displaced offices.
So, the real question is not whether it is worthwhile for a modern entrepreneur to hire a virtual assistant or not, the real question is what kind of virtual assistant do you need or for what kind of (digital) tasks.
Since the recent exponential growth of digital and virtual jobs, this trend has also morphed into new forms and thus indeed changed the way we will run our businesses in the future. Today’s online presence, besides requiring some basic digital skills, requires also a regular effort and extra time in order to survive in the virtual world on the long run and, ultimately, reap its rewards. Moreover, since the business has moved to virtual offices and web shops, online team coordination and virtual communication with customers have been raised to a higher level that requires also greater resourcefulness in the digital world.
Today in Croatia there are more virtual assistants than it is seemingly visible. There are different types of virtual assistants and they have a wide range of skills. It’s true that they are mainly involved with web administration and digital marketing, but they are active also in many other services, such as translation or project management. There are also personal virtual assistants and, no, I don’t mean like ˝Siri˝ or ˝Alexa˝, but as real persons.
Therefore, the most important thing is to have a clear idea of what kind of tasks do you want to delegate to a virtual assistant and then look for ones that offer that kind of support.
And if you are an entrepreneur, start-up company, investor or institution and do business in Croatia or in the Western Balkans and if by any chance you need someone who runs a virtual office, offer coordination and project management support or you need a translation, Bright Code is here for you. Feel free to send me a message via the contact form!
VIRTUAL ASSISTANT
for national and foreign
entrepreneurs and investors
in Croatia and in the Western Balkans
