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The Big Value of Outsourcing Work
Sometimes, it isn’t always the most practical route to use in-house employees to complete certain tasks as a business. As time goes on, more and more business owners are realizing just how easy and accessible outsourcing has become in the modern age.
At its core, outsourcing is a relatively straightforward concept: A company will hire the services of workers outside their own company to complete specific tasks or projects. However, maybe you’re unsure how businesses can actually benefit from this method, compared to working with their own employees to get all their work completed. Wouldn’t outsourcing be the less convenient option? Well, much of the time, that’s actually quite far from the case.
There are many common reasons why a business entity will opt to outsource work, even if it’s only to complete small, specific tasks. A few of those reasons are as follows:
Outsourcing Can Help Reduce Costs and Save Money
This is true whether we’re talking about a major corporation or a small business. In any case, if a company is hoping to control operating costs, delegating certain tasks to contracted workers is one of the most effective moves that they can make.
If you’re comparing the cost of hiring a brand-new employee to hiring an outsourced worker, then it’s not really a surprise that the former is more expensive than the latter. Not only will a full-time employee generally be paid a larger salary, but you’ll also need to handle all the other expenses associated with hiring and training a new employee, including whatever benefits they receive.
In addition, with hiring a full-time employee, there’s typically going to be far more uncertainty surrounding the cost. If you decide to outsource the duty instead, the contract you create will make it much easier to predict what you’ll be paying to work with the individual in total. With a new employee, these factors are often more unpredictable and difficult to control.
Outsourcing Lets You Focus on Core Tasks
Much of the time, businesses will bring in outsourced workers to handle small (but very important) tasks, such as administrative duties. For a company to function at its peak, it’s essential that this work is taken care of and that it’s done efficiently and effectively.
For instance, most companies need someone to handle phone calls from customers and potential clients. If these calls aren’t handled, then there could be dire consequences for the business — maybe frequent unanswered phone calls will cause individuals to lose trust in the company, or customers could become frustrated that their questions or concerns aren’t being dealt with. Soon enough, those customers are likely to move along to your competitor, who might be more responsive to their customer base.
So, while it’s crucial that your business stays on top of phone calls, this can be a tedious duty to juggle alongside the core functions of your company — you’d be surprised just how much time and energy needs to be devoted to answering the phone, week by week. If you’re hoping to create more time to handle core duties, then it makes perfect sense to hire an outsourced worker to take care of certain administrative tasks.
Outsourcing Creates a Larger Pool of Talent
It’s possible for outsourced workers to be based anywhere across the world, regardless of where your business is located. So, not only does outsourcing allow you to find workers who possess skills outside your employees’ capabilities, but you’ll have an enormous global pool of talent to draw from. In fact, the pool of potential talent is practically endless if you decide to outsource work. This means that you can find someone who is truly the best person to tackle the job, rather than compromising by bringing in a lesser qualified staff member to handle a specialized task.
Outsourcing Allows Your Company to Share the Risk
By outsourcing, you’re effectively removing some of the risks from your own shoulders via bringing in contracted workers. If you hire outsourced workers from a contracting company, for example, responsibility for the projects you assign them to work on will be split between you and the other company.
Pain Points Commonly Faced by Small Businesses
Historically, there has been a bit of a misconception surrounding the type of business that can outsource work. Outsourcing isn’t a practice that’s exclusive to major corporations to lay off employees and cut costs. In reality, this isn’t what modern-day outsourcing tends to look like. Not only can outsourcing have a positive impact on a company’s current employees and the ease with which they can work, but also, outsourcing is entirely accessible to small business owners.
Ultimately, the reasons that a small business might choose to outsource work are similar to why a larger company might make the same move. More precisely, outsourcing tasks can make it far easier for small businesses to:
- Manage capital costs and stay away from large expenditures, which can be especially risky during the early stages of building a business. This could also help make your company more appealing to potential investors.
- Work with maximum efficiency, compared to if your small business was tackling everything itself. It isn’t difficult to become overloaded by the multitude of tasks involved in running a business, especially if you don’t have enough staff to handle everything.
- Spend less on labor costs. As we’ve touched upon, hiring and training employees can be expensive, and this can be especially difficult to afford if you’re running a small business.
- Put time and effort into the core duties of your business. It can be difficult to grow a small business if you’re stuck spending all your time on peripheral tasks, such as customer service. This could even cause entrepreneurs to lose time with their own loved ones or facetime with clients.
Is a Virtual Assistant or Virtual Professional What You Need?
One of the most popular ways businesses, large or small, choose to outsource work is through hiring virtual assistants. No matter the kinds of tasks or projects you’re hoping to outsource, chances are, you’ll be able to find a VA able to complete it — even if it’s a more specialized task, such as organizing and managing a PPC campaign or maximizing your company’s SEO.
However, to determine whether a virtual assistant or virtual professional is for you, it’s worth considering the following questions:
- What are the specific tasks you need help with? Do you have staff members who are currently qualified to handle these tasks? Do you have the time and resources to take care of them yourself?
- What does your current budget look like? Would outsourcing work to a virtual assistant allow your company to save money?
- Are you prioritizing long-term work relationships, or would you rather work with others on a temporary basis?
That being said, here are some other questions you should probably consider before you decide whether you’d like to hire a virtual assistant.
Do You Need Someone Who Speaks Spanish or Another Foreign Language?
Sometimes, businesses can benefit from taking on workers who are fluent in a language other than English, such as Spanish. This could make it considerably easier for you to form business relationships or garner customers who speak other languages or who reside in different countries across the world. Even within the U.S., many people speak Spanish, and you could be missing out on this market if your business can’t reach this demographic. And it’s entirely possible for that individual to be a VA rather than a full-time employee.
In fact, due to the larger talent pool of outsourced workers and virtual assistants, it’s often easier to find someone who’s qualified to perform a specific task, on top of being fluent in a particular language.
Do You Need Someone Within Your Time Zone?
Oftentimes, it’s easier to seamlessly collaborate with individuals within your own time zone. If this is what you’re looking for, then don’t give in to the false belief that a VA is off the table. Depending on where your virtual assistant is located, it’s completely possible to bring in someone in the same (or a similar) time zone.
Notably, this is one of the many reasons why it’s a great idea to hire a Latin American VA. Not only is it simple to find a Latin American virtual assistant in your time zone, but you’ll also receive other valuable perks, including:
- Latin American VAs typically have strong English skills.
- Latin American VAs come from a similar cultural background and typically have a similar work culture, minimizing the chance of cultural miscommunication.
The Different Types of Virtual Assistants
As we’ve already mentioned, there is far more than one type of virtual assistant out there. No matter the industry you’re a part of or the tasks you’re hoping to outsource, there’s a strong chance you’ll be able to find the virtual assistant for you.
Still, what are some common examples of virtual assistant services or types? Here’s just a few — many of which are available through Virtual Latinos.
Healthcare Virtual Assistants
f you’re a part of the healthcare industry, then you could likely benefit from hiring a VA of your own. Notably, healthcare virtual assistants are perhaps one of the best ways in which healthcare organizations can improve patient engagement in the long term.
With better patient engagement, it becomes easier for healthcare providers to improve patient care and health outcomes, all at a lower cost for the organization itself.
Healthcare VAs are capable of tackling a number of different duties, including:
- Managing insurance details
- Collecting demographic information
- Keeping track of patients’ health histories
- Virtual Scribes
- Medical Transcription
- Finance and cost-related tasks
- Organizing procurement details
- Record analysis
- Data mining
- IT-related tasks
- Managing human resources
Legal Virtual Assistants
It’s really no secret that Attorneys can accumulate an overwhelming amount of work, and sometimes, it just makes sense to hire outside workers. Running any kind of legal practice is complex, and lawyers can often benefit from hiring a legal virtual assistant to lend a hand.
If you’re focusing too much of your own time on peripheral tasks, then you’re not spending time on billable work. The less time a lawyer spends taking care of billable work, the less profitable their firm is going to be in the long run.
By hiring a legal VA, it becomes easier for firms to:
- Increase their efficiency
- Create a client-focused experience
- Rapidly scale-up
It’s possible for law firms to hire legal VAs to complete a variety of important tasks, including administrative work, customer service tasks (including managing client phone calls), coordinating deadlines and meetings, and more.
Marketing Virtual Assistants
No matter the industry you’re a part of, it’s possible to hire VAs to handle various marketing-related duties.
For instance, if you’re hoping to improve your company’s social media marketing strategy, it could be time to hire a VA. A marketing VA can create and manage various social media profiles for your business, as well as perform thorough research on content for your posts, build up and engage with your audience, measure analytics and performance, keep an eye on the social media presences of your competitors, and more. All of these duties can lead your social media marketing strategy to be far more effective.
Of course, this isn’t the only form of marketing a virtual assistant can take care of. Aside from social media marketing, you can also hire a virtual assistant to handle:
- Keyword research
- Email marketing
- Google Ads campaigns (both creation and promotion)
- Researching and discovering leads in your business’s domain
- Managing mail merges
Admin & Customer Support Virtual Assistants
Again, regardless of your industry, administrative tasks are going to be essential. In order to continue growing your business, however, it can be frustrating devoting several hours per day to administrative and customer support-related tasks. Naturally, this takes away time that could have been spent on core responsibilities.
Some of the many tasks you can hire an admin and customer support VA to do for you are:
- Handling scheduling
- Managing phone calls and emails
- Customer management and bookkeeping
- Helping you to remain up to date about happenings and development in your industry
- Creating a contact list
- Managing your calendar and arranging meetings
- Handling travel arrangements
- Formatting and managing important documents
Property Management & Real Estate Virtual Assistants
It’s becoming increasingly popular for real estate agents to hire their own VAs. Property management and real estate VAs can be hired to take care of:
- Data scraping of the real estate marketplace
- Listing ads on popular sites, such as Zillow or Craigslist
- Constructing morning reports using info from MLS
- Emailing potential renters to suggest appropriate listings
- Organizing your calendar, as well as meetings
- Following up with prospective buyers or renters
- Managing social media and email campaigns
- Writing articles and blog posts
- Managing a database
- Performing property research (and constructing a property report using that data)
- Following up with appraisers, inspectors, and others involved in the closing process
Other Types of Virtual Assistant Services
Aside from the examples listed above, it’s also possible to hire the following kinds of virtual assistants:
- Website management VAs
- Public relations VAs
- Research VAs
- Bookkeeping VAs
- E-Commerce VAs
- Tech Support VAs
- Affiliate management VAs
- Graphic design VAs
- Community management VAs
- Amazon selling VAs
- Lead generation & Outreach VAs
- Shopify VAs
- Video Editor VAs
- Sales VAs
- …and many more
The Top Virtual Assistant Companies, Across the World
If you’re currently in the market for a virtual assistant, here are some global companies worth turning to.
GetFriday (India)
More specifically, if you’re currently searching for a virtual assistant company based in India, consider GetFriday. Based in Bangalore, GetFriday offers companies a number of flexible payment plans, including pay-as-you-go, task-based, and hour allotments per month. GetFriday offers professionals that are qualified to work with many kinds of businesses, as well as with businesses in any timezone.
Virtual Staff Finder (Philippines)
Are you more interested in finding a virtual assistant from the Philippines? In that case, one of your best bets is going to be Virtual Staff Finder. This service has been in the VA game for over a decade, and offers a simple, five-step process to hiring a virtual assistant:
- Sign-up
- Sourcing
- Testing
- Interviewing qualified candidates
- Hiring your assistant
Virtual Staff Finder will lend a hand in crafting your job description, before finding three potential VA candidates to be interviewed. Then, you can select whoever you believe is most qualified for the job.
Onlinejobs.ph (Philippines)
One of the largest Filipino job boards that is only exclusively for remote online work opportunities. It was created in 2009 by Utah-based entrepreneur John Jonas as a way to connect North American business needs with an affordable Filipino workforce.
Virtual Latinos (Latin America)
Nevertheless, if your company is based in the United States or Canada, your best bet is going to be a Latin American virtual assistant service. Most notably, it’s time to turn to Virtual Latinos. All our VAs are highly qualified college graduates and pre-vetted before joining our community. We’re exclusive with the VAs we take onto our team, providing our clients with some of the strongest contenders available. Plus, the time to hire with Virtual Latinos is just seven to ten days — this is considerably faster than most other virtual assistant services. We offer the most personalized and customized virtual assistant service in the market.
How to Find the Virtual Assistant Company for You
To fully benefit from having a VA, it’s important that you assess your own needs and hire the best candidate for your business. Before hiring a VA or virtual assistant company, make sure to consider:
- What tasks are you looking to have a VA take care of?
- Are you looking for a VA to tackle ongoing tasks or a one-time project?
- Is it important that your VA is available during business hours, or are you open to providing flexible scheduling?
- Would you prefer that your VA is a native English speaker?
- Are you looking for a full-time worker? What about a dedicated resource?
- What does your budget look like?
Before hiring, make sure to do your homework on any potential company. This includes looking at reviews from prior clients to get a better sense of what to expect.
Are you looking for a virtual assistant company that can provide you with the best possible package? Consider the personalized and customized service of Virtual Latinos. We provide each of our clients with a free 45-minute consultation, allowing us to learn all about their challenges before we help them through the entire hiring process, start to finish. It’s our guarantee that, in the end, we’ll find the perfect virtual assistant for your business.
Virtual Latinos Has the Professional for You
Virtual Latinos is your go-to option for virtual assistants for just about any North American-based company. Each of our assistants is a fluent English speaker, making communication between you and your VA simple.
We offer VAs from all across Latin America, including Mexico, Costa Rica, Columbia, Argentina, and many other countries. You can visit the Virtual Latinos site for more information on the process of working with us, or to get started on hiring your very own Latin American virtual assistant.
