Is Having An Office A Thing Of The Past?

Office Space

Buildings are so old fashioned. Why go to a shop when you can just order online and have it delivered straight to the door? Every year we are transferring new aspects of our lives from the physical into the digital world. The office is no exception. While most businesses still have an office space, newer enterprises are starting to move away from that. With so much new technology at our disposal, it is easy to do away with the old-fashioned physical office and create a virtual one instead. Anyone considering starting a new business should think about creating a virtual workspace and whether having an office is necessary?

Why Go Virtual?

There are a few benefits to creating a completely virtual office. The obvious one is that you don’t have to pay rent or utilities on a building so your overheads are massively reduced. Beyond that, there are other things that you might not have considered.

When you’re hiring staff, you’re limited to people that can actually get to the office every day. A virtual office doesn’t have that issue. This means that you don’t need to compromise at all, you can find the best people for the job, regardless of where they live.

The virtual office also allows you access to everything online. That way you can always be up to date with new developments and deal with any problems that arise immediately. Being able to work from home also improves your customer service if you can reply to people and solve issues without having to wait until you get into the office the next morning. The benefits are clear, so where do you start?

Outsource

The first step is to outsource departments that would ordinarily be in your office. Of course, you don’t want to get rid of everything, but there are some things that you don’t need to handle yourself. There are plenty of companies that offer outsourced IT for small businesses so you don’t need to worry about it at all, and you don’t need a designated space for an IT team to work in.

You could also outsource your marketing but it depends on your personal preference. Some business owners prefer to handle their own marketing in-house, while others are happy to outsource.

File Sharing

People are often put off the idea of a virtual office thinking that not being able to speak directly with colleagues will increase the volume of emails. That isn’t the case if you use file sharing services. Instead of emailing a document to everybody in the office, set up an online sharing system like Google Docs or Dropbox. That way, all of your employees can access all of the documents they need from anywhere.

Robotic Personal Assistants

Hiring a person to be your assistant is all good and well, but it’s cheaper and easier to have a piece of software to do it all for you. A robotic personal assistant can be linked to your email accounts and it will automatically put them into folders to make things easier to handle.

Some of the more advanced ones can also help you to track projects and create milestones.

Using these new technologies, you can easily get rid of your office and reduce your outgoings by a significant amount.

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