I found this interesting article in my daily Google Alerts as it mentions virtual assistants and echoes my previous blog post about the importance of Virtual Assistants during an economic downturn.

Today I purchased this book - Becoming an Online Business Manager - as recommended in Erin Blaskie’s Facebook blog. It was a timely purchase as I’ve already been thinking about the direction I want to take my business in next year. An Online Business Manager actually aligns with the thoughts I have for Net Secretary and its future direction so I am eagerly looking forward to receiving this book and absorbing the information within. Net Secretary has transitioned from a Virtual Assistant business to more of an online management business, where VAs are provided for clients to help manage their business and myself as the Online Business Manager overseeing the performance of the tasks. I am very excited about this new phase in my business and I look forward to sharing more of my discoveries.

Firstly, apologies for not writing in this blog for most of June and all of July. I have experienced a large increase in workload which has been great for Net Secretary but has meant that I am time poorer than usual. That said, I need to organize my time a little better so that I don’t neglect my blog.

I happened upon the above website today and have left a comment. It is a common question I get asked by potential clients - what tasks can I outsource to a Virtual Assistant? My advice is to write down all the tasks you do daily, weekly, monthly etc and perhaps all the things that you would LIKE  to do. Then go through the list and circle those items that you hate to do/don’t make you money/involve working in the business, not on the business/tasks that you don’t know how to do or don’t do well. These are the items that you should be outsourcing to a Virtual Assistant.

Outsourcing these tasks to a Virtual Assistant will free up your time immensely to allow you to concentrate on building your business and doing those things that you are an expert in, not things that take your time away from your business.

Virtual Assistants specialize in different areas so it may be that you require more than one assistant for different tasks (i.e. a VA skilled in websites for updating your website and another VA for your document formatting). Or you can have one VA be a one-stop shop and allow them to source a web skilled VA and manage the workflow on your behalf.

These certifications are helpful for one’s business in that they are an internationally recognised standard for expert status in the world’s most popular office productivity software. It’s all well and good to say "Yes I’m an expert in Word" but until you actually have that certificate, it can be difficult to substantiate that claim. Certification adds credibility and authenticity to one’s claims of expert status in these areas and I think it is something that is going to be great for Net Secretary and good for clients in the long run also.

I do wish my VA friend all the best with her future endeavours (she has not yet told me what she will be doing - its all very secretive!) and I am sure she will do exceptionally well in whatever field she chooses to pursue.

One tool which I am trialling is Airset.  This collaboration tool is currently free and so far it looks like it has everything I need. I can log messages to my team there, upload files and documents we are working on, add contact details of clients, and other features which I haven’t yet fully explored. All of these features are for the eyes of my team only and are in a secure environment that is password protected and encrypted.

I’m not at the stage where I need a portal for clients to login also but this may be something I look at down the track. For now, I think Airset will work well for Net Secretary’s team and enable us to be that little bit more efficient.

So I duly called Dell to see what they could do and to my surprise, I was told I only had the hardware warranty, not the software warranty. So $82 later, I now have the 12 month software warranty helpdesk support. This was something I omitted to look at when I purchased my new PC, perhaps arrogantly thinking I could handle any issues myself. It is a timely reminder that small business should have a software support plan in place, whether it be your partner who is an IT expert, a reliable accessible friend or family member who is expert in IT issues or a paid for helpdesk service, of which there are many around.

Dell were extremely helpful when I previously had issues with my PC not connecting to the Internet and dropping out. They fixed it remotely from Malaysia or wherever they are and because I purchased my system from them, they have all my details on file and I feel confident they can provide me with the support I require (hopefully infrequently!). Virtual Helpdesk Assistants helping a Virtual Assistant!

Now I just have to get around to calling them back to get this darn Outlook problem fixed …