What Is a Virtual Office and Why Do You Need It?

What Is a Virtual Office and Why Do You Need It?

As many small companies choose virtual offices for managing their business. Surely, a virtual office comes with many benefits.  

Today, if you want to open a business you don’t need to build a big building first to operate them. The reason is because now you can have a virtual office for your great business without worrying about spending so much money on electricity costs or for renting a physical office.

Plus, having a virtual office is much safer amid the pandemic as we don’t have to deal with people directly, instead, we use virtual meetings for everything regarding the company issue. So, we can prevent the spreading of coronavirus. 

What Is a Virtual office?

Virtual Office is incorporation between people, technologies, a place, and processes that aim to assist businesses and individuals to work efficiently, most of them in a remote way. 

Virtual offices can also be used by everyone and all businesses. It provides businesses a physical address and office-related services with no prolonged rental fees. Through virtual offices, employees can work from anywhere as long as there is internet access, but they still have things such as a mailing address, phone answering services, meeting rooms, and videoconferencing.

To make it simple, a virtual office is an enterprise which operates as one unit and it has a physical mailing address, however, it does not exist in one certain location.

The creation of online-based office software and services including video-conference such as Zoom and G-meet has driven the growth of virtual offices.

The Benefits of Virtual Office

As many small companies choose virtual offices for managing their business. Surely, a virtual office comes with many benefits.  

It gives professional looks

Professionalism is an important element in the business world as a quality image will result in a good first impression. Especially, for small companies or businesses that still try to develop their brand name.

Having a good  image to show to your customers will affect your business success. A virtual office enables you to offer the picture of professionalism with all the best features you want, while actually, you work on your comfy sofa at home.

You can choose any places for your office

Maybe for small companies that are still trying to make a name for themselves, startup, or freelancer, renting a physical office will be too spendy. This will bring you to cut-corners and accept a lower- standard place than the place you like. However, with using a virtual office you can save your money and allocate it to other necessary things. 

You can save some money

As a virtual office 100 percent virtual, often totally online. There is no need for renters to sign a contract with a number of services that they don’t need. 

For example, you don’t need a meeting room as you use virtual meetings and you don’t need call services. You just pay for what you need. This opportunity enables startups and freelancers to make an ideal payment plan for them,  you can save money, when at the same time, you earn that professional look. 

Work-life balance

The next benefit is a work-life balance as the more your business grows and evolves, then, the more important that you as an entrepreneur and your employees can manage your work-life balance. Having a virtual office enables everyone to work efficiently from anywhere they feel comfortable, which means it can lower their stress level as well as provide enough time to spend with their loved ones.

The benefits of virtual offices in general have been listed above, then how about the advantage of having virtual offices in Hong Kong? Well, let’s find out. 

Hong Kong offers many business options for foreign investors, especially when it comes to the type of company you can create in Hong Kong and the way they can base their new company. 

The virtual office in Hong Kong gives many benefits for small companies and startups, when a foreign investor decides to open a business in Hong Kong through virtual offices they can get regular office services with lower cost. Plus, it will also manage your professional business image.

Here is the list of the benefits of the virtual office in Hong Kong:

Low cost

The annual or monthly rent, and the subscription to extra services are lower than to lease an entire physical office space in Hong Kong or if you purchase a property, then you staffing and equipping it with office supplies.  

Flexibility

Having a virtual office means you get flexibility both for you as an entrepreneur and your employee, they can work everywhere without going back and forth to the office. 

Complete services

Majority virtual office packages will include complete general services and diverse additional services that aim to make your business operate smoothly and without feeling discomfort.

In addition, virtual service systems widen job options for employees as well as hiring options for businesses.

Also Read: Limited Company and Unlimited Company in Hong Kong

What Does a Virtual Office Provide

Virtual office provide many services for business, there are:

Registered company address 

The registered address is the official address of a company with a legal entity or association. Typically, this address will be considered as a form part of the public record and is required in many countries where the company or legal entity is registered. 

A virtual office offers business a registered company address that helps businesses look a bit more prestigious than their actual office for example, their homes.

This registered company address is usually visible to outsiders and is used for invoices, agreements, as well as contact forms.

As for virtual offices in Hong Kong, companies must have a registered company address in order to receive information regarding business from the government. 

Correspondence

The definition of correspondence is a written form that happened between two parties. In other words, it is a way of conveying or exchanging ideas in writing and also making agreements between certain things. As in business, correspondence is often used for communication.

Previously, physical letters or telegraphs were used as correspondence. Meanwhile, today, we use emails, text messages, documents, social platforms as well as digital agreements for our correspondence.

Once you have registered a company address you can also use them for correspondence activities. There are diverse official letters such as a letter that contain cooperation with other companies or letters for the needs of the company, both can be sent to the registered company address of the Virtual Office.

Receipt of parcels

As you already have a registered company, you can use it to receive a post, small or big packages, parcels, as well as official government mail. It is also a great alternative place to a PO Box. 

Telephone lines to answer calls

The next service that can be obtained from virtual offices is a telephone line to answer call service. It is a commercial service that answers phone calls for companies' clients. This means you need a dedicated virtual receptionist to answer all of  your business calls that may come from across the world.

A virtual office offers you a receptionist service that can help create your meeting schedule in or around your virtual office. It will make your virtual office look less virtual for your customers as well as your business college.

Furthermore, you don’t need to pay a salary for this service and you don’t have to worry about answering sales calls that can waste your precious time.

Rent Conference Rooms

Conference rooms are part of the important elements for your business as you need a place to discuss or to meet with other companies. This means, there is a virtual place that is provided in order to meet a number of people as well as clients through talking, video chatting, sharing virtual documents, spreadsheets, and powerpoints, and enabling seamless communication no matter where you are located.

Virtual office also provides you with additional equipment such as presentations tools to support your business and to impress your clients, colleagues or investors.

Who Typically Uses a Virtual Office? 

With the advance of  today’s technology, it is not surprising that numerous businesses are capable of operating as virtual office users. 

Furthermore, virtual offices also offer many benefits that can attract business to use them as their office.

A virtual office can be used for all types of business, most of them are smaller companies, startups, and freelancers. However, larger and more established companies sometimes use these virtual offices for their business.

There are several reasons behind their decision to choose virtual business rather than to rent a physical office, such as testing the local market,  when they only need a temporary base, and startups or freelancers who want to minimize the overhead as we already know that virtual offices offer a lower cost for their services. 

We hope this explanation has given you more detailed information on the definition of virtual office, what services they offer, as well as what benefit you can get from it. If you need help to open your virtual business, we are always happy to help you with our best services.