Reduce business costs with a virtual office

01 Mar 2019 | SMB, Software as a Service, Voice and Collaboration, Mobility, Digitalisation | 5-min read
 

As office rental rates continue to rise, Singapore has become one of the most expensive rental space markets in Asia. With affordable office spaces becoming increasingly difficult to find, business owners are turning toward remote working and virtual offices to lower costs.

How do SMBs ensure that productivity and efficiency is maintained, if not improved, with remote working and virtual offices? Below are some practical tips on how to reduce your business costs by moving towards a virtual office setup.

Even in a virtual office, it is important that employees are able to work together efficiently. Otherwise, productivity will suffer. Fortunately, there are many tools that have made collaboration in real time much easier. And doing this effortlessly is crucial.

A solution like Microsoft 365 for Business gives employees access to email and cloud versions of applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint from any device. Its Outlook tool and email service allows employees to stay in touch with one another as it integrates contacts, calendars and other tools to give employees access to important information from their emails.

It also allows employees to work together on the same document in real time and shows fellow team members’ changes. This improves productivity as employees do not have to waste time or effort in emailing documents back and forth.

Additionally, as changes are tracked, this makes the workflow clearer and improves operations. The loss of documents from computers crashing is also not an issue as files are automatically saved to the cloud. These documents can easily be shared via OneDrive.

Just because you operate a virtual office, it doesn’t mean that you are not able to maintain a traditional office phone setup. There are cloud-based telephony services that allow employees to handle calls while working remotely.

These allow full phone-system functionality anywhere — even from smartphones and tablets. They are also more cost-efficient because traditional phone setups incur regular maintenance costs for the physical hardware.

Singtel BizVoice provides a rich set of communications and collaboration tools on your smart devices. It has an Auto-Attendant feature that handles all calls to your business professionally with an automated receptionist. This service also allows for communication between team members with the ability to make intra-company calls easily by dialling the extension numbers.

Additionally, with Singtel BizVoice Unified Communications (UC), all business communications and collaboration tools are combined with a single app. Employees working remotely are able to place calls that display their office number even when dialling from their smartphone – wherever they are.

With this app, employees who are travelling can save on roaming costs by leveraging Wifi and connecting to your existing Singtel BizVoice network. It also allows you to seamlessly switch between desktop and mobile phones as well as communicate via video conferencing and instant messaging.

Connectivity is key to any virtual office. Make sure you have a reliable and strong internet connection wherever you go with a mobile broadband plan. For example, Singtel’s 4G Mobile Broadband plan lets you download large files at a fast speed so that your productivity does not suffer. Alternatively, SIM only plans offer large data allowances and no upfront costs – a cost-effective way to keep employees connected.