Somehow, small and medium businesses carry the assumption that virtual assistants are a luxury, but the contrary is actually true. Virtual assistants offer more flexibility than SMEs realize and could be a great benefit to any fledgling company. Any business can’t overlook the benefits of getting an extra set of hands to help you run your company, whether by doing the things you have no time to do or by simply organizing paperwork and scheduling calls. Many businesses have noted the benefits and have started to connect with outsourcing providers and hire virtual assistants who can further improve their business processes.

Here are a number of benefits virtual assistants can offer SMEs:

Reduced Operating Costs

Operating costs are among the biggest expenditures of any business owner, and are therefore up there on their list of constant worries. Virtual assistants greatly reduce operating costs, because as opposed to regular or full-time employees, they are not paid any benefits or training. Virtual assistants only need compensation for the time they put in for work, and they usually just charge by the hour. This even gives them more reason to be efficient and productive, because no work means no pay. Business owners worried about being cheated out of their services could either require a virtual assistant to work with a productivity app that monitors their work progress or hire from outsourcing providers for experienced virtual employees.

Increased Productivity

With a virtual assistant, work productivity and efficiency increases for everyone involved. Business owners get to tackle the challenging tasks that grow the business itself, while the virtual assistant deals with non-core tasks that support everyone else. This includes organizing meetings, preparing presentations, placing schedules on the work calendar, sending invites, making travel arrangements, sending newsletters, answering customer inquiries, and more. Sure, you could just do it yourself, however, that could even do more damage than good: by taking on extra responsibilities, you would risk doing them badly, and the consequences could have a domino effect, damaging the business process over time. By outsourcing these non-core and administrative tasks to virtual assistants who are experts at what they do, leaders of SMEs can leverage their time and energy to maximize their business efforts.

 Strengthen Weaknesses

There is no perfect business, and any good business owner knows that there will always be something to improve on. Every system and company will always have their own challenges brought about by a weakness in a particular area of operation. Virtual assistants address this by picking up the slack; being skilled professionals coming from a variety of fields and expertise, they can instantly get to work without training. Several virtual assistants have skills ranging from social media management, marketing research, content marketing, graphic design, and even basic programming and web design. Depending on the need, a business can hire one virtual assistant with specific sets of skills who is a master multi-tasker and can take on many tasks and responsibilities, or multiple virtual assistants—each with their own specialties—to work on different projects.

Business Upscaling Opportunities

The long-term goal for any business is to continuously flourish and grow. With a virtual assistant—or even multiple virtual assistants—helping you manage specific aspects of your business, it becomes easy for a business to scale up. Seasonal businesses need not worry about downsizing or upsizing during off and peak seasons: virtual assistants work by the hour and with contracts that can be ended without legal issues; then when peak season comes around once again, virtual assistants can be hired quickly to get to work as soon as possible. Hiring virtual assistants from a different time zone can also let your business run 24/7, especially when the virtual assistant’s place of origin has a time zone complementary to your own.

No one should undermine what a good virtual assistant can do for a company. Proper leveraging, with the correct strategic approach, can only bring more growth and opportunities for SMEs both in the short term, as well as for the long run.