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Cloud Computing: A Paradigm Shift for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Cloud Computing has been generating a lot of buzz lately. The topic has been appearing more and more frequently in technology magazines, blogs, and big technology outfits like IBM, HP, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have all setup offerings to capitalize on the growing acceptance of Cloud based services. The term Cloud Computing does not refer to one particular service; rather it encompasses collection of offerings that provide customers with an option to rent these services as opposed to spending large amount of capital to buy them upfront. While this subscription or rent based model appeals to enterprises of all sizes, it’s the Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) that stand to benefit the most from this paradigm shift. With no startup capital required, the SMEs can quickly ramp up their computing capacity, try out new enterprise applications in areas such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Business Intelligence (BI), or experiment with renting entire software development platforms to build and host their own customized applications.

Flexible Infrastructure

Research shows that enterprises waste a significant percentage of their physical computing capacity. The initial planning often results in procurement of hardware to anticipate the future growth in usage which, more often than not, does not materialize. This disconnect between computing capacity and the actual requirement is not limited to larger organizations. SMEs also face a difficult choice of either procuring expensive dedicated hosting solutions or, if they cannot afford that, resorting to cheaper shared hosting solutions that give them little control of their hosting environment. Moreover, keeping their physical computing setup in sync with their changing business requirements is a constant challenge. In most cases, improving capacity meant moving to a more powerful machine with more memory and that required migrating all the running applications causing headache and downtime. Cloud Infrastructure Services provide an ideal solution where SMEs can sign up with little or no upfront costs and they are billed on how much computing power, memory, and data transfer they have consumed. Amazon Cloud Services (EC2) is an ideal starting point for SMEs looking to explore Cloud Computing. They have wide range of services that cater, or can cater to an entrepreneurial entity to large companies looking for hundreds of virtual servers.

Software as a Service

Cloud Computing encompasses more than just flexible Infrastructure services. The term also includes increasing number of enterprise applications that are hosted on the servers of Cloud Computing providers and then rented out to companies who use them as a service. The data generated by the users of these applications is also stored on the servers of the providers. While some critics question the wisdom of storing important business data on outside servers, the approach does have strong appeal to SMEs who do not have resources, both financial and human, to store data on in-house servers and secure it properly. SalesForce.com has been one of the biggest successes of this model. Their CRM software has tens of thousands of customers who access the service through internet and store their data on its servers. Through its Google Apps for Businesses, Google is targeting companies to host their emails, document creation and editing, and Calendars. Business Intelligence (BI) applications are also making their way to clouds making this important segment accessible to SMEs. It is widely expected that other software vendors, like SAP and Oracle, will come out with offerings that follow the same delivery paradigm and are targeted towards SMEs.

Software Development Platforms in Cloud Environment

Another segment of Cloud Computing provides entire development platforms that companies can rent and then build and deploy their custom applications in the cloud. Increasing number of Cloud Computing companies are providing virtual machine images that have some of the common development platforms installed and ready to use. Examples include LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) web starters, Java, Ruby, and Flex pre-build environments. IBM has also made its flagship WebSphere Application Server, which is popular for building Java enterprise applications and web services, available on the cloud. SMEs which previously could not afford this IBM product can now rent its usage and deploy custom applications that can host mission critical applications.

Cloud Computing offers substantial cost benefits to SMEs in terms of how they maximize return from their IT investment. But like any other business expense, the whole process of adapting to Cloud Computing needs careful planning and execution. SMEs can partner with reliable outsourcing providers who can guide these companies through the whole process of finding reputed Cloud Providers, picking the right subscription plan, and developing, deploying, and maintaining their business applications and infrastructure using these Cloud based services.

Posted in Technology Outsourcing | 5 Comments »

Some Powerful Online Tools: Best of all, most are FREE

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Now that we are past 2010 New Year celebrations and are approaching end of January, it is time to take a pause and ask an important question: am I using all the FREE tools to my advantage? If the answer is no, or maybe, then read on. In this short blog, we discuss some of the simple, yet powerful tools, that when used properly can give you a competitive edge. Let’s start with a few that have proven their worth.

LiveZilla Live Chat Support

If you are running an online business and do not have live chat support then you are losing an important channel to connect to potential customer and, thus, are losing sales. LiveZilla live chat support tool offers great value – its FREE! It is a solid tool with good number of options and, best of all, it’s an open source application that can be easily customized and branded to fit your requirements. Research consistently shows that if the visitor has a question when visiting your website then he or she is likely to ask it to your chat support – assuming of course that it is available. Bottom line, chat support increases your probability of generating sales. Some technical expertise is required to install and configure the tool but its well worth the effort.

Google Analytics

The saying goes something like this – “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” For an online business, the ability to gather and analyze relevant sales and marketing data, is a must. Google Analytics enables you to understand website traffic sources, keywords used, and a whole range of data about your website visitors. The tool is FREE and provides intermediate level analytical information that can enable you to fine tune your marketing efforts. The cost to you is only few hours of setup time.

Skype

Skype is probably one of the best voice calling tool available in the online market place. Skype-to-Skype calls are FREE and now include video calls as well. With a large user following, this tool offers a great way for businesses and individuals to connect with each other and to potential customers. Skype also advertises reasonably priced plans which allow the users to place calls to land lines and offers other great features such as voice mails, ability to send SMS messages, and Call Forwarding. Skype is also available on popular Smart phones which is very useful for cost conscious businesses and users.

Twiddla

There are quite a few popular desktop sharing and meeting tools such as WebEx.com, GoToMeeting.com, and LogMeIn.com to name a few. Another interesting tool that is very useful for one time use or single session is Twiddla. Say you are working with a vendor to update your website and you quickly need to point out a required change. Simply go to Twiddla, generate a meeting session (with one click), and pull up your website. Send the meeting link to the other party and now both parties can mark up the site together. Once the meeting is done you can save the edited file. This tool is very useful for one-off online meetings. And best of all, its FREE.

Google Docs

This is another powerful and FREE tool available from Google. Lets say you do not have Microsoft Word installed on your PC. You receive a Word document from a potential client and need to edit it and send it back. You can go to Google Docs, upload the document, make the edits, save it as a Word document, and send it back to your client. This is very useful for SMEs who do not want to install Microsoft Office, for cost or other reasons, on some or all of their PCs. Google Docs does lot more than just editing of common document formats. Other benefits include ease of sharing and collaboration. For example, you can setup a spreadsheet and other individuals, who are authorized, can update that on a daily or weekly basis. The document can be saved in Excel, OpenOffice, or PDF format. All you need to access and start using Google Docs is a Gmail account.

Stixy Bulletin Board

This is a web-based bulletin board that can be shared with friends, family, and colleagues. On this board you can put widgets; a widget could be a note, task, appointment, photo, to-do item, or a document. There are no rules on how you can arrange your bulletin board. Its completely up to you. We found the tool interesting to use. However, this is a not a formal project management tool but a casual sharing platform. So far Stixyboards are FREE or at least we couldn’t find any pricing structure given.

Gliffy Diagram Creator

Gliffy is an online diagram creating software tool. You can draw up professional quality flow charts, diagrams, floor plans, technical drawings, and more. Moreover, you can collaborate and share diagrams with your team. The tool has a good size object library that should fulfill most, if not all, of your requirements. The basic version of the plan is FREE with certain limitations, but if creating diagrams is important to you then a single seat license for $5/month might be worth the cost.

IDrive

This is an online backup tool for your PC data. The key benefit is the ability to restore you data from anywhere. If you are an entrepreneur or a small business whose employees are on the move then this is definitely worth a look. The IDrive basic plan allows only 2 GB of FREE space but this should be enough to back up your important mission critical data. The tool has a number of features that allow you to pick and choose when and what data you want to back up on regular basis. Features include True Archiving/Sync, Continuous Data Protection, Mapped Drive Backup, Versioning, Timeline Restore, and many more. It also offers personal, family, and business plans. The paid plans are reasonably priced.

Disclaimer: Our endorsements are based on our experience in using the above tools. If you decide to use any of the above tools it is your responsibility to review its terms and conditions as Kaya Systems, its management, and affiliates will not be held responsible in any event since we have no control over any of these tools.

Posted in Technology Outsourcing | 17 Comments »

The world is flat: Even for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Thomas Friedman in his book, The World is Flat, describes how faster and more reliable internet connections spawned an era of flatness in which companies reached across the borders and started using vast manpower pool that became available to them. The big companies were the first to take advantage of this flatness. They had the scale, risk tolerance, economies of scale, and financial muscle to setup those global information supply chains that Thomas Friedman talked about in this book. The workflow software and processes brought together work done by people in different countries, streamlined it, and truly created a global knowledge supply chain – similar to global manufacturing supply chains that started getting setup decades ago.

This global integration of manpower into companies’ every day operations is not restricted to large organizations anymore. In this second phase of flat world, SMEs (Small and Midsize Enterprises) are getting in the act and starting to reap the same benefits that compelled global larger companies to take risk on this novel concept in late 90s. This was a predictable trend. In early 80s as personal computers were introduced, initially they were mainly used in the large organizations because of their cost. However, as they became cheaper, they became available for SMEs to own and improve their productivity. The business process innovations brought by this flat world have also tricked down to SMEs which are increasingly looking beyond their borders to collaborate and improve their operations.

One of the biggest reasons why SMEs are successfully taking advantage of this flat world is that in past few years, a new crop of smaller SME focused providers have come in the marketplace. Their services are specifically tailored to SMEs and they have kept their cost structure low and thus can offer services that are affordable to SMEs. The better known and bigger outsourcing providers have primarily targeted large Fortune 500 type companies and their engagements have involved hundreds, if not thousands, of employees of the outsourcing company forming a team to service the needs of a given client. This structure does not map to the requirements of SMEs which may range any where from a single person to a team of few dozen people. The flexible outsourcing plans, that these new smaller providers offer, have targeted the sweet spot of SME outsourcing.

While the larger outsourcing providers have a bigger proportion of their workforce in cheaper locales, they still have priced themselves out of the SME outsourcing market. SMEs are very price conscious and the service cost has to be attractive enough for them to take the plunge. To keep themselves competitive for SMEs, these smaller outsourcing players, in some cases, have opened offices in other South Asian or African locations which are cheaper than India or Russia but still provide educated and well-trained workforce. The internet connectivity has vastly improved in these newer outsourcing locations and can support the activities of these companies.

The end result has been emergence of these smaller and more nimble outsourcing providers who have placed themselves well to target the under served SME outsourcing market. They have been continuously amassing experience working with SMEs in areas of Business Process Outsourcing and other more advanced areas such as Market

Research, Web 2.0 services, Virtual Assistance, Bookkeeping, and Equity and Financial Analysis. With these lower barriers to setup their own mini global information supply chains, the world has indeed become more flat for these SMEs.

Posted in Small & Medium Business | Comments Off on The world is flat: Even for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

Hiring Virtual Assistant Services: Making Relationship Work

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Large corporations, as early as late 80s, had started setting up offices or partnered up with local back office service providers in South and Far East Asia to take advantage of cheaper talent pool. These companies had the financial muscle to open offices, train employees, and adapt management techniques to fit the local environment. This option was not viable for Small-to-Mid size Enterprises (SMEs) for financial and economy of scale reasons. All this has changed with evolution in Virtual Assistant Services concept and the advancement in broadband internet access and remote connectivity tools. Virtual Assistant Virtual Assistant Services Providers now not only provide basic services but also web/desktop application development, business analysis, online marketing, and bookkeeping support to new a few.

So how do we differentiate this new crop of Virtual Assistant Services Providers from standard outsourcing firms? In my view, today’s successful Virtual Assistant Services Providers operate in a make-to-order environment with flexibility to accommodate the needs of a SME. Their flexibility and lower cost structure actually makes them attractive to any size business. The question then becomes how do you find a quality Virtual Assistant Services Provider and how should you engage the provider in a mutually beneficial relationship. While there is no silver bullet, the following seven points will improve your probability of finding and sustaining a good match.

Characteristics of Good Virtual Assistant Services Providers

First define what your needs are. Take some time to make a list of tasks using 80/20 rule; 20% of the tasks that take 80% of your time. How many of those tasks are repeatable; for example, regular content updating on your website or ad postings on a daily or weekly basis is a repeatable task. Once you have your list, then search online for providers that provide those services. Pick three to five Virtual Assistant Services Providers that have a solid website with testimonials section and provide a range of services. Google these providers to find out what good/bad information you can find. Read their testimonials, ask for references preferably from one of the clients in the testimonial list, and ask for work samples. Generally, you can expect responsive service if your requirements are at least 20hrs/week.

Expect Learning Curve

A common mistake made is not accounting for learning curve. No matter how experienced a Virtual Assistant Services Provider is and how much a client has utilized a Virtual Assistant in the past, it always takes some time to understand requirements and implement solutions. Clients that factor in the learning curve have the highest success rate. If you are going to test a Virtual Assistant Services Provider’s productivity against a specific benchmark then you must help the provider to perform at it best. In few extreme cases we came across, the client’s focus was on proving that Virtual Assistance arrangements do not create value and as a result, the relationship was more adversarial to begin with than a potential partnership. While virtual assistance many not work in all situations, the value it creates is well documented and beyond doubt. If you’ve your doubts about productivity, discuss those with your provider so an accurate assessment can be made.

Initial Settling Period

Once you have selected your Virtual Assistant Services Provider, the focus must be on building a process that suits your requirements and creates value. You must understand the variables involved. The most common variables are:

1. Time Zone Difference

By understanding the time zone difference, you can actually make it work to your advantage. If your Virtual Assistant Services Provider is located in South Asia and you are located on the American East Coast then most likely your provider is 10 to 11 hours ahead of you. If you are located in Sydney, Australia then you are most likely 4 to 5 hours ahead of your South Asian Service Provider. The main idea is that you find out what working hours overlap so you can communicate with your Virtual Assistant and clarify any issues.

2. Language and Cultural Difference

Your assigned Virtual Assistant most likely speaks and writes English well but the differences between South Asian English and wherever you are located do exist. Add cultural difference to that and it becomes all the more important that you clearly state the task/project, explain any underlying assumptions, and leave some time margin for your VA to ask questions.

Task/Project Management and Reporting

When you assign a task/project make sure you articulate the problem statement clearly. If there are any underlying assumptions make your assistant aware of those. The effort (hours) allowed for the task/project and the project delivery due date must be clearly communicated. Most Virtual Assistant Services Providers should have a basic project management tool that could be accessed via their website. It should, at the very least, convey the status of your task/project (%age complete) and authorized vs. consumed hours. Some providers will include other information as well, such as your plan related information, and payment status to name a few.

Bottom line, you must provide complete task/project information and your provider should have a mechanism to update you on the status without you having to ask for it.

Organizational Issues in employing Virtual Assistant Services

Any outsourcing of tasks/projects will be met with resistance unless those affected are involved and not threatened by it. Organizational dynamics must be carefully considered before any Virtual Assistant relationships are considered. There are numerous cases where the company management was excited about the possibilities but the employees were not on board, and as a result the collaborative benefits were not fully realized. Virtual Assistant Services Providers when employed to facilitate growth by increasing capacity, improving capability, and enhancing collaboration result in successful relationships; as opposed to, when seen as an exercise in work force reduction.

When employees understand and believe that resources freed up by Virtual Assistant collaboration can be redeployed for revenue generation activities hence improving the health of the company, the arrangement becomes a win-win situation.

Avoid Hasty Conclusions

If your Virtual Assistant misinterpreted the task and went in the wrong direction, that doesn’t mean that you have conclusive evidence that this type of relationship doesn’t work. This is actually part of learning for both you and the associate. Make sure you find out what caused the confusion and what needs to be done by you and the associate to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. If your Virtual Assistant continuously underperforms, then talk to your provider and most likely they will assign you another associate. Understand the difference between a good provider and the underperforming associate. Good Virtual Assistant Services Provider is what you should be interested in. Virtual Assistants will come and go.

While we all would love our assistant to hit the ground running, the reality is all relationships take time to develop and Virtual Assistance is no different.

Sustaining and Growing the Relationship

This is as important as finding a good Virtual Assistant Services Provider. Open communication in a closed feedback loop will ensure consistent performance. Mistakes will happen and lessons must be learned. However, the key is how your provider reacts to rectify the situation. Openly communicate your concerns and suggest ways to help the situation. This will signal to your Service Provider that you are a partner and you want to help in straightening things out.

The term virtual in “Virtual Assistant” is somewhat misleading; these are real people working in a real office with all the issues of any business. Sometimes clients expect the assistant to be available at the drop of a hat and that is not a realistic expectation. If you have subscribed to a 10hr/week plan then taper your expectations accordingly. Part-time support means your assigned Virtual Assistant is supporting multiple clients, if you need dedicate support then subscribing to a full-time plan is required.

Conclusion

Utilizing Virtual Assistants is a great way for SMEs to improve capacity and capability, and reduce cost at the same time. All supporting activities of your business are candidates for back office processing. By tapping into a Virtual Assistant relationship clients also get access to a number of other skills. You may be able to get bookkeeping support, website maintenance/development, invoicing, research etc. all through your assigned Virtual Assistant. And this is what makes a “Virtual Assistant” extremely valuable.

Posted in Virtual Assistant Services | Comments Off on Hiring Virtual Assistant Services: Making Relationship Work

My 4-Hour Work Week Experiment

Friday, September 18th, 2009

My 4-Hour Work Week Experiment
By: Andrew Brown

In a recent article, I touched on Timothy Ferriss’ book The 4 Hour Work Week. While I can’t say I agreed with the practicality of all of his suggestions, I did find some of his ideas very interesting and figured I’d try some on for size. Namely, I wanted to find my very own Virtual Assistant.

Just what is a Virtual Assistant? Well, in simplest terms, they’re like a secretary – providing administrative / clerical support to a busy executive. They can do whatever any assistant can do as long as they don’t have to be physically present. So while you couldn’t have them pick up your dry cleaning, they’d be more than happy to research an upcoming presentation for you.

The Search Begins
Ferriss’ book mentions a couple resources – Brickwork, Your Man In India (YMII), & Elance to name a few. I chose a shot gun approach and made inquiries with all three. Evidently, I was not the first person follow in Mr. Ferriss’ footsteps. My initial requests for information from both Brickwork and YMII were met with requests for me to ‘please be patient due to a recent upsurge of customer inquiries.’

Elance was a different story altogether. I posted a job request and within a few hours started receiving bids on my project request.

I have to admit that I initially was biased towards Brickwork and YMII because both promised highly educated professionals in myriad areas of expertise. They also offered 800#s, 24 x 7 service, and skilled project management capabilities to source my tasks to a resource best suited for my needs.

I was drooling at the thought of being able to jot an email request at 9pm at night and then having a full report waiting for me in my inbox the next morning.

My expectation was that anyone I found on Elance would be hard pressed to match the infrastructure of one of the more established services.

But would that be the reality of the situation? Would the experiment be a success?

4 hour workweek by mr ferriss

First Contact
After about a week, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Satwik Joglekar of Brickwork. We had a 20 minute interview where he assessed my needs to ensure we had a good fit. I really liked Dr. Joglekar but my only concern was the difficulty we had communicating with each other. His accent was very thick and I had to keep asking him to repeat himself. This made me feel horrible.

Here’s this guy. He’s extremely well educated. He speaks multiple languages. I’m confident his IQ was 10X that of mine — I know, I know that’s probably not saying a lot. But the whole time I’m having to ask him to repeat himself because I just couldn’t make out what he was trying to say. Yeah, I guess that makes me the Ugly American expecting the world to meet my needs and communicate with me on my terms — but it is what it is and IT was painful.

That same week I was sent a description of services & contract agreement from yourmaninindia. My initial contact, Pushpa, said if I was agreeable to the terms I could sign document and I’d be assigned a VA (Virtual Assistant) within 3 weeks. That’s right — 3 weeks. I read the agreement and it was fairly benign and offered a trial period which would easily let me out of my commitment if I wasn’t happy. The documentation they provided was well thought out and I was anxious to get started, so I signed.

Elance. As I mentioned I received multiple bids within hours of me putting up my original post. Many, many were boiler plate responses but a number of them responded with intelligent & well thought out proposals. All in all, there were 14 bids which I was able to narrow down to 4-5.

So ummm what’s this going to cost?
Brickwork – assuming most of our communications would be written, I was very impressed with Brickwork. I really felt they could handle anything I could throw at them. They too had a bit of a lead time before they could assign someone to me. But I got the sense whoever it was would know their stuff. But it was going to cost me. Minimum to get started I had to be willing to pay $600 a month for 30 hours of work. Yikes. That was not the $4/hr. mentioned in Mr. Ferriss’ book.

YMII had a more reasonable entry fee. Prices started at $15 per hour but went down to $7 if I were willing to commit to 160 hours per month. I settled in on their $120 per month plan @ $12/hr.

Elance varied between $4 – $40 per hour. I had offers from US & Canadian firms which were on the high end but I did get the feeling communication skills would be worth it. In the end I settled on Kaya Systems @ $6.5/hr. I settled on them not because they were the lowest bidder, because they weren’t. I just felt they had put the most time & thought in responding to my request. They said what they were good at, what they weren’t suitable for, and they provided intelligent responses to any questions I asked.

My First Assignment
So after eliminating Brickwork just for budgetary concerns. I found myself with two VAs: Ashwin as assigned by YMII and Hassan of Kaya Systems.

I still had to wait a few weeks to get going with YMII so Hassan (Kaya Systems) & I got a head start on things.

Hassan Bokhari is actually based in Athens, Georgia. He founded the company with his brother Razi after getting his MBA in Finance & General Management at the University of Texas at Austin.

Kaya has a two step process. First, all tasks are managed by Hassan or Razi. They feel as Americans they’ll be able to quickly understand what the requirements are and set performance parameters for regular processes. The second step involves transferring the work to their colleagues in South Asia. This approach makes sense as they’re essentially acting as the communications bridge between their clients and their team.

Hassan & I were both on the same page. Delegation of tasks to a VA is an iterative process. My first goal was to get regular maintenance of the Small Business Guru Web site and email newsletter into someone else’s hands. This was a series of repeatable steps that if offloaded, would free up my time to focus more on what I do best — which is NOT managing a Web site.

We started off slow. The weekly management of the Web site and newsletter generally took me about 5-6 hours per week. I was able to divide the project into chunks of work that I could transfer to Hassan. I knew I wouldn’t be able to teach the whole process to him in one week and still get the newsletter out in time. So we broke it up in chunks and over a 3 week period we eventually got it to the point where Hassan was handling the whole thing from start to finish.

At first, the back and forth of this process doubled the lead times for stuff that I’d normally just pound out myself. But once Kaya ‘got it’ — it was AWESOME. Not only did I gain the 5-6 hours a week, I just don’t have to do something that I hated doing. I can relax and know they have it covered.

YMII’s Turn
By the time YMII was ready to take me on as a client, I was already sold on this whole Virtual Assistant idea. I was excited to try YMII because I figured with their infrastructure they’d be able to really take me to the next level. Unfortunately, that changed within the first week’s worth of assignments.

Based on what I read in their literature, I was expecting YMII to bring some bench depth with respect to research and analysis. The idea was forming in my mind that I could use Kaya for data entry type tasks and YMII for research and analysis.

I started by assigning a research project. I tried to set expectations for questions I wanted answered, how long the project should take, and what resources they might want to check out. Two days later I received a very thin report that apparently took 3 hours to put together. It failed to answer my questions and was little more than a one page document with a couple links to some Web sites.

By contrast, I tried assigning the same exact project to Kaya. What a difference.

Hassan first sent me an email with some questions he had on the task. He wanted to make very sure he understood my objectives before just jumping right in and eating up a bunch of hours. Then when he did deliver the report, it was a thing of beauty. It was packed with RELEVANT information. It answered all my questions. It had summaries of the pros & cons of each option presented. It was more than I hoped for and it only cost me $18.

Conclusion
For me, Kaya Systems ended up being the clear winner.

Perhaps if I had invested more time in coaching yourmaninindia, we could have eventually established a good working relationship. I still think YMII is probably an excellent company. If anything, I’m guessing they’re probably just a victim of their own success. I just got the impression they were struggling to keep up with an onslaught of new clients and thus were not able to provide the level of service they would have liked to.

Long & short, I’d say Kaya’s success stems from the high level of involvement by their principals. They offer a great service at a great price. They take the time to understand the expectations for each task before assigning them to some random associate.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kelly Andrew Brown of Small Business Guru provides Coaching, Inspiration and Practical Advice for Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs. Subscribe to the free, weekly newsletter at Kaya System Blog.

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Posted in 4 hour work week virtual assistant, tim ferriss outsourcing, tim ferriss virtual assistant, Virtual Assistant Services, virtual assistant tim ferriss | Comments Off on My 4-Hour Work Week Experiment

Virtual Assistance in Real Estate Business

Friday, September 11th, 2009

According to the National Association of Realtors [(NAR), www.realtor.org], “the housing sector contributed $2.1 trillion to the national economy in 2007, accounting for 15 percent of overall economic activity”. The association further states that 81% of agents/brokers buy or sell homes by using the internet; furthermore, 73% of buyers drive by/view a home they came across on the internet. It can safely be concluded that real estate business is information driven and one’s ability to find the right information at the right time and matching it up with the right buyer can pay huge dividends.

In a large sector such as housing, extracting information from this dynamic data can be a daunting task, but those who are able to successfully process this information hold the competitive advantage. Services of a virtual assistant outsourcing firm can help you gain this competitive advantage. Some of these firms have developed competencies in supporting real estate related businesses. They can act as your one-stop-shop for developing and maintaining your web presence, managing your CRM, updating your MLS listing, contact management (GroupMail 5, www.topproduceronline.com etc..), running your ad and online marketing campaigns, and newsletter and flyer design. So how does the process works? When a property comes on the market the real estate firms gets to work by taking property snapshots and collecting information. That information is sent to the virtual assistant associate and s/he gets to work and performs the following tasks:

  • Conduct further research to locate parks, churches, etc. creating the external virtual tour and developing detailed property promotional package
  • Perform price comparison
  • Post property ads on different free/paid advertisement sites
  • Advertise via social media
  • Blog maintenance
  • Email marketing
  • Flyer and banner design (primarily for investment and commercial properties)

The other critical element is contact management. All the inquiries that are generated via the website, phone calls, and emails are collected in different categories that can be used for future relationship marketing. Also, clients are updated on a regular basis by generating property ad traffic report for them so they know how many people visited their property online.

The industry is dynamic and new tools, channels, and ideas are a regular feature. Your associate can help you scan those and recommend the ones that need serious consideration. Whether you need help in researching the referral system, or a software, or simply need material for your monthly blog, your VA is there to assist. They not only help reduce your workload but also help you stay ahead of the curve by advising you on the latest tools and ideas. The potential for virtual assist support is only limited by the bounds of your imagination. The opportunities are significant and applications are numerous!

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Posted in Virtual Assistant Services | 7 Comments »

Selecting a back office service provider – Things to consider

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Over the last few years, outsourcing of products & services has gained traction with Small & Medium Size Enterprises. As connectivity improved and bandwidth costs came down, outsourcing to low cost regions fast became a norm as apposed to an exception. These days SMEs are using back-end support in wide range of services from simple tasks such as data entry to writing complex business development plans to designing and developing advanced software systems. SMEs are reaping benefits in productivity gains, shorter turnaround times, and lower cost structures and are able to focus more on core business issues. Nonetheless, the task of finding the right provider that understands your business, communicates well, and most importantly responds promptly when things go wrong, is still daunting. Here are a few steps that can help you find the right provider.

Right Size Provider
If you represent a Small-to-Medium Enterprise (SME) then subscribing to a large back office service provider many not be a wise choice. While size has its benefits, a large provider will be more focused on big clients and if you only require one full-time associate, you will not be on his A or even B list. Mid size service providers are able to provide better value, service & flexibility.

Background
Thoroughly checking a provider’s background, management profile, and customer testimonials are all part of due diligence process. Time spent doing research upfront is time well spent.

Start Small
Run a pilot program with your selected provider before any long-term commitment is made. And while different situations may demand different durations, we strongly recommend that the pilot should be at least two months in duration. The goal is to test the provider on:

1. Overall task(s) quality (consistency, timely delivery etc…)
2. Response time in case of emergency
3. Quality of communication especially under stress
4. How disagreements are handled
5. Documentation/data provided in support of completed work

“Remote Local Office”
Consider your service provider as an extension of your company. Consider them “Your Remote local Office”. Think of the whole process as training a new employee into a new job. Make sure that your remotely located employees have some understanding of the company’s culture and its expectations and know the right people to contact if there is a need. Be open to new ideas that they may bring. Most likely, they have done similar consulting work with other companies and thus can bring fresh ideas and perspectives. Successfully integrating these remotely located employees into your company will pay long term dividends and help you focus more on growing your business.

Posted in Back Office Services (BO) | 11 Comments »

How VA Providers can help SMEs in Speeding up Technology Adoption

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

The world of Virtual Assistance has evolved from providing basic administrative and clerical support to handling increasingly complex tasks for clients. Today’s virtual assistants are increasingly becoming a gateway and a liaison between the client and the other specialized resources within their company. One area where this model can really gain traction is in addressing the growing technology pains for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

An SME can have myriad of technology needs, which are sometimes as diverse as for a large corporation, though obviously smaller in scale. These requirements can be generally divided into two categories. Firstly there are “must-have” needs such as email and desktop support. The second category includes applications in areas such as CRM or BPM (Business Process Management), which help make these companies more productive, more informed, and more responsive to the changing world. It’s this second category where SMEs have generally lagged the larger corporations in adoption for obvious reasons. The SMEs do not have the scale to invest in human resources, software, and consulting cost to implement these solutions. A lot of times SMEs are busy just trying to manage their must-have technology needs that they don’t get time to seriously think more about incorporating technology solutions to streamline their businesses.

However, during last few years, the environment has become increasingly favorable for SMEs to start looking into incorporating more technology into their daily business tasks. Firstly there is the rise and acceptance of open-source technologies as a viable alternative to more expensive commercial software from companies like Oracle and SAP. LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) based technology stack provide robust frameworks on which we can build applications. Also available are open-source customizable applications that target certain verticals such as Joomla for Content Management or SugerCRM for Customer Relationship Management. The result is that the product development life cycles have been reduced drastically thus enabling fairly rapid development and deployment at a much lower cost.

Secondly the evolution of VA companies have provided these SMEs with one-stop shop where they can ask providers to look into operations, spot potential areas which can be automated, suggest particular existing or new applications that can fit the bill, and then make development resources available to develop and maintain those applications. Today’s crop of VA companies has amassed a strong knowledge base working with SMEs which they can leverage. Plus they can rely on in-house research teams to supplement their knowledge base when working with a particular company. Quite simply, this range of services is not available through specialized offshore development houses or dedicated technology consulting companies.

Combine the low cost of open-source or subscription based software with the flexibility of reasonably priced VA rate plans and you create a very attractive model for SMEs to speed up technology adoption and gain competitive edge – at a time when they need it the most.

Posted in Technology Outsourcing | 33 Comments »

Virtual Collaboration to keep your Back-Office running

Monday, April 13th, 2009

The age of virtual reality has arrived! We have seen a gradual but steady development in human psyche as well as technological advancements that have led humans to push the envelope in terms of how we use virtual systems. Take for example the online gaming industry — you have millions if not tens of millions of people connected in a virtual gaming arena. The experience is life like, yet safe in your living room. You can not only beat your opponent from Germany; 6 time zones away; you can even talk to him on the game system.

With economic pressures looming large these days, businesses have stretched their office boundaries to virtually include the entire globe. One such phenomenon is the Virtual Office Services. These companies have been operating as small niche players, typically a single working mom would be the owner of such company. The services offered were faxing, calendaring and sending emails etc. But with the advent of secure Internet communications, seamless availability of office and productivity tools (that you use every day), these companies now offer large scale services that not only relieve your staff, it dramatically improves the way you are used to doing business. Offshore companies have tens or hundreds of educated staff members offering a wide range of service portfolios.

All of the above hinges on how effective the ‘Virtual Collaboration’ is between you and your virtual service company. The mainstay is the initial dialog; simply put — how well can you define your needs and requirements! These companies are nimble and flexible in turning around with a viable solution at very affordable prices. Virtually anything that can either be digitized and processed on a computer is something that you can offload to a Virtual Assistant or a Virtual Back Office Consultant.

Try to push the envelope today and enjoy the benefits of cost savings while staying focused on your core business!

Posted in Virtual Assistant Services | Comments Off on Virtual Collaboration to keep your Back-Office running

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