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How a VA can help you with Project Management
Project Management is one of those wishy-washy terms that you might not be sure of unless you are actually doing it.
What is Project Management?
A project is something that is temporary with a defined beginning, middle and ending. Project Management is the application of processes, skills, knowledge and tools to achieve the projects’ objectives.
How can a VA help?
Good VAs are great at organisation, multi-tasking and generally getting stuff done: all the qualities sought after for a Project Manager.
They are capable of handling the project from beginning to end ensuring that tasks are completed and deadlines are met.
A Virtual Project Manager can also:
- Keep you within budget
- Keep the standards high
- Deal with organisational requests
- Monitor and supervise the key stakeholders so that a report can be pulled together at a moment’s notice
- Keep track of timesheets and invoices so that freelancers and contractors are paid on time
What are the advantages of hiring a VA as a Virtual Project Manager?
Aside from managing the project a Virtual PM assist with other duties. Think about what else could be outsourced? How about replying to emails, coordinating teams, providing customer support. The list is endless with a talented VA on board.
A VA can handle all of the smaller tasks so you can see the bigger picture. Your Virtual PM can send you timely feedback whilst you focus on the running of your business.
Hiring a Virtual PM means that the day to day running of the business can continue. You only hire the Virtual PM for the duration of the project and only pay for the time spent on the project.
Asana – our Project Management tool of choice
When we embarked on one of our latest Project Management tasks, we were introduced to Asana. It has changed our life at Red Desk VA and we haven’t looked back.
We were finding that as our company grew, trying to coordinate tasks was getting more and more difficult and our inbox was full of project updates.
Asana is billed as “teamwork without email” and allows users to plan and manage projects online without having to use email. We love it as when a new task is assigned, or the status of the project changes followers get a notification to your inbox.
Asana is free to use if your team is less than 15 people. Pricing for larger teams and organisations varies depending on the number.
If you are struggling with a project, give Red Desk a call today and we can take care of things for you.
Handy guide to photo storage
With the rise in digital photography, made all the more accessible by mobile phones we can at times find ourselves inundated with photos. But what is the best way to store and share your images? There is an overwhelming amount of options available to you and this handy guide aims to cut through the maze of choices.
External Hard Drives
High capacity external drives are one solution with a dizzying 3TB drive now available for just under the £100 mark. These are a great if you just want somewhere to keep your images; however as with all things computer related there is the potential of them failing or becoming outdated.
Cloud Photo Storage
A better solution by far would be to subscribe to a cloud service. Simply, a cloud service hosts all your data, giving you all the convenience of an external hard drive without the cost and the need to update the hardware. They require very little effort to set up and the photos are backed up automatically or at the click of a button at most. There are several providers out there from the Google’s offering of Drive to probably the most popular service Dropbox. With a range of plans to suit everyone needs, Dropbox’s free account equips you with 2GB of space, with a paid account giving up to a 500GB. Dropbox has an auto sync feature, which means that any pictures that you take with your smartphone will be backed up and synced with your computer within seconds. It also gives you the ability to share chosen files with friends and family, while ensuring that you are still in full control of the privacy options.
Social Media Sites
It would be hard to ignore the draw of social media sites, especially with the ease of which they allow you to share your photos and photo galleries with family and friends. The obvious choice for this would be Facebook although there have been constant media reports regarding privacy and who actually owns the rights to content. That leads us to Flickr and Picasa, which are both a happy half way house between photo storing and sharing. They have tools for editing and managing your photos, with flickr offering a massive 1TB of space with their free account.
However you choose to tackle the problem of storing and sharing your pictures; the wealth of options means it has never been easier to find a solution that suits your individual needs with a minimum of effort.
If you need any help with the above please contact lindsay@reddesk.co.uk
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