Bizpro Ltd – Virtual Assistants

Emails seem to be taking over our lives! Some days it seems you could spend all day purely answering and sending emails and not getting any real work done. If this sounds like you, then now is a good time to get organised, and get in control of your in box before it controls you!

Organising your emails increases productivity and improves time management. In the last two days I have spoke to two people with email fatigue! One of whom had just returned from their two week holiday and it’s taken them 2 days just to shift through the mountain of emails they received, and the other had over 1500 unread emails in his inbox!

There is a better way!

Bizpro is kicking off the New Year with an exciting announcement, we are celebrating our first official franchise: Bizpro – South Oxford.

New Bizpro franchise owner Alison Wiltshire, says”I am very excited to be the first franchisee for Bizpro. I’ve worked alongside Kerry Anne Orr in Bizpro for a few months now and have seen first hand how it works and the business has grown. When Kerry first mentioned the franchise idea I knew I wanted to be a part of that success.“

Alison has extensive experience in administration, book keeping & financial management, and spent over 11 years as a Financial Controller for a well known local business. She has been working as a Bizpro associate since May 2008, so she knows the Bizpro brand and method of working very well and she is also well known and appreciated amongst our clients.

2009 is promising to be a big year for Bizpro. With our first franchise operation already up and running, we are now looking for additional franchisees to become part of our success story. Want to know more? Visit here to find out, or email us now for an information pack.

I’m a firm believer in accountability. That is, I feel that when someone is held accountable for something, and have someone to answer to they are more likely to achieve it. Most small business owners find they have to wear a number of hats, and have a myriad of tasks to achieve, but more often than not the only person who they are accountable to is themselves.

The difficulty with having no one to push you, no one to show that you did those tasks you said you were going to is that it’s very easy to let them slide. They build up and continue to grow and the bigger they get, the more we are likely to want to put them off. There will always be those tasks that you enjoy doing and those tasks that you don’t. Inevitably, the ones you don’t enjoy doing get put to the bottom of the pile.

I’ve recently been putting together my business continuity plans and procedures. Working out what Bizpro would do, and how we would do it should things go horribly wrong. It’s a good idea for all businesses, whether large or small to have a contingency plan, just in case.

This has, of course, got me thinking about what are the items that I really cannot function properly without, and, how I could work around them in the worst case scenario. Luckily for Bizpro, we believe we run a relatively tight ship. A lot of our work is based online, which means should our internet connection breakdown, we can still access our files and folders from anywhere that has an internet connection, such as the local library or hotels.

We are also fastidious in backing up files and keeping our virus protection up to date. All my work & emails are backed up online and offline, and, in my home office I have the choice of PC, 2 laptops and a netbook to use, so it is unlikely we would have much of an issue should we get a virus or one of the machines breaks down.

Of course, paperwork can be an issue, and regardless of how paper light we intend to be, there will always be some paperwork we need to keep. In an ideal world we would scan everything to ensure we have an electronic record, but in a small business this is just not possible. Instead, we keep most of our paperwork in a metal filing cabinet. It’s not ideal, but it should offer some protection in the event of a fire.

The real disaster for most small businesses is personnel. What would happen to your business if something happened to you? Would it just stop? Would those closest to you know what to do and who to contact? These are all things that every business should consider. Luckily for Bizpro, we now have a team of Virtual Assistants, and something as small as keeping a business diary (also kept online), allows them to know what is going on with the business, what I’m currently working on and who I’m currently working with, so I can rest assured my business is in safe hands should I be unable to work for a period of time. Not only does this give me peace of mind, it also means my clients can rest easy too, as their business is in safe hands.

Putting together a contingency plan is a worthwhile task for any business, regardless of size. Knowing that you are prepared should the worst happen, and you have a reliable and informed team available to step in or assist can be worth it’s weight in gold.

So, ask yourself a simple question – if the worst should happen, what would your business do?

Bizpro gets asked about telephone answering services a lot, and whilst we are happy to research the market for clients and get them the best deal, it’s not something we offer as a service ourselves. We believe that as Virtual Assistants & Virtual PA’s our focus needs to be on client work and not just answering the telephone. To us answering the telephone can be just as much of an interruption to our work as it can be to a client. We believe that if you are looking for telephone answering services you should look at a dedicated telephone answering service that is specifically set up to do just that.

And we should know!

We currently outsource all our reception calls to a firm called Kendlebell based in Swindon. We’re happy to admit we use a call answering service, as we are great advocates of outsourcing.

We keep telling our clients how beneficial it is, so we have to practice what we preach!

Kendlebell help to take the pressure off us. They know our service, what we offer, who deals with what, and we know our business is in safe hands. Answer phones aren’t really an option when it comes to business. Most callers won’t leave messages, and prefer to speak to a real person.

Who are we to argue?!