Specialist Virtual Assistants
Club "Where virtual staff meet virtual
employers"
Specialist Virtual Assistants Club has been
recently established and is committed to filling the professional
virtual services gap on the Internet as a portal bringing together
professional virtual assistants for serving virtual employers both
individually and in coordination.
SVAClub is founded
under the umbrella of Point Co., has been active in the engineering
field since 1977. As part of our activities, we used to need
subcontractors or part-time employees for completing various tasks.
Similarly, we had served many other companies as a service provider
on tasks for which our office personnel had professional
qualifications. In the early 1990's, we made our first agreement as
a "Virtual Service Provider" with an International translation
company on engineering translations. In later stages, with the
further development of the Internet, we have started concentrating
on "Virtual Business" where we can both hire assistants for our
tasks and serve other companies that need our services
electronically. Knowing the fact that most of our business will
shift into the cyber world in the near future and after considerable
experience acting both as a virtual assistant and a virtual employer
in various fields ranging from engineering to programming, from
translation to presentations, we investigated how we could expand
our horizons through the Internet. As part of these efforts, we
noticed that there is a real gap in virtual services, especially in
the engineering discipline. Finally, we have decided to initiate a
club where virtual staff could meet virtual employers
professionally. That is why the name of our club contains
"specialist". Furthermore, the SVAClub Web site was also put together by the aid
of several "Specialist Virtual Assistants" in Web and animated gif
design, translation and presentation.
We all buy products
and/or services physically, which requires direct contact with the
suppliers. As the Internet grew, our "shopping" routine started to
change from physical to cyber.
First born as buying products on
the Internet and now expanding into buying services which
mostly relate to "business to business", the Internet and
e-commerce are currently growing by 200% each quarter. There
will be a 2000 % increase in e-commerce revenues on the
Internet in the next 18 Months. According to latest
statistics, 32 million households now have home-based
businesses and that number grows every day. Consumers
worldwide are spending 6.6 billion U.S. dollars a year in
transactions over the Internet. In the past 14 years alone,
the numbers of home-based businesses has grown from 6 million
to 32 million with no slow - down in sight. In fact, an
estimated 8,493 new home businesses open every day. It has
been predicted that up to 32 billion US dollars will change
hands through online business transactions by the end of
2000.
Although the Internet, e-commerce, e-job,
e-business and e-.... are growing so fast, buying products or
services on the Internet is a new experience for most people and
organizations. You don't see the supplier's building, physical
storefront or office and you can't look into their eyes or hold a
product. Because of the somewhat insecure nature of the Internet and
customer habits, there are some difficulties with e-business. There
are also different challenges involved in handling virtual service
e-commerce compared to product e-commerce.
Products are
physical things you can touch after you buy, services are not.
Someone may evaluate and more or less classify the quality of goods,
but it's harder to do the same for services. When you buy products,
the price versus quality criteria ("bang for the buck") are
relatively straightforward. When you purchase services, this
evaluation is harder.
So, in order to establish an optimal
environment for the trading of "Virtual Services", we have to
generate a scheme in which both parties will have 100% satisfaction
as every person or organization tries to maximize their efficiency
and profit during such "shopping".
As our main consideration
is the "services", furthermore "virtual services" which can be
rendered electronically and supplied over the Internet, both the
buyers' and the sellers' confidence in this business is very
important. This confidence is achieved by first establishing mutual
trust and an understanding that both parties will practice proper
business ethics. There are further main criteria in virtual services
such as task cost, quality and completion time. The relative
priority of these are determined by the parties on a case by case
basis.
Finally, the best environment is achieved if and only
if both parties have a professional profile in the field of their
activity. Our commitment is to grow our club by accepting only
"Specialist Virtual Assistants" and by keeping track of performance
to end up with real professionals. The same applies to virtual
employers and we shall evaluate all feedback on virtual employers as
well as on our members and eventually filter out all
non-professional individuals or organizations from our
content.
We know that establishing such a club and such a
"clean" database will take some time, but this is our
commitment.
