A high-level Virtual Assistant will enhance growth at a lower cost allowing business owners to focus more of their time on core business activities. Firefighting between company admin and planning growth be draining and debilitating.

The agile nature of how a virtual assistant works helps to control costs, as business owners only pay for the hours that are worked and do not need to provide a physical working space, laptop, broadband, utilities or stationery.

Some concerns raised about Virtual Assistants are: internet speed, lack of familiarity with business processes, reliability and privacy. I would like to address these here

1. Internet speed – I use a high-speed fibre optice broadband service – and for backup, I have a reliable mobile supplier to hotspot from in the event of a broadband outage.
2. Lack of familiarity with UK business processes – I have lived in worked in London for many years. I understand the business landscape and am comfortable liaising with organisations such as HMRC, ICO, and other professional organisations in the course of my everyday working life
3. Reliability – while I have other clients, I aim for a 48 hour turnaround of ad hoc unscheduled tasks. I endeavour to push urgent tasks though quickly. The most reliable way to know tasks will be completed is to schedule time in my diary in advance.
4. Privacy – some of the measures I take to ensure privacy and security are
- I only work from secure internet connections
- Passwords are complex and changed regularly. I use the password manager, Lastpass.
- I routinely use two factor authentication
- I use Windows 11 Pro, with Bitlocker enabled to encrypt shared files and documents
- I keep antivirus software and firewalls up to date on my devices

The Virtual Assistant services I provide fall into three categories.

1. The first category is the day to day administrative function of a company, which include
- inbox and calendar management,
- organising travel arrangements,
- preparing for high level meetings
- management of electronic filing systems
- setting out and formatting reports and presentations
- invoicing, and reconciling expenses
- project management and general ad hoc duties

2. The second category is the social media function where I will research and create content, schedule the content for publication, engagement with users and monitor the statistics

3. The third area of service I provide are online events. These event can be small, intimate, interactive meetings or large webinars. I offer a wealth of knowledge and experience to enable the smooth delivery of online events.

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Detailed overview of Services
For a great workflow, a company needs to keep some vital elements of their business organised. This include – good email management, efficient scheduling, meetings that focus on an outcome, secure and accessible file sharing and bookkeeping. To let these slip can mean missed deadlines, being unprepared and appearing disorganised and unreliable.

Done in a haphazard way, these tasks cause headaches and feelings of dread for everyone and may, ultimately lose a company clients.

Done well, it is a pleasure to have a workflow where all the pieces come together with ease and good preparation becomes a way of life.
Meetings

Successful meetings begin with a clear vision of what the goals of the meeting is supposed to achieve. I have assisted executives with processes that enable real outcomes from meetings.

From ascertaining who will be in attendance, to preparing agendas, sending invitations and liaising with relevant stakeholders – I endeavour to make sure the pieces are in place before the meeting begins.

For online meetings, I look after the tech function and during the meeting, I am at hand to take notes and record who has responsibility for specific actions to be taken.
After the meeting, I correlate the minutes and action points and circulate to the attendees and other interested parties.

Bookkeeping

I started my career working as an assistant auditor for a firm of chartered accountant, which gave a good understanding of accounting, and the journey from bank reconciliations to trial balance. In my later work as executive assistant I have ample experience of reconciliations, analyses of expenses, invoicing and raising purchase orders.

I have worked with Quickbooks and Sage accounting and am an advanced user of Excel

Project Management

All projects have three constraints - cost, time and quality – and executives must decide which of these are their priority.

I can assist in setting out a project in a Gannt chart to identify the critical path of a project – the path that takes the longest time - and monitor the progress of the project as time moves forward.

I can act as a coordinator using software like Asana or Trello to set out the tasks, distribute information and allocate responsibilities to specific groups and individuals.

Social Media

A social media presence creates brand awareness and can act as an effective tool for customer services. It is a must have for most businesses that deal with the public.
- I can research effective strategies of competitors and keep an eye on what topics are trending in your industry that can be used to promote your business.
- I can design social media images, banners and presentation and I can make video edits for social media, maintaining a bank of social media assets for future use.
- I can also schedule posts to be published at certain times, engage with users and monitor the stats of each post to understand how to improve for the future.
- I can help create and implement a social media strategy to grow the reach of your company and allow people interact easily, giving you useful instant feedback of what is going right for your company and where it can be improved.

Virtual Events

Virtual events are used for networking, training course, team building and social outlets in both small intimate settings and large webinars. Regardless of whether the event is open to the public or by private invitation only, I can help set up the event to make it a successful and pleasurable experience for everyone involved.

1. Early stage planning is the set up stage, where invitations are sent out, the event is promoted and material are prepared.
2. The late stage planning is alignment to ensure the smooth delivery of the event. This means that everyone understands their role, the tech is ready and tested, behind the scenes communications are set up and material are in place and shared with everyone who needs them
3. During the event, I am on hand to assist any participant or panel member who are having problems with tech, which is usually of an audio or video nature. I assist the facilitator or presenter with the delivery with tasks like - monitoring chat, managing breakout room, sharing documents, running slideshows, spotlighting speakers, recording and streaming to social media. I am the go to person for anyone in the event environment who are having difficulties
4. Post event, if it is required, I correlate feedback from the participants of the event, upload recordings to YouTube and request feedback from the rest of the team, to learn from the experience.

Please contact me if you need a Virtual Assistant with my skillset to discuss how we could take a professional relationship forward.