The business of virtual offices It is a convenient and attractive solution for those who want to have a variety of services at their disposal without investing a penny in their own infrastructure. The strategy ? It’s called: shared resources.
What is a virtual office.
The fundamental concept of virtual offices is to offer your clients work spaces of different sizes and equipped with all the minimum and functional services of any office. Ideal for beginning entrepreneurs, executives who are passing through the city or for temporary uses.
The special feature is that the resources are fully shared, with the advantage that the client does not have to invest in equipment and furniture or cover the costs of salaries and services, but instead pays a single monthly rent for the space and services it uses.
What services are offered in a virtual office
There is a range of services that can be offered, from the basic ones with the highest demand to some specialized services such as market research, tele-marketing and others.
- Rent of spaces for work offices. Sizes range from small 10 square meters to large 50 m2 offices.
- Telephone line (s). Optionally, the office can have one or two exclusive or shared telephone lines with the possibility of making international calls.
- Secretary. It performs functions for several tenants such as receiving calls, taking messages, sending and receiving faxes, coordinating messaging errands, writing documents, attending visitors, etc.
- Fax service. This service is regularly offered shared and centralized in the reception area.
- Messenger service. Function carried out by a courier that attends to the requirements of the different tenants.
- Session room or room for events. These rooms are usually shared spaces that tenants can use upon request and schedule as many times as they need, obviously at an additional cost.
- Internet. This is a shared service that can be offered to offices that request it.
- Audiovisual equipment rental such as gunships, laptops, audio systems, etc.
- Financial assistance services how to receive money transfers
- Digital services: lifting of text, photocopies, scanning and digitization of documents.
- Other professional assistance such as accounting, legal, etc.
In short, the variety of services that can be offered make this a very versatile business.
How to start the business
First of all, we need to consider the infrastructure to offer the services to your clients.
- It is recommended to rent a large house in an executive area, which is where you will mainly find demand for this service.
- The rooms should be adapted to function as offices of different sizes with elegant decorations and carpets.
- You can install a wireless internet system to be able to offer the service easily at any point in your virtual center.
- Managed telephone line connections should be installed from a central office so that one or more lines can be easily assigned to offices when required.
- A central reception area with a waiting room should be accommodated.
- The staff to be hired is basically a secretary, a messenger and cleaning staff for the regular maintenance of the spaces.
- Depending on the project, you should consider the possibility of an administrator or it is yourself who performs this very important function for the optimal operation of the place and that the services will be offered with agility and promptness.
- Parking area. Extremely important and can represent an ideal complement to the business, remember that you can offer one or two parking spaces included in the contract to your tenants but the additional parking spaces are charged separately.
- Cafeteria (optional)
From the investment
Accurately measuring investment is not simple because there are too many variables related to assembly, from the size of the area to be rented, the quality of the infrastructure and furniture, to the salaries that vary from one country to another.
What I recommend as in any business is the elaboration of a detailed plan that includes the scope of your project and that allows you to determine in detail the amount of the initial investment and monthly costs.
Of course, once the costs have been determined, you can estimate the prices of your services and your profits in order to measure the project profitability.
Keys to the business
As in any business, there are fundamental factors that must be taken care of, but there are others that are very important due to the type and level of client that is handled, for example:
- Careful organization of events
- Efficiency in secretarial and messaging functions
- Functionality and availability of computer and audiovisual equipment
- Make payments for services on time to avoid cuts
- Quality and cleanliness of the facilities
- Adequate administration
- Excellent image and presentation
As you can see, this is a interesting business which can be an ideal option, especially in times when rents for formal and exclusive offices are very high. Successes!
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