We recently had a request to do a sponsored review of BPOVIA, a Virtual Assistant Service. Their main selling point is the ability to cut your costs by 60%. How do they figure?
They assume that an In House, Full Time Employee will cost:
- $30,000 base salary
- $6,120 benefits (15% of salary)
- $5,304 vacation, sick time (13% of salary)
- $4,896 payroll taxes (12% of salary)
- $2,856 administrative costs
- $3,600 equipment, maintenance
- $2,100 space and equipment
The total therefore is $54,876 to hire a full time employee in house.
By comparison, their full time virtual assistants cost $950 per month. There are no benefits, vacation or sick time, payroll taxes, admin costs, equipment or maintenance costs, or space and equipment costs. The total you would have to pay on an annual basis is therefore $11,400.
More on BPOVIA:
BPOVIA is the largest virtual assistant service provider in China.
BPOVIA’s primary business objective is to provide small and growing companies with an on-demand and one-stop solution of essential business services varies from data entry, word processing to the tasks require more advanced skills like website design, graphic design, internet research, etc.
BPOVIA believes tapping into cheaper labor overseas isn’t just for large companies, but for mid-sized and small companies as well. Smaller businesses can achieve the same benefits from outsourcing as larger ones. BPOVIA’s major target customer is small and medium sized companies.
I’m not sure how they justify putting maintenance in the cost calculation twice and if all the additional cost assumptions are actually fair representations but even if you cut those extra costs in half, you’re still experiencing significant savings.
This is the first I’ve heard of Chinese virtual assistants – most of the companies I’ve seen are from India or other Asian countries – but it only makes sense that the service would expand to China.
Depending on the task I believe you can hire workers outside of the office to work remotely. I currently have two people (Americans) who work for me on a part time basis every month who I’ve never met before and I found through elance. It’s been a wonderful experience working with them but there are many tasks I would never outsource.
If you are considering outsourcing, make sure that:
- The tasks are clearly defined and easy to do. If it requires your constant input and having to explain things dozens of times then it’s going to be very difficult to make it work.
- They can communicate properly in English. I once called one of the largest virtual assistant companies in India and I couldn’t understand the person who picked up the phone. She couldn’t understand my questions either and ended up just telling me to email the company’s help line.
- They are responsive. With that same Indian company, I did email them thinking that perhaps my experience with the woman on the phone was not necessarily representative of what their other workers were like. I never got a response from my email. Needless to say, I didn’t hire them!
BPOVIA looks ok on paper. The real test will be if they can actually deliver on their promises like the other virtual assistant companies are failing to do.
Matthew Toren is an Award Winning Author, Serial Entrepreneur, and Investor. He Co-Founded YoungEntrepreneur.com along with his brother Adam. Matthew is co-author of the newly released book:Small Business, Big Vision: “Lessons on How to Dominate Your Market from Self-Made Entrepreneurs Who Did it Right” and also co-author of Kidpreneurs.
Interesting article. I suspect that BPOVIA will have the same difficulties other overseas virtual assistance companies have. The failures are often related to communications difficulties, due not only to language differences, but differences in culture and ethics as well.
Glad to see you also use virtual assistants from America as well – it gives you a better frame of reference for an article like this!
There are virtual services in America as well. Places like Davinci Virtual http://www.davincivirtual.com/ provide virtual office assistants that can provide many of the same features offered by BPOVIA. There are many others out there too so if you are worried about the language barrier and communication problems you can get the same thing in the USA and Europe.
I’ve hired VA’s to do some limited work for me and it has gone okay. There are some language barriers usually, and the time zone differences can be a challenge (there working when I’m in bed and vice versa). Overall it’s been good, and I think I’ll continue to use VA’s in a limited capacity.
Matt
Thanks for the info, I will have to consider this for growing my business.
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We are using BPOVIA’s service. They are simply great. Their hourly rate is below $10 per hour.
BPOVIA is the only virtual assistant service provider ever been nominated for “Red Herring 100 Asia” Awards 2008.
I would like to find some thorough comparisons between different VA companies. I have been using GetFriday for over a year and I am disappointed. They do save me time in the end but they often cause me to spend more time explaining again and again what I wanted, not reading my emails properly, omitting part of the request etc. Competencies are very limited. Even very simple tasks such as checking flights get done in sloppy ways.
As to the comments on this and some other pages: some of them look like they’re trying to advertise for somebody. I would like to see more thorough, critical user reviews… If anybody can refer to a page with something like that, please go ahead…
Good article. Looking back to one year ago, my firm came across financial deficit, which was a terrible disaster then and I couldn’t afford to hire local employees, in order to continue my career and pay off the debt, I picked a full-time virtual assistant from BPOVIA, well, I should say it was their help that I could pull my company into the right track. Now I have 4 full-time BPOVIA virtual assistants working for me beyond our shores, of course I hire local ones, but I think there are some advantages, in addition to the lower costs, that local employees cannot compare to.
A very good article and well written blog.
It’s the first time I know bpovia, and the meaning of virtual assistant.
By browsing bpovia’s website, I feel its rates are a little bit higher.
Anyway, I think the virtual assistant services are very meaningful.
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