/24-7PressRelease/ - TACOMA, WA, August 25, 2005 - 2005 Danielle Keister, TheRelief.com
Time. As a small business owner, it's the commodity you covet most but never seem to have enough of.
If you had more time, you could complete all the administrative chores required to operate your business.
With enough time, you could do more marketing, more networking, more planning and systemizing.
If you had just a little more, you'd be a whole lot less hurried and stressed.
But how on earth do you create more time to do all the things necessary to run smoothly, build business, and create revenue?
The obvious answer is to increase your manpower. But hiring staff is not always an easy or affordable proposition for the small business owner.
"Fortunately," says Danielle Keister, owner of The Relief, "there's an outsourcing alternative - Virtual Assistance."
Ms. Keister's company, The Relief, is a successful Virtual Assistance practice that has been delivering expert, personalized office support and design services to the business community since 1997.
And just what is a Virtual Assistant, you ask?
Ms. Keister defines a Virtual Assistant (or VA) as a professional service provider specializing in business support services who works from his or her own fully-equipped office utilizing computers and other technology to deliver services and communicate with clients.
"We primarily serve small, mid-sized or home-based businesses and independent entrepreneurs who have smaller workloads, need only occasional help, or who don't have the budget or space for in-house office staff, much less the time to train and manage them. Today's technology allows us to serve clients anywhere - they can be a business across town or on the other side of the world!"
Virtual Assistants provide just about any secretarial service you can think of: word processing, transcription, data-entry, database management, spreadsheet creation, proofreading - you name it.
Ms. Keister's practice, The Relief, offers additional specialties such as bookkeeping, web design, desktop publishing, writing and legal support services.
The savings can be huge compared to the cost of an actual employee because there are no payroll taxes or benefits to pay, no extra office space and equipment needs, and no training or management headaches.
Not to mention that not all employee time is productive (think breaks, sick leave, vacations and other downtime). With Virtual Assistance, clients pay only for the time the VA spends working on their behalf.
That's 100% productive time; you can't get more efficient than that!
The Virtual Assistance profession has been around well over 10 years now, and has its own industry associations and certification programs. Businesses large and small are taking advantage of this outsourcing trend, which is growing by leaps and bounds. According to a 1999 study conducted by the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP), about 80 percent of administrative work will be outsourced by 2009.
And who are these saviors? What are their qualifications?
Ms. Keister states, "Virtual Assistants come from a variety of business backgrounds in the private, public or corporate business sectors, but the common denominator is that the best of us are typically overachievers with extensive administrative experience and superior skill sets and training."
She stresses that Virtual Assistants are not temps. "We are highly-skilled, qualified professionals who love what we do, and are in business to provide consistently top-quality work to clients we are committed to."
Although there is a fair share of one-time or occasional project work, Virtual Assistants are commonly interested in establishing long-term partnerships with their clients. As the VA gets to know the owner and learns about his or her business, supporting the client becomes more intuitive.
Ms. Keister states, "The ideal is to achieve a very simpatico working relationship where my support not only instills more efficiency and productivity, but is key to helping my client create more time in both their business and personal life. By taking on work they hate, they're too busy to do, or simply is not a smart use of their time, I allow them to concentrate on the roles they love most while growing their business and getting more out of life. I'm a collaborative partner with the same goal - their success!"
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Danielle Keister is owner of The Relief, a successful virtual assistance practice in Tacoma WA that has been delivering expert, personalized office support services to small businesses since 1997. Ms. Keister has over 20 years administrative management experience in both the private and public business sectors. Her areas of expertise also include bookkeeping, desktop publishing and web design. For more information, visit http://www.TheRelief.com
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