Virtual Offices Rely on Advanced Technologies for Communication and Collaboration
As I noted earlier, remote and virtual work force (also called the Human cloud) where people collaborate and offer their services using the internet is growing much faster than onsite employment, where a “permanently employed” personnel (as if there is really such a thing) reports in person every day to a physical location. I found an interesting article on Virtual Workforce Communications by Melanie Slaugh which talks about how such a virtual work force, which includes not only folks working in creative and IT positions but also technology and financial executives – stay in touch with each other. The article covers the full spectrum of communication vehicles ranging from old-fashioned snail-mail to older electronic means (wire and fax) to ultramodern Instant Messaging, Smart Phones, Skype and web based sharing.
Yes, while rarely used, snail mail is still useful when you need to send 100s of pages of un-digitized documentation, and nothing beats talking over phone – be it a landline or a wireless call and hearing another human voice though it’s more and more supplanted by mixed media electronic tools such as skype, GoToMeeting and other websharing tools and Google Docs.
on July 29th, 2011 at 9:52 pm
Real Estate offices are “virtually” unnecessary these days. Paying high office fees in order to use a “fax” machine, copy machine, office phone or for office meetings has become a thing of the past. A laptop and a Starbucks is the new office. My “new” real estate company uses a virtual office for staff meetings and any education we want or need is within our online education center where we attend classes together and can collaborate on projects and transactions in various “virtual” office settings. We have online 24/7 live communication available throughout the U.S and Canada between brokers and agents and use Google apps for docs, faxes, communication and the latest available technology to stay on top of the latest listings and updates. We have the best and greatest software developers and trainers as well as award winning brokers who have come together to create a new paradigm for buyers and sellers.. All this allows us, as agents, to share our information with our clients who may be out of the area. Using video and YouTube we can offer detailed information about properties and share requested information immediately while we are personally viewing the property they are interested in.
At the end of the day it frees us up to pay more attention to our clients needs and to be more flexible with our time. There is nothing more important than the trust and relationship we can build with our clients and being ahead of the curve technologically helps us stay in touch minute to minute with our clients, and any distance issues melt away as we provide the best customer service. As a vendor at amazon.com and google.com I have had to keep up with advances in technology to provide real estate services to my clients who operate mostly in this arena, and finding a real estate company who thinks like I do has been an amazing fit for me. After all, I think without virtual offices, real estate would go the way of travel agencies except for the need for collaboration and documentation. People just don’t walk into their “local” real estate office anymore to purchase a home. And real estate agents don’t need to meet in a brick and mortar office to share information, ideas and the lease.