How to Set Up a Virtual Office

In today’s global environment, workplaces are practically without boundaries, with employees located all over the world. And with increasing real estate prices, the concept of a virtual office has become a phenomenon desired and explored by numerous business people. With it, a company may be located at a particular place but the employees do not have a specific location. Instead, the employees conduct their day to day office affairs, negotiations and discussions from any place such as a hotel, a café or their own homes. Here's how to set up a virtual office.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

1. Determine a business address for your virtual office. It could be a post box number or you can use a CMRA (Commercial Mail Receiving Agency) mailbox service to get a corporate-sounding address.
2. Evaluate your connectivity options, such as e-mail, cell phones, online forums, instant messaging and VoIP.
3. Ready your location for the virtual office set up. Furnish it to your taste, create the atmosphere that you prefer and work from there. Ensure that there is ample room for gadgets such as computers, fax and telephone line. This is an ideal solution for a lack of corporate space.
4. Install the necessary equipment such as computers, printers, modem, CD writer and other optional hardware such as a web camera and scanner.
5. Install necessary software on your computers depending on your virtual office needs. Some of these programs are specifically designed for web conferencing, presentations or meeting scheduling. Also choose a reliable anti-virus program to protect your PC.
6. Ensure that your employees are connected to the central office by way of a computer network. If you have sufficient funds, provide them with necessary paraphernalia such as a laptop, Wi-Fi cell phone or VoIP equipment. This way you and your workforce can be connected efficiently.
7. Contact a telephone service provider and get your company a modern phone system with interactive voice response (IVR) facility. This will help you manage your phone calls without being on site. This is a comfortable and conducive mechanism, since it has the technology to divert a call to a necessary destination, it comes at a reasonable price and it charges by usage.
8. Set up an intranet facility meant to be accessed only by the employers of the company. This makes it easy to pass information, vital communications, files and documents. Or go in for the Virtual Private Network (VPN) so that full confidentiality of the transferred material is maintained.
9. Keep track of who is accessing the database of your organization by keeping logs of entry, exit and access information.
10. Schedule your official meetings with co-workers, clients or others over a cup of coffee at a location that is suitable to all. If all your contacts are unable to physically be present, ensure connectivity by using web cams, cell phones and instant messengers so that physical absence does not become a hindrance.
11. Ensure that your employees submit timesheets on a routine basis to record their number of work hours. Systematically evaluate these timesheets based on the estimated hours required for specific tasks.

Tips & Warnings

• A number of business applications come in the form of "suites" that include most programs required to set up a virtual office. Some of the popular suites are Microsoft Office, Lotus, Corel and AppleWorks.
• Back-up your data on a regular basis to avoid a complete meltdown of your day to day business in case the system crashes.