Monday, 22 June 2009

Virtual Office in the Face of Economic Uncertainty

Virtual Office - www.i2office.co.uk
Globally Virtual office services are unprecedentedly flourishing. Clients who need to keep up appearances have been flocking to these Virtual Office service providers even though the virtual rents keep going up.

The traditional office leasing market in Manchester and London, after absorbing rent decreases of 25-30 percent over 2008, remain in the doldrums. However, the market in ‘virtual offices’ is booming.

A ‘virtual office’ is an office with an area of zero square metres. A customer who leases a virtual office gets a high profile city address he can use to register his business and send and receive mail, a fixed telephone line and a fax machine that operates 24/7. Operators answer incoming calls as though they are staff of the client and then forward messages to client’s true location. If the clients need an impressive place to meet business partners or customers, they can use meeting rooms equipped with modern facilities.

It’s an innovative – and somewhat 22nd Century - solution to the problem of not having an impressive city center office of your own. Clients can opt for an additional range of services, including the use of meeting rooms, photocopiers, printing machines and Internet. They can rely on the virtual office providers to deliver tasteful decorations, stylish receptionists, I.T. set-ups and even staff to organise a reception service.

That explains why office buildings have been appearing in various town and cities across the UK with nameplates of several companies.

Clients save both money and face

The economic difficulties of others have proven to be a golden opportunity for virtual office service providers. For many, business turnover has tripled in comparison with pre-crisis period.

One of the biggest virtual office leaders in the UK, said that he had 50% more clients early this year than he did twelve months’ earlier.

Most of clients say they use virtual office services to save money. A director of a real estate company in Liverpool said that normal office fee is too high for businesses facing economic difficulties. Therefore, he decided to lease a virtual office. “We only need to pay a small amount to see our nameplate hanging over the most modern and fully equipped buildings,” he added happily.

Laura Jones, a manager at a travel firm that leases a virtual office in Exeter, confessed that her firm’s real office is located in a terrace house. "It’s not a suitable place when the staff need to invite clients to discuss business which is why we use a virtual office with additional services". “Our business has become better since we began using the service,” she said.



Written by: Dave Williamson (ipl international)

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