Virtual assistants offer off-site alternative 

An alternative to hiring an employee has been gaining popularity in the business world. Virtual assistants – independent professionals who do bookkeeping, marketing, Web design or any number of other tasks for companies from an offsite location – say their businesses have stayed strong and even grown in the down economy.

Virtual assistants list various advantages to hiring a VA over hiring a traditional employee. For one, VAs aren’t given fringe benefits. And they don’t require office space, electricity, a desk, a computer or any other physical capital. Also, a company only has to pay for the time the bookkeeper, consultant, editor, accountant, marketer, designer or other assistant is actually working – coffee breaks and busy work not included.
“The market for VAs, I believe, will remain strong if not grow during these times,” virtual assistant Kendall Gjevre of Coeur d’Alene-based All Digital Support said in an e-mail. “Hiring a VA is a less expensive option for a growing business owner who does not want or need the cost of a full-time employee.”
Lanel Taylor, a virtual assistant based in Hayden, said her business has stayed strong as the economy has declined.  
“To be honest I have not been affected at all by the recession. Actually, for me it’s been the opposite,” she said.
Taylor, who owns Taylored Office Solutions, recently signed a new client whose business had slowed down, and the business owner wanted her bookkeeping services to make sure finances were sound.
“At the same time, business has slowed down, so some companies do not want to hire full-time employees. … They need someone to outsource it to; they want to be able to just pay for the time that I work,” she said.
Taylor said one of the reasons her business has stayed strong is that she has a diverse client base (including real estate investors, other virtual assistants, construction companies, a doctor and a manufacturer). She said other virtual assistants who work solely in the real estate industry have felt the recession more.
Velma is a Boise-based virtual assistant that is even more virtual than other VAs – she’s a computer program. Ben Price, the president of NSN Solutions, which created Velma, said as the lending market has shrunk, so has the number of lenders that have stayed in business and require assisting. But he said marketing has become increasingly important, and Velma helps with that.
He said the idea for the program came about as its creators realized “the mortgage professionals that were successful were the ones that had an assistant.”
But the cost of an assistant who does mailings, remembers birthdays, keeps track of adjustable-rate mortgage dates, sends out newsletters and e-mail alerts and more can be high. Assistants can be about $30,000 a year, where Velma costs $50 a month.
“It’s a bit overreaching to say we’re replacing a human, but at the heart of it, that’s the basic concept,” Price said.
One Boise-based virtual assistance firm that has been growing is Easy Office, which caters its finance, accounting and bookkeeping services to small and medium-sized nonprofits. Alison Warner, the Connecticut-based vice president of financial services, said hiring virtual help requires some to overcome initial fears.
“Some people kind of want the person in the cube next to them because it’s what they know. I don’t know if ‘habit’ is the right word, but it’s familiarity,” she said.
Some are concerned about transferring classified information securely, though her firm has a secure system in place for transferring documents.
She said as companies become more familiar with the concept of virtual help, they see its benefits. And since Easy Office opened for business about six months ago, they’ve signed 19 clients – “amazing” growth, Warner said.

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