- Understanding Virtual Office Space
- Benefits of Virtual Office Space
- Choosing the Right Virtual Office Space
- Setting Up Your Virtual Office Space: A Step-by-Step Guide
Q: What is the purpose of a virtual office space?
A: A virtual office space helps protect your address, ensuring privacy, and solidifies your professional reputation by providing you with a prestigious business address. This article delves into how virtual office spaces contribute to a successful business identity, addressing various benefits and practical applications.
The year 2020 was a monumental year for many reasons. Two events easily come to mind: the COVID-19 pandemic and the drastic but welcomed switch in how we work and the future of work. Businesses across the globe had to quickly adapt to social distancing laws by adopting remote or hybrid work schedules.
The pandemic has come and gone, but remote and hybrid work is here to stay.
A 2022 Gallup survey found that approximately 39.2 million American employees can do their work remotely. Between 2019 and Q2 2022, the percentage of remote-capable employees working fully on-site dropped from 60% to 22%. Within the same period, the number of hybrid employees rose from 32% to 49%, while fully remote employees rose from 8% in 2019 to 70% in May 2020 and balanced out at 29% in June 2022.
As of February 2023, 71% of remote-capable employees in hybrid and remote work environments reported that it has helped them a lot with their work-life balance, according to Pew Research. 56% also reported that it has helped them meet their deadlines more effectively.
Current indicators from Gallup show that:
- 54% of remote-capable employees are now working with hybrid schedules.
- 27% are working exclusively remote
- 20% are working on-site.
- 60% of remote-capable employees prefer hybrid work, 33% prefer fully remote work, and less than 10% prefer on-site work.
Clearly, hybrid work strikes a seemingly perfect balance between remote and on-site work, and the future of work is leaning more toward hybrid work.
But this shift is not all about remote-capable employees.
Entrepreneurs, small business owners, and freelancers are keying into hybrid work environments to enhance their operational efficiency and boost their professionalism. To do this more effectively and efficiently with maximum returns, they are turning to virtual offices.
Virtual office spaces offer all the advantages of traditional office setups without the financial, resource, and managerial burden of running one around the clock. They offer more flexibility, engagement, and productivity where traditional office setups simply can’t.
It’s no surprise that a lot of businesses and entrepreneurs are turning to Alliance Virtual Offices for personalized virtual office solutions that fit right into and enhance their existing business processes.
Do you need a virtual office? Are you considering setting one up but not sure how to go about it?
This article will help you answer these questions confidently.
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Understanding Virtual Office Space
First off, what is virtual office space?
Virtual office spaces are modern business solutions that offer businesses and individuals the technologies, workspaces, and human resources needed to flexibly and successfully run their businesses remotely. They offer all the benefits of traditional physical offices minus the overwhelming cost of full-time office rental.
Typical virtual office spaces offer the following services:
- Copy and print facilities
- Business address service
- Mail handling, including mail processing and forwarding and a place to receive and pick up mail
- Business phone system and business number
- Access to physical office space and meeting rooms
Virtual offices combine the crucial aspects of physical and virtual elements needed to successfully run a business.
Do you need a virtual office?
If you are asking yourself this question, there’s a high chance that you do need one.
Here are some questions to prod you in the right direction:
- Are you at your office full-time? Do you need to be?
- Can you run most of your operations from anywhere?
- How often do clients visit you at the office?
- Given the scale of your business, can you really afford to pay cleaners and a receptionist around the clock?
- Is it necessary to pay thousands of dollars for office space in New York when you can secure a NY virtual office space starting from $48 per month, with a physical space or meeting room available to you on demand?
Bear in mind that beyond the rental costs, there are other costs attached to running a physical office.
These are some of the questions that most entrepreneurs, freelancers, remote companies, and businesses seeking to establish a presence in new markets have asked themselves before coming to Alliance Virtual Offices for more apt, beneficial, and cost-effective virtual office solutions.
In 2016, long before virtual offices were a major thing, contributors at Forbes pointed out that virtual office spaces position startups and small business owners to enable their employees to meet the six fundamental needs through work, which include the following:
- Feeling of achievement
- Autonomy
- Belonging
- Sense of purpose
- Sense of social security
- Status.
More importantly, these can be accomplished without unnecessarily plowing through large chunks of personal and investor funds.
Today, freelancers are also embracing virtual offices to meet these fundamental needs.
Benefits of Virtual Office Space
From all that’s been said so far, some of the benefits of virtual office space rental seem obvious—but those are not all the benefits of virtual offices.
Let’s take a more elaborate look at the benefits of virtual office space for startups, small businesses, entrepreneurs, and freelancers.
Virtual Office Spaces Are Far Cheaper than Traditional Office Rentals
It’s tempting to assume that once you are done planning the developmental aspects of your business, you’ll just step out, get a lease on an office, and have things running right away.
For those who run on such assumptions, the shocker usually comes when they finally set out to find an office but run into a formidable wall of never-considered factors that translate to substantial costs.
For context, a business with 6-10 employees needs at least 1,000 sq. ft. to 1,500 sq. ft. of office space to run efficiently. In midtown Manhattan for instance, a square foot of an office costs as low as $46 to as high as $91.
This means that for a business with approximately ten employees, renting an office space in this area by square foot could cost you between $46,000 and $136,500.
Thankfully, there are options for you to skip the per-square-foot rentals and rent existing office spaces as they are. Even so, you would still be spending at least $10,200 per month in rentals for the cheapest offices in Midtown Manhattan.
But that’s not all!
You still have to consider the monthly cost of:
- Utilities like energy bills. Over 56,000 small businesses in New York were at risk of going bankrupt due to utility bills, necessitating the state to institute a utility bill relief program in 2023 for small businesses.
- Maintaining or replacing office supplies.
- Employing administrative staff to run the office throughout office hours
All these are without considering all other charges—sometimes hidden—that come with leasing an office.
Meanwhile, with Alliance Virtual Offices, you can get a virtual office in New York with a live receptionist for approximately $200 per month. With additional features, you’d still be spending well under $500 per month.
Side by side, the cost benefits of opting for virtual office spaces over traditional office spaces are far too substantial to ignore.
Superb Flexibility
Remote and hybrid work inarguably offers more flexibility than full-time, on-site work.
However, the notion of flexibility is often limited to the surface fact that one can work from anywhere.
With virtual office spaces, there’s more to that notion:
- Access to an office space anywhere, anytime: Suppose you are targeting a big client outside your territory and need to actively engage them over the span of six months. You can simply establish a virtual office in their locality with all the necessary services/facilities you need to engage them at your beck and call. When you are done, you can return operations to your base.
- Run multiple offices across the globe from the comfort of your home: Building on point #1, you can maintain official, customer-accessible office addresses across all U.S. regions. This creates the notion of proximity, which consumers consider when choosing a business to patronize. Customers can send mail to the address, call your business numbers specific to the state/region, and meet with you or your rep at the physical office when needed.
More importantly, all these offices could come at less than half the monthly cost of running a physical office at any one of the locations.
- Scale up or down on a need basis: Many businesses have off and peak seasons, which means that you may need more or less staff/facilities to run your operations at different times. Virtual office spaces offer you the ease of scaling up or down effortlessly. For example, with Alliance Virtual Offices live receptionist services, you can decide to opt for Live Receptionist 50 at $125/month during off-seasons or Live Receptionist 200 at $260/month. Similarly, you can scale up or down with other services as your business needs change. Essentially, alongside the flexibility offered, you get to spend money on what matters and save costs on what doesn’t matter now.
Business Credibility and Professionalism at Its Peak
One of the things that bother remote business owners and entrepreneurs the most is how to appear professional while running operations from wherever they base their operations at a given time.
Some startups, entrepreneurs, and freelancers have enough cash to convert one of the spaces in their homes into an exquisite office.
After that, what next?
Do you start receiving clients—strangers—at your residential address? Do you use your personal line on your business cards and flyers? Do you use it to answer work-related calls? Do you start receiving business mail at home?
You can see how succumbing to any of these temptations could immediately place the credibility of your business and professional image under scrutiny.
These considerations have pushed lots of small businesses into the financial strain of establishing a physical office with all the bells and whistles. Unfortunately, this makes it even more difficult for them to survive the first few years due to high overhead costs.
With virtual office spaces, you can boost your credibility and professionalism without wrecking your account balance. You get all you need to keep things going in a respectable and safe direction, including:
- A prestigious business address in a business district, which also serves as your mailing address
- Access to meeting rooms and office spaces at the said address
- Professional and certified live receptionists able to attend to your customers’ inquiries in an empathetic but professional manner.
Choosing the Right Virtual Office Space
Virtual office spaces are meant to make your life and business easier. That might not be the case when you partner with the wrong virtual office provider.
Therefore, you must know how to choose the right virtual office space provider.
Criteria for Selecting a Virtual Office Provider
Some crucial points to consider include:
Catering to Your Specific Needs
Businesses sought virtual office spaces for different needs. Sometimes, these needs are easily covered by the generic offers from most virtual office providers. Other times, they are not.
Go for providers with the capability and capacity to sort your unique virtual office needs to your satisfaction. More importantly, ensure that the services are provided within the relevant statutes covering the establishment of an office space in the given locations.
Although it seems like a basic requirement, not all providers are able to offer credible business address services for a virtual office space for LLCs. When they do, can you use the address to:
- Obtain a federal or local business license
- Create a business bank account
- Build business credit
- Apply for a Federal Tax Identification Number
Additionally, do they offer registered agent addresses, which LLCs, corporations, and partnerships are required by law to have?
A registered agent address is crucial for processing “Service of Process” mail and mail from the secretary of state. Note that legally, these sorts of mail are handled differently than commercial mail exchanges between you and your customers and business partners. And they are mostly not processed through PO boxes.
Best Practices for Comparing Virtual Office Space Providers
After all you’ve read, choosing a virtual office provider may now seem like a chore. Don’t allow indecision to trap you in limbo.
Below are some pointers to help you choose the best virtual office space rental service with ease:
- Customer reviews:
Customer feedback is the best reflection of a virtual office provider’s credibility and capability. Customers, who are usually small businesses, entrepreneurs, startups, and freelancers, are not afraid to air their opinions when a virtual office provider behaves in a manner that jeopardizes some of their business operations.
Similarly, they would drop great reviews if the provider has performed up to their expectations. It’s important to also assess how the provider addressed the bad reviews. It would give you insights into how they handle their customer support.
Trusted platforms for verified virtual office customer reviews include Consumer Affairs and Trust Pilot.
- Pricing structures:
Pick a provider with transparent pricing structures. There must be clear terms on the cost of add-ons. Before you sign the contract, ensure that the provider is not in the business of cloaking hidden charges in their fine print. Have everything in the contract explained to you as clearly as possible.
At AVO, we have two clearly defined virtual office plans: the Virtual Office Platinum Plan and the Virtual Office Platinum Plus Plan.
More importantly, opt for providers that offer premium services at friendly rates. You may find that a lot of virtual office space providers offer basic services at steep prices.
- Contract flexibility:
Your contract for a virtual address lease should not be a trapdoor that destabilizes your operations once you sign it. Go for service providers that offer some degree of flexibility. That is, the contract should allow you to finetune the services to better suit your business needs.
At the very least, there should be reasonable options that allow you to customize your plan—pay for only what you need and include add-ons when you need them.
Unless it’s what you wish, a contract should not force you into a two-year commitment when you probably only need it for 6-12 months.
If a service provider offers a rigid plan with no wiggle room, they are definitely not for you.
Setting Up Your Virtual Office Space: A Step-by-Step Guide
At Alliance Virtual Offices, setting up a virtual office address is quite the walk in the park.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to set up virtual office space for LLCs with Alliance Virtual Offices.
- Search for a virtual office address. Use this portal to search states where you’d like to have a virtual office. From the addresses that pop up, pick the location/address that is most suitable for you.
- Choose a plan. Our plans are:
- Platinum, which is the standard plan. It basically comes with a business address and mail processing services.
- Platinum Plus offers all that Platinum offers, plus access to meeting rooms for up to 16 hours per month. Some locations, as indicated in the location’s terms, may offer fewer hours.
- Include the add-ons you need. Our added services include:
- Live receptionist (automatically included in Platinum Plus plan alongside business center services).
- Virtual phone plan and business number
- Mail forwarding
- Exclusive meeting rooms
- Sign up with AVO. Once you’re done selecting your plans and add-ons, input and submit your information to sign up with us.
- Proceed to check out. Follow the prompts to proceed through the checkout. Apply a promo code, if you have any, to earn huge discounts. You will get an email confirming that you have secured your virtual office space.
Your office address is ready! You can now use it on your Articles of Organization.
Always feel free to contact us if you need assistance setting up your office space and using the address to obtain a business license or business credit.
How to Maximize Your Virtual Office
Now that you have a virtual office space, you should make the most of it.
You can:
- Use your business address on all your marketing materials, including your business card, paper and digital flyers, and all internet platforms where your business has a digital footprint.
- Use your virtual office address to set up your virtual phone system.
- Outsource some of your administrative tasks, including receptionist services, to your virtual office provider to cut overhead costs.
- Use the address to receive all your commercial mail and letters.
- Take advantage of the notary services offered by your virtual office spaces service provider.
Remember to ask your provider what you can or cannot do with your virtual office address. This ensures you are always on the right side of the law.
Integrating Virtual Office Services to Existing Operations
Recall that part of the considerations for choosing the right service provider is their ability to cater to your unique business needs.
It’s important to assess your business needs before choosing a virtual office space. This will ensure that the service you choose aligns with your business goals and existing operations.
Considerations in this regard may include:
- Is the in-office/meeting room hours offered by your provider sufficient? Do you need to adjust the terms to accommodate more hours?
- Does the coworking space available onsite allow for team productivity?
- Can the business center services offered by your provider cater to your basic office needs? What special need will make your operations more seamless?
- Is there a specific script you want the attached live receptionists to use when addressing your customers? If so, ensure that your provider gets the script.
- What tools can you use to bridge the intersections between your remote, onsite, and virtual office operations?
- Are your provider’s tech services/tools compatible with your existing tools?
Also, consider the impact of the transition on your employees and how you can make it more seamless for them. If necessary, it might be helpful if the virtual office is centrally located so that employees can easily commute.
Get It Right with Alliance Virtual Offices
Clearly, virtual office spaces are as much a cost-saver as they are a route to the operational efficiency, credibility, and professionalism that independent contractors, startups, small and medium-size businesses, and entrepreneurs need to scale through competitive markets.
However, these things are only true for businesses that partner with the right virtual office provider. Some businesses have ended up with questionable addresses in locations with ill repute, unfortunately jeopardizing their businesses.
At Alliance Virtual Offices, we are transparent with our terms, our live receptionists are fully certified, and all AVO virtual office spaces are thoroughly vetted. We’ll help you with your business license, business credit, and other extended services.
Our customer support is available to attend to all your needs and inquiries, ensuring you do everything right to establish the legitimacy of your business.
Further Reading:
- Do I Need a Virtual Office Space Near Me?
- Get a Virtual Address For LLC Registration
- Choosing Your Business Address Wisely: A Comprehensive Comparison of Virtual Office Providers
- Enhancing Your Virtual Office: Additional Services to Consider
Moreover, with nearly two decades in existence, Alliance Virtual Offices has perfected service provision in the virtual office industry, laying the path for other providers to follow. Alongside having a proven operational framework, marketing support, and the most reputable network in the industry, we also bring our clients closer to a broad audience of potential clients.
Contact us today for a virtual office that fits your needs in Latin America, Canada, Australia, Europe, Asia, or the 50 states of the U.S.A.
