Do you have a great vision for your software house, but realize that you’re growing too slow by performing all the essential and non-essential daily tasks?
If you are running a small software house, you’re likely be answering customer calls, developing and designing software & applications, managing social media, developing blog content and much more. If you are managing a growing software house, you may not have access to more experienced and highly qualified professionals due to budget constraints. In both cases, you are left with lesser time for strategic level tasks associated with business growth. If these scenarios sound familiar, it may be the time to lease a virtual team.
Why should You Hire Virtual Employees?
Adding highly qualified individuals to your team (with minimal overheads) can remove a large financial burden from business. You can beef up expertise in-organically inside your organization and free up your time to focus on driving profit instead of managing and administering the human resources.
Also, tedious repetitive tasks can exhaust time and energy. Why not delegate these tasks to someone better suited and enjoy the cost-efficiencies gained in lieu of hiring locally?
Not convinced? Here are six simple ways your small business can benefit from hiring a virtual employee:
1. Build your business faster
Decrease your tactical workload instantly and gain increased freedom to focus on core competencies that build your business faster, while your virtual employee manages the non-core processes. For example, hire a developer on lease who will be responsible for all of your web development. Leased marketing personnel can market you and content writer can provide your the quality content without being a overhead for you.
2. Eliminate Risks associated with freelancers
Rid yourself from the uncertainties and sometimes unprofessional conduct associated with hiring freelancers since the model itself caters to short-term work. Most entrepreneurs need someone more permanent and reliable for long-term tasks and for this “virtual team” is the best option.
Virtual employees work remotely and come cheap, but the word here is ‘employee’. A freelancer can never be an employee because they don’t work for you full-time or exclusively. A virtual employee can work for you remotely and exclusively as a dedicated part of your team without handling other assignments.
3. Save hiring and training costs
Not only can you save money in salaries, but also in overhead costs such as office space rentals, ancillary services, information technology (laptops, hardware and software), office supplies training costs and much more. When you employ a virtual staff, you can run a successful business from anywhere in the world — even your own backyard.
4. Do away with the hassles of recruitment and hiring.
A virtual employee is legally employed by an outsourcing company, so you are not in any way responsible for a virtual employee. All of the hiring, employment legal issues, taxes, insurance, human resources issues (benefits, time-off, etc.) and IT concerns are handled by a virtual staffing service provider — not you.
5. Eliminate uncertainty.
Since a virtual employee works out of a physical office with HR management supervision, and constant monitoring, the questions of mismanagement and missed deadlines are a non issue. When you hire virtual employees, you are outsourcing but technically your team still remains within your control. Sounds good! Right?
6. Expand your home-based operations.
If you are launching a new startup, hiring one or more virtual employees can quickly help you scale operations. You can run a multinational small business from the comfort of your home.
The key thing to remember is that a virtual employee, when managed through a service provider, is as real as a local employee and technology takes care of the rest!
Technology to Manage Virtual Team
Once you’ve identified and selected your Virtual team , you can use free or low cost applications to easily manage communication and workflow. Here are a few that we, find helpful:
- Skype: A voice-over-Internet Protocol service and software application that lets you make free and low cost internet calls. It’s a great communication tool for free audio, video, conferencing and screen sharing.
- Dropbox: A free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. Because files reside in the cloud, you save PC storage space and avoid multiple versions of the same document.
- Jing: A screenshot and screencast tool that captures anything you see on your computer screen, as an image or short video, and lets you share it instantly.
- Desk: An online social help desk platform that integrates social networks with email, phone and web on a single desktop agent.
- Basecamp: A web-based project management and collaboration tool that helps teams manage to-dos, files, messages, schedules, and milestones.
- FreshBooks: Online invoicing, accounting and billing software that helps you track time and invoice your clients.
- Hall: A real-time collaborative platform that acts as a private network for your team to share documents and post messages.
Eliminating Potential Risks
Going through some important performance aspects of software houses and IT companies, there are some unique challenges that need to be addressed here. Few of them are given below:
Hiring & Training a new resource
Usually there is high turnover in the organizations offering less salaries to employees so if you want to minimize the cost, you can never reduce the salaries. You have to bear extra salaries while you can manage it in less cost by getting permanent virtual employee.
Hiring and training a new resource is costly phenomenon, so avoid being trapped in high cost and get the maximum benefits of virtual teams by hiring one. Software developer on lease can be beneficial for you in term of expertise and availability in your non working hours as well.
High Overhead
You have to pay for office space and parking for employees that adds overhead for your office expense. Even if you provide money for an employee to set up a home office, the cost remains significantly lower than renting a regular office. So better using a virtual employee on permanent basis with a long term commitment can decrease the overhead cost. Softtware developers requires a better environment and woorkstations for development purpooses that proves it more costly as compare to other in-house employees.
Expertise not available
You should hire for the skills you need, not just what’s locally available. If you need to hire more experienced employees, but those with families and houses that don’t want to relocate from their current locations are not available to you.
Virtual teams solves this problem by providing you the world’s best resource for that job without any search or training. You can have a combination of the best resource of their particular fields.
Less Diversification of Employees
Team members located in different states or countries increase the diversity of your team. Diversity gives you multiple points-of-view, helping you to see the problems you are tackling holistically.
Conclusion
A virtual team works for your company, like an in-house employee, with one primary difference that it may be within our city or working from an office halfway around the globe. Companies have now started to embrace the concept that it is the most convenient option they can adopt. Thanks to improved technology, you gain the benefits of global talent with the control and collaboration opportunities as you hardly ever feel the distance.
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VizTeams has local offices in USA and Canada and offshore offices in UK and South East Asia. We have a history of serving the software industry by providing all kinds of experts on lease on temporary and permanent bases. Feel free to contact us for any consultations or hiring a virtual resources for your company.
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