Imagine being a small business owner in 2020. On top of this pandemic, there are just so many tasks to remember and complete in a day that you either forget crucial tasks, or end up not delivering on them altogether. Just about every business owner out there is facing the same issue in this current economic climate.

Whether they be a business owner, or even a top executive of an organization, most of their focus is on keeping their business afloat, rather than looking at crucial tasks to optimize or take their business to the next level. If you are among those business owners, then perhaps you need to be looking at a Virtual Assistant as a solution to your operational problems.

But what are “Virtual Assistants?” What do they do? The simplest way to describe them would be to refer to them as software/applications that work in the place of an office assistant or personal assistant. What they do is quite simple:

Time tracking

Virtual Assistants help track the working hours of your employees, including breaks and screen time, allowing you to simplify the payroll process.

File Sharing/Storage

Virtual Assistants help share and store files across your ecosystem, either through a third-party app like Google Drive and Dropbox, or merely to hold files in a specific location.

Social Media Plugins

Virtual Assistants provide important updates for your Social Media needs, by helping to schedule posts, integrating Social Media APIs, and providing notifications on post trends and impressions. This allows for a much more efficient Social Media Calendar.

Scheduling Assistance

Likewise, virtual assistants help to optimize the scheduling of your meetings, by granting extra assistance in the time-consuming task of moving around appointments and/or commitments.

Meeting and Minutes

Another important feature of virtual assistants is the Meetings and Minutes feature. Never worry about missing another minute of an important meeting, as your virtual assistance keeps complete track of every point of discussion.

Faxing

Although faxing and emails are starting to feel “outdated,” there are still some organizations who prefer to see physical communication. For this reason, your virtual assistant is fully optimized and capable of integrating seamlessly into your contact lists.

General Assistance

Like all good assistants, virtual assistants help streamline your everyday tasks. This particular feature is a runaway success as several largescale consumer goods players like Amazon have jumped into this space. Be it Siri, Cortana, Alexa or Bixby, they all attend to simple queries and requests, offering general assistance along the way.

So, we’ve gone over the basics of what a virtual assistant can do, but now you want to know what they can help you achieve, right?

1. Optimized Time Management

For any tasks you can automate, be it the click of a button or the flip of a switch, this translates into two major things for you and your business: for you and your business: more time, and money. Most business owners or senior-level executives work overtime to ensure the growth of the business. This slowly eats into whatever time they have left on their hands for everyday tasks, from family to business expansion. This translates into great personal sacrifices for the well-being of their business.

Studies suggest that a large percentage of small business owners invest a substantial amount of their personal time in growing their business, while about 90% of them are unable to put in 100% because of the tediousness of everyday operations “getting in the way.” Almost all of these business owners express frustration over how they spend extra time combing the fine details of their business, rather than focusing on the overall growth.

2. More Hands On Deck

Business owners cannot afford to lose their best talent on time-draining, lower-level duties. It is quite understandable that the best talents have to be skilled towards priority tasks. Using a virtual assistant circumvents this particular issue by allowing business owners to optimize these mundane activities, thereby freeing up time for their best employees to work on things that actually matter for the business. Likewise, the virtual assistant can even lend a hand to the employees working to complete these priorities. It’s a win-win

3. Creating an Affordable Workforce

By taking on the bulk of mundane everyday activities within the business, virtual assistants directly impact the growth of the business and the bottom-line. Business owners needn’t have to focus on hiring more talent to perform daily activities, and are now free to invest in specialists who can help grow the business as a whole.

Additionally, since virtual assistant streamline operations, meetings, client communications, and market research, the speed of growth for the business is improved as well. This means that any business, no matter how small, are as agile and scalable as their competitors.

Furthermore, since a virtual assistant is fully AI and machine learning, you don’t have to stress over its sick days or vacations. It’s there for you day and night, 24/7.

4. Efficient, Streamlined Operations

Business owners, especially small business owners, need to focus on understanding the future of the business, and should likewise be looking to invest in the right places for growth. They cannot waste time or get bogged down by operational inefficiencies or errors. With a robust virtual assistant solution at their disposal, business owners need not worry about the everyday, mundane operations. These can be automated, streamlined, and optimized for productivity.

So, how can we help you?

Archarina’s ArcMeeting is a comprehensive virtual assistant software that can help you with everything mentioned in this article. Get in touch with our experts to understand how we can ensure total operational efficiency for your business.