So you’ve been looking to get a bunch of tasks off your plate and freeing up some time for the more crucial work. But for one or more reasons, you don’t want to employ a full-time in-house assistant. You’re considering hiring virtual assistants and you’ve now realised that there are multiple options to look at such as freelancers and admin managed service providers.
On that note, we are going to discuss the differences between freelancers and a managed service, and also dissect their respective advantages and disadvantages:
Freelancers
A freelancer is someone who offers their services to you directly but isn’t restricted to your organisation alone. In a typical freelancer arrangement, the virtual assistant will work for you for a designated amount of time in a day or on a specified set of tasks.
However, outside that allocation, they can work for other people. Additionally, while there might be someone who initially pointed you to the freelancer, there’s usually no intermediary in your day-to-day collaboration with the virtual assistant and you’re also the one paying them directly.
Managed Service
With a managed service, you pay a firm for administration services, and the firm deploys virtual assistants on its roster to tackle the tasks at hand. The company you pay will be in charge of hiring and training these virtual assistants and making sure that there’s always one or more available to you.
This may mean that not every task you pass on will be handled by the same person but that’s not a problem – you’re paying these businesses for a service, not a person. It will also be up to the service provider to determine how much each virtual assistant will get paid based on the volume and complexity of the work they do, amongst other factors.
Advantages of Freelances
- When dealing with a freelancer, you have direct influence on the relationship with the virtual assistant doing your work. Therefore, you can easily gauge their suitability for the job outside their academic qualifications. If a candidate is lacking in soft skills, it can be easier to find out before committing to them.
- On average, a freelancer is likely to be cheaper since they do not have a lot of other overheads. Furthermore, a freelancer might be willing to take less money as a way to stand out from the other virtual assistant candidates who are represented by companies with larger marketing budgets. In saying this, with freelancing, there is little quality control, so although the cheaper option may be alluring, the risk of low skill level or output is high.
- When setting up a deal with a freelancer, there’s plenty of room to customise it down to small details like which portions of a task will remain in your hands. And once you start working together, you can continuously tweak this arrangement based on availability and other factors. This helps to maintain the virtual assistant morale since they don’t feel too constrained.
- There’s less bureaucracy involved in dealing with freelancers, which makes them ideal for unforeseen eventualities. A freelancer can quickly jump in to help with an emergency and then have a conversation with you about additional recurring tasks afterwards.
Advantages of a Managed Service
- Firstly, a managed service gives you access to a large pool of talent, meaning you can get virtual assistants with varying skills. So, in cases where you need virtual assistants with more specialised knowledge say in accounting, law or another field then having access to this much wider resource pool will be beneficial.
- Scalability is another bonus of the managed service offering. If you need to pull a team together quickly for a tactical project then your service provider will already know your business and be capable of mobilising a team of specialist virtual assistants at very short notice.
- Quality of work and delivery is also guaranteed to be of a more consistent and higher quality. The more established admin-as-a-service providers will have rigorous training and accreditation processes that all their virtual assistants will need to complete prior to working for clients.
- A managed service often comes with better customer support. If you have any qualms regarding the virtual assistants assigned to you, there will be a project manager to liaise with. Managed service providers will also provide regular ongoing reporting aimed at ensuring the best customer experience.
- When working with a managed service provider, you don’t have to worry about unavailability of your current virtual assistant. If they are sick or unable to attend to you for some other reason, the company will get a substitute immediately and your work will continue smoothly.
- Managed service providers also tend to have a more standardised approach to delivering virtual assistance, with strict procedures. These range from cybersecurity practises to confidentiality clauses preventing any reckless behaviour that could jeopardise the safety of data, applications and other resources they interact with when working.
Disadvantages of Freelancers
- When searching for freelancers, it can be a lengthy and frustrating process before you land on a candidate with the exact skills or experience you want. Consequently, you could end up having to hire various freelancers to get the entire skill set you desire. Not only is this expensive, it’s also tedious and time-consuming.
- If you’re dissatisfied with a freelancer’s services, there’s usually not much you can do. A freelancer rarely has a money-back guarantee and there’s no middleman to address your concerns.
- In cases where you’re working with an experienced and in-demand freelancer, you will have to keep everything within schedule. If you have any spill-over or sudden tasks to take care of, such a freelancer might not be available. In that sense, it isn’t ideal to bank on a freelancer for emergencies.
- There is no scalability with a freelancer, nor is there any contingency as it is a one to one relationship. When they are on holiday or ill, you’re on your own.
Disadvantages of a Managed Service
- In a managed service arrangement, you don’t have much visibility into the recruitment or selection of virtual assistants who will handle your tasks. The focus is on the service they are providing, not the person/people providing the service.
- Due to the fact that the service provider may often rotate the virtual assistants assigned to you, it can be hard for any one assistant to get into a rhythm. They could struggle to get used to the tasks and there might also be some inefficiencies during the switches, with the outgoing assistant having to bring the incoming one up to speed. If you are considering a managed virtual assistant service, it is crucial therefore to make sure the provider you are talking to has a thorough onboarding and contingency planning processes.
Factors to consider before choosing freelancers or managed services
Location
It is important to know where the virtual PA you intend to go with is based. Firstly, it helps you determine how knowledgeable they might be on issues particular to the country in which you intend to operate. Secondly, you may want to know how close they are to you in case you need them for a physical meeting or some other exercise.
Training
This is a crucial factor to consider, especially since the training occasionally involves elaborate equipment or software applications. Some managed service providers, like SmartPA, requires their pool of assistants to be trained and accredited, therefore assuring that they are skilled across a range of requirements. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where a virtual assistant is having trouble installing an app or can’t properly digest instructions being given remotely.
Contingency
One of the main differentiators with an established provider like SmartPA is the guarantee of no break in service. All their services are delivered through virtual Pod teams, so if one member is off ill or on holiday, it’s not a problem, there won’t be any service issue as the other members of the Pod will absorb the workload. With the average worker in the UK reported to be absent from the office for over 50 days per year through holiday, illness, and training days, roughly 20% of the working year, having a guarantee of no break in service is a compelling proposition!
Intermediaries
Particularly when searching for freelancers, there are many platforms out there that can make your work much simpler such as UpWork, Fiverr, People Per Hour and more. It helps to get acquainted with their policies and understand what measures they have in place to protect both the employer and the freelancer.
It is not uncommon for organisations searching for freelancers to fall prey to scammers, hackers and generally low quality pretenders..
In conclusion, individual freelancers are often better suited to micro to small businesses who are also quite flexible in the way they work. For a large organisation, it is better to deal with another centralised entity that takes on more of the administrative and support work associated with using a virtual PA group.
However, large organisations can also single out some of the smaller more specialised tasks and delegate them to a specialist freelancer who meets the standards they set for full-time in-house workers. Luckily, managed service providers like SmartPA can deal with both types of customers.
So whether an independent worker looking for one virtual PA, a large public or private organisation in need of numerous multi-skilled assistants, SmartPA has you covered. Book a meeting with our team and get the ideal virtual assistance solution for your unique needs.
About SmartPA
SmartPA is the pioneer of remote, admin-as-a-service BPO provision. We have in excess of 3000 customers world-wide. We deliver our services by drawing on the most appropriate skills and talent from within our internal CoE (Centre of Excellence) teams and our global network of over 350 fully trained and accredited franchise partners. Our CoE base is in the UK, we have a near shore hub in South Africa, and an offshore hub in Malaysia enabling us to support our clients where and when they need.
From the provision of individuals, to multi-skilled cross-functional teams, to full lift and drop admin process outsourcing, SmartPA has the skills, experience and processes to tailor the perfect solution for businesses of all sizes.