Virtual realty

Urban legends about start-up companies pretending to be bigger than reality are numerous, from answering the phone with different voices to make it seem like there were more than one staff member to setting up 20 different email accounts — all answered by the same person.

Thanks to the wonders of technology, many home-based businesses in the suburbs are now establishing a big city presence through virtual office set ups.

Serviced Offices International managing director Michelle Mills said the company had seen a 40% to 50% growth in demand for its services in the last 12 months.

“The financial crisis has force people to re-look at the way they are operating and start to think outside the square and think of different ways to run their business,” she added.

“This facility allows them to have that support without channelling additional funds to infrastructure.”

The way it works is simple: clients purchase a package of services on a monthly basis, which may include elements such as phone answering services, mail collection from a CBD address, access to meeting rooms in the city or a hot desk which can be used between meetings or to get away from the home and focus on business.

“You don’t actually need the office and a lot of people don’t want it either,” Mills said.

“For a small business, depending on your situation at home, this is the best scenario to keep your funds controlled while you are establishing your business and marketing and building your client base.

“There are a lot of different areas that people need help and everyone is unique, but it is really important as a home based business that you do have additional support.

“Operating from home can be very lonely, it takes a lot of discipline and while some people thrive on that there are others who are not so good at it.

“You also have the flip side where some people are working at home for six months and they can’t switch off – where it was supposed to give them lifestyle they can’t walk away.”

The reduction in operational costs and overheads was another benefit of the virtual office set up, Mills added.

“Previously if you needed to take a full office the costs were such that it would take a lot to develop the infrastructure, which would discourage some people from doing it,” she said.

“If you are a home based business where you suddenly win a tender and you will need five contractors working for you, it might be difficult to have them coming into your home, but they could take a virtual office for those few months.

“It really helps people compete against the larger businesses without worrying about how to compete on infrastructure.

“[The virtual office] has actually lowered the barriers to entry. It also gives clients support, for example it allows them to go on holidays. A lot of our clients who may be doctors or naturopaths or something like that allow us to keep taking calls and making their bookings so they can go away and they have a full  calendar when they return.”

Credence International principal and founding director Judy Wong-See started her executive recruitment firm from home more than a decade ago, primarily because of work-life issues to assist with her young family.

“Our business is the sort of business that doesn’t need a shopfront, so when I am doing meetings I am in the city but when I am doing emails and paperwork the office doesn’t have to be there, which gives me the flexibility to operate it from home,” she explained.

“The business is now 12 years old, but initially it was very difficult and I was very careful. I don’t think your clients need to know you are operating from home, but it means you have to make a lot of decisions about your phone and broadband and networks and so on.

“The difference is that you can not compromise on the level of service or level of deliverables right from the start. Working from home does not mean that you deliver a service that is substandard.”

There were a range of motivations for starting a virtual office set up, Mills said.

“I get people who have worked from home for a number of years who can’t stand it anymore — they say they can’t stand it working in

 suburbia anymore because they need the buzz of the city,” she explained.

“But then I also  had one person who was working from home and coming in one day a week who said that when she was at home she was putting off doing her marketing calls to go and put the washing out or something like that.”

For Wong-See, creating the perception of a big-city corporate was one of the key drivers behind setting up the virtual office.

“Because of the nature of the business, we needed a CBD address because no one will take you seriously if you have a suburban address,” she said.

“Well, they might, but that wasn’t the market I wanted to capture because I wanted to be working with the big boys.

“I also needed a quality service in terms of answering my phones and getting my messages sent through properly so I don’t miss anything.

“Then I needed secretarial support which was up to scratch, so for example if I need to do a PowerPoint presentation I can outsource that and they can put that together for me. You are one person when you are starting a business so you can’t do everything yourself and if you try to you will only compromise your performance. I wanted to deliver the best every time, so I bought the services when I needed them.

“My company sometimes competes in the same space as the big four, where we will be up against KPMG or PricewaterhouseCoopers. From the beginning I had that challenge and I rose to it because I decided I wasn’t going to compromise on my service deliverables. That’s where my virtual office came in, because I was able to deliver the quality that they were delivering.”

Mills said companies could look to budget around $200 per month, including GST, for a package which includes having calls answered in your company name and a message taking service.

“There are a lot of different packages so we do spend a bit of time sitting down with people to talk about what they want,” she added.

“Everyone is different. If someone wanted hot desks but they didn’t need support on the phone then we could do something for them, or if meeting rooms were important we could do something different again. It is also totally scalable so the clients always have control.”

For Wong-See the solution has been simple — access to professional support and a CBD presence with reduced overheads — but she said the virtual office would not suit every business.

“You need to decide on what your company needs to deliver,” she explained.

“It depends on your product whether or not you can package it up or deliver it from home. It depends on your market too — if you don’t know who you are aiming at then it is difficult to work out whether you need to be at home or in the city.

“For me I never wanted to have a big business which involved branches and interstate offices, because my service is personal and based on maintaining relationships.

“I wouldn’t do it any other way going forward. Our business is still growing but I wouldn’t change it.”