Office Lifeline

Collaborative technology enables Virtual Assistant business to develop and grow

Virtual Assistant offers a lifeline to busy executives

Thanks to the internet, plenty of busy companies outsource all sorts of jobs to Virtual Assistants (VAs). Innovators like Anna Isaacs of Office Lifeline, however, are putting technology right at the heart of the virtual business – and going for healthy growth in the process.

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A world of flexibility

After working as a PA and administrator for 20 years, Anna Isaacs decided to use her experience to set up a virtual office services business. She duly launched Office Lifeline in January 2007 to offer clients her organisational and PA skills virtually - from her home office.

“I had recognised for some time that there were lots of small companies and individuals out there who could benefit from my experience and expertise as a PA,” says Anna. “The issue was that those people didn’t necessarily require my help full-time. A flexible, ad hoc service that would cut their overheads seemed to me a much more attractive and affordable proposition. The real challenge was how to service such a wide variety of secretarial needs remotely across so many different kinds of client.”

What’s made Anna’s service possible is technology. Just about everyone in business can count on reliable email these days, but Anna has built her whole offering - and profitability - around exploiting the latest communications tools. “Thankfully, for every type of situation there's a technological solution,” says Anna. “The National B2B Centre introduced me to a number of collaboration tools, allowing me to run the whole business from my PC.”

By using sophisticated, online collaborative services, Anna is able to carry out the role of the traditional PA or Administrator - including call handling, monitoring email, managing diaries, typing documents, preparing invoices, chasing late payments and a host of marketing support tasks, all of which require secure file sharing. It also means she can also work with other VAs as far afield as Canada. All this happens - for clients all over the world - from the comfort of her home office in Warwickshire.

“The beauty of the virtual model is that, by using the appropriate technology, I can call on precisely the right skills from my remote team at the right time to meet the needs of individual clients,” she says. “Equally important, our clients can access the service from wherever they are based or happen to be working that day. They can also have more than one VA working with them, each with their own skill set, but physically based in different locations.”

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The solution: low-cost collaboration

One of the many services Office Lifeline offers is to receive calls whenever clients are unavailable. “For this, we use Voice Over IP (VoIP) telephony to manage client inbound calls and provide low cost outbound calls - and calls between us are free to anywhere in the world!” she adds.

Another technology Anna uses extensively is Microsoft Office Groove 2007, (included in the Enterprise edition of Microsoft Office 2007) which offers low-cost collaboration by combining file sharing, discussions, meetings, calendars, databases and much more.

“If I need to discuss a document for a client with one of my VAs, for example, I can talk to them using VoIP and we can both make revisions to the document while viewing one another’s changes on the screen as we make them. Using a collaboration tool like Groove makes it very easy for us to exchange large files and share documents with clients.

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Technology at the centre of the business

“Thanks to Groove, if a UK client comes to us at the end of the working day with a document to be typed, our VA in Canada can type it up while we’re all asleep and have it ready for the client first thing next morning - that’s quite a feature that our competitors can’t offer!

“The online database available in Groove also allows us to keep good client records and timesheets and provide accurate invoices. That in turn reduces the amount of paper we use, which clearly makes us more environmentally friendly.”

Anna says most clients have their own ways of working and their preferred technologies. “What makes Office Lifeline different from other VAs who are popping up is that we have a variety of technologies, which means we can work in the way that each client likes to work. Rather than trying to shoehorn clients into our way of working, we can accommodate whatever method they prefer to use.

“We have several management consultancy clients for whom we handle invoicing and general admin using the file sharing facility in Groove. We’ve played around with various types of solution, but we prefer Groove because it contains a very fast and reliable synchronisation mechanism. It really does the trick when it comes to connecting Office Lifeline with clients.

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“Less time co-ordinating, more time working”

“What’s more, if I’m working on a document for a client and I have a query I need them to address, using Groove, I can simply send them a quick instant message. It’s particularly useful when I need to send a short message, rather than writing an email and waiting 30 minutes for a reply, or chasing a client on the phone.

“Built-in ‘presence’ and other clever features like this - that complement the phone - just make everything happen that much quicker. I know who's working on what and when, without having to ask, which means my team and I can spend less time coordinating and more time working.

“On other occasions, if I have a problem formatting a complicated document for a client, say, I can use Groove to get instant technical help from my business partners. On a personal front, some days I don’t see a soul, so it’s also great to know I can chat to colleagues online if necessary using the instant messaging feature.”

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A model for the future

Since starting up two years ago, Anna‘s revenue has more than doubled and she now has several VAs serving a variety of high flying business clients. Her operation is continually developing and becoming more efficient by keeping abreast of new technology, all of which allows her to take on more clients.

In time, she plans to franchise Office Lifeline, as she’s confident many PAs and secretaries seeking to work from home will be interested in the virtual PA and admin support concept. “Our services are not limited to UK-based businesses. Whilst we already have clients abroad, with the help of technology, I believe we can expand further into the international market,” she says.

Office Lifeline is a shining example of how collaborative technologies, like Groove, can help a business evolve into something no-one would have dreamt of a decade ago. In the current economy, it’s also a model that’s helping small businesses not just survive, but reach new customers on a global stage. Today Warwickshire, tomorrow the world!

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