As we continue to move the business world into the digital universe, certain options and alternatives arise that must be considered. One of the biggest is the physical existence of your business itself. At one time, a company would be represented by its property, region, and specific market. But today, there is no reason to be so narrowly defined. You might not need a building at all. Some people can do almost everything from their phone. Others require an office, but a room at home will often suffice. In these cases, you should likely be considering a virtual address for your business. Here are some reasons why.
- Legal Reasons: Registered companies need to have an address on file. But you have no control over who has access to that address. Suppose you use your residential address, which could be inviting spam, phishing, harassment, customer issues, or other inconveniences to your home. It is better to have a virtual address for your protection. Today personal privacy is becoming very difficult to maintain. It is best to do what you can to protect your in-real-life identity.
- Convenience: One of the aspects of having a virtual office is that physical mail is received and can be checked, scanned, and forwarded to you. You will rarely need to go to the post office. Another factor is that your mail, both physical and digital, is received at a central location. It will be stored with sufficient redundancy, so you will not easily lose it.
- Expandability: Expanding a physical office space to accommodate new employees or products is complicated and expensive. With a virtual office, it can be done in minutes. With unlimited expandability, you will be able to take advantage of changing market conditions without overextending yourself with high overhead.
- Access to Markets: Communities, cities, and countries often like to favour local businesses. If your address is from out of town, you might not be considered equally in bids or proposals. One of the advantages of Virtual addresses is that you can often add a new one for the area you are expanding to. It can be essential if you are trying to start a business in another country. And there might be certain tax advantages as well.
Having a virtual address is an uncomplicated way to improve your companies reach without increasing overhead. The virtual office should represent considerable savings. And those savings can be applied to generating more business opportunities. Going forward, it is safe to assume that having a virtual address will be the standard rather than the exception.