Virtual Management for the Real World

With online businesses you have to find the right way to manage them effectively. Sometimes virtual management works but could lack clarity. Find out how you can mange your virtual business successfully.

For small businesses, creating a website and conducting a virtual business is more affordable and realistic when it comes to hiring employees and cutting overhead costs.

While this works well in terms of low start up costs and leveling the playing field, there are complications that small businesses usually don’t consider ahead of time. This includes communicating with partners and vendors, creating an efficient website, and connecting with employees who work from home.

Take a moment to consider how you’re going to run and manage your virtual business. You should anticipate possible problems and solutions so your business can be a success.

Managing Your Virtual Business

When you are managing a small online business, your primary concern needs to be the ’employee’, which is the business itself. This means you need to figure out how you are going to run your business in order to make it efficient in providing everything your customers need.

Set up an order taking, processing, and shipping system to make sure you can accurately take customer orders and ship them.

One way to ensure you have a working website is by researching web hosts that offer these services.

In order to maintain a steady supply of products for your customers, you need to communicate with your partners and your vendors in an effective way.

While it may be easier to send email to people about what your business needs, you might also want to talk to them in person. This way you can be certain that everyone understands what is expected.

Meeting in person can help in the long run because you can forge a business relationship that will stay strong even when things go wrong.

When You Decide to Hire Others

Once you’ve learned how to manage your tasks and the people who are helping you handle those tasks, you may notice that virtual management is completely different from meeting with people face to face.

Since you won’t be able to monitor your employees regularly, you will need to be able to communicate your instructions clearly. There are several ways listed below to help create a virtual management system.

Set up a instant messaging system – This way, everyone will be able to sign in to ask questions or ask for further instruction. You can also tell when people are working and when they are away from their desks.

Create multiple ways to contact each other – It’s best to have multiple ways to contact your employees and for them to contact you. Email, screen name, phone numbers, and alternate phone numbers are best.

Create clear job descriptions or project descriptions – When you offer clear job descriptions for the work you need done, you should have no problems getting your business goals accomplished. Signing off on all job descriptions shows that everyone understands what needs to be done.

Virtually managing employees and vendors may be faster and easier in some respects, but it does take a bit more attention to detail the communication from both employer and employee.

Since the virtual management isn’t 100% reliable, you need to be ready with alternative ways of handling the issues at hand. Such as contacting employees by phone and letting them know of the situation.

Like this? Share it with your network:

I need help with:

Got a Question?

Get personalized expert answers to your business questions – free.

Affiliate Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning we get a commission if you decide to purchase something using one of our links at no extra cost to you.