Understanding the Virtual Office
To understand the
concept of a Virtual Office, one should look simply at
how the concept arrived at its name. The term Virtual
is an idea applied in many different industries with strikingly
different implications and connotations. However, Virtual,
as used colloquially in the Executive Office/Shared Office
industry has a meaning that is very much like ‘pseudo’
or ‘not authentic’ or ‘in spite of appearances’
meaning something that is ‘almost something else
but not quite really that which it appears.’ The
classic example of the word Virtual would be as used in
the phrase “She is virtually (almost) my girlfriend,”
or “that which is not real, but appears to be real.”
The term Office is defined as a room or area in which
people work. One’s Office may be a bench in a park
or the counter at a local bar or restaurant, a room set-aside
in ones home, or the floor space in a building or even
a building dedicated entirely to one company. A typical
Office usually refers to the location where white-collar
workers are employed.
When you combine the two words you get: The Virtual Office;
a place that is not real, but appears to be real, but
where one conducts their business.
The term Virtual Office is generally recognized to have
been coined by Chris Kern in September 1983 while writing
an article for an in-flight magazine, American Way. In
that article Chris was trying to describe the use of portable
computers for businesspeople and the flexibility they
have by virtue of the capabilities of the portable computers
(the term used in 1983). With the advent of the new technology
at the time (portable computers) businesspeople could
appear to be at their desks in their corporate headquarters
when in fact they may be thousands of miles away from
their actual corporate office. Chris went through the
exercise of defining and describing each word that he
had applied to the phenomena and coined the term “Virtual
Office.” The term Virtual Office struck a chord,
primarily with the “dot-com” industry that
was typically made up of one or two techno geeks who needed
just a little space that they could sit with their portable
computers to create whatever they were creating. The space
that they would be occupying at that precise moment would
be their office, but not really a traditional office,
thus the Virtual Office, a ‘pretend office.’
Virtual Offices in the Executive Office/Shared Office
industry have evolved from the concept of Corporate Identity
Programs (CIP) where a businessperson needed a prestigious
address established for business status, or for licensing
requirements or to receive mail and packages, they may
have needed to have their phone lines answered, or a place
to host the occasional conference, or even to have a physical
office for a few hours or days, all without the higher
fixed costs of an office under a long term lease that
perhaps they could not afford at the time. As the technology
changed, such as fax machines, color high-speed networked
copiers, T-1 lines, broadband width, teleconferencing,
VOIP, internet, email, voice mail, voice-mail to email,
fax to email, conference calling, etc, the CIP quickly
became known as the Virtual Office to better describe
the concept of the temporary use of any or all of the
technologies and facilities.
Typically, the user of Virtual Office services would
be those who are:
- Seeking a low-risk alternative to renting a conventional
office;
- Testing a new product or service idea;
- Downsizing from a conventional office;
- Migrating from using a post office box;
- Temporary escape from the kids and pets at home to
conduct a business meeting;
- Seeking to establish a business presence in the provider’s
country or city;
- Seeking a business address within an expensive location,
for a corporate image purpose;
- Seeking a business address as its registered business
address for complying to government regulation;
- Seeking supportive business services such as answering
services;
- Seeking a proxy for collection or “fielding”
of mail and parcels.
Virtually any industry that utilizes to any degree mail,
telephone, and broadband width, conference rooms, meeting
rooms or an occasional office becomes an ideal candidate
for a Virtual Office.
The Virtual Office has evolved in of itself, breaking
down into different types of needs or functions and the
user pays only for those specific needs that the user
has on a short term basis. All Virtual Office packages
are structured to the specific use that a user needs.
Such packages: |
