Virtual Outsourcing: Making Dealings with VAs an Everyday Reality

Excitement mounts as you think about putting virtual outsourcing to work for your property management business. Once-lingering doubts have long since dissipated. A few minutes checking online directories have revealed how easy it is to find virtual assistants (VAs).

You are ready to deploy the vast, world-wide army that stands ready to provide a complete range of services at competitive costs. As part of getting started, it helps to understand that there are two types of service providers.

VA VS. VC? VIRTUALLY THE SAME?
So far, I have used “VA” as shorthand for anyone who provides a service from a location remote to your business. But, says Michael J. Russer (www.russer. com), an early proponent of virtual outsourcing, it’s possible to make the following distinction.

A virtual assistant, he notes, provides services on an ongoing basis. Project work, by contrast, is performed by virtual consultants (VCs) who expect to sever ties upon completing their assignments.

The distinction can blur; is the writer you hire one project at a time—but for project after project—a virtual assistant or a virtual consultant?

THE DIFFERENCE AT WORK
This distinction may seem obtuse at times and irrelevant at others. The difference matters, Russer affirms, because it influences each aspect of how you work with VAs and VCs.

Finding
Knowing whether you seek a VA or VC helps you choose between the methods outlined in part three of this article series, Navigating the Globe (July Issue, Vol. 19, Number 7). The controls and optional anonymity of virtual service provider marketplaces, such as Guru and eLance, are most appropriate when seeking a VC for a one-off project.

Associations and communities, as well as search engines, work better when seeking a VA for an ongoing relationship.

Selecting
The marketplaces pit VCs against each other as they bid for your project. For more straight-forward functions such as transcription or data entry, a cost-driven decision can make sense—as long as experience, work samples and feedback check-out, of course.

To select a VA, you will want to weigh such considerations as communication style, experience and work quality. Fees are part of the equation, but when thinking long-term, paying more for an experienced VA can increase the return on investment.

Hiring
Provider marketplaces let you review VC responses. You find the most competitive bid and close the deal with a mouse click. If you choose, you may hire anonymously—and remain anonymous through the entire process.

With a VA, you will discuss terms, working out details such as work standards, compensation and non-disclosure. Some cases may warrant a formal independent contractor’s agreement.

Managing
With VCs, says Russer, management is by objective. With short-term, well-defined projects, an objective—100 open house registrations entered into a database, for example—is either met, or it isn’t.

Objectives for ongoing, open-ended functions are less clear-cut. To keep a VA on track, Russer advises, it helps to have “a well-defined, written business process with straightforward and easily measured results, timelines and quality standards.” Don’t let the lack of a written process stop you from hiring a VA. In fact, this is another area where VAs can help. More than once, our firm has engaged VAs who have collaborated with us, using our business model to write and initiate the formal business processes that becomes the framework for the professional relationship.

Compensating
Once the VC has met the specified objective, you submit payment to the provider marketplace, usually through credit card or bank draft. The marketplace deducts its commission and forwards the balance to wherever the VC happens to be (keeping your identity private, if you choose).

A VA may submit a periodic invoice based on an hourly rate, retainer or results-based fee. Most employers send a check when the VA requests payment in the same currency. Other options include PayPal and sometimes credit cards.

TAKING THE PLUNGE
Russer offers some concluding thoughts for those ready to make the leap to virtual outsourcing. “Jumping in all at once and outsourcing everything right from the start is a recipe for disaster,” Russer warns. Instead, start with “one support function, and when that appears to be working and stable, outsource another one.”

To help choose which support function to outsource first, Russer suggests that you think about the three ways a function might cause “pain” (too costly, too time-consuming or no fun). “Consider which of the three is causing you the most distress,” he advises. “This will help you determine what to outsource first.”

With the resulting precision and clarity, you will be on the path of continued success with virtual outsourcing.