Virtual Office- How to choose a good Singapore virtual office?

VIRTUAL OFFICE- With the promotion of entrepreneurship by the Singapore government, many Singaporeans are going down the route of starting their own business. A lot of these businesses start off on a small scale, with the Singapore entrepreneur operating out of their home with just an online web presence. However a lot of these businesses will still want to have a respectable business mailing address in the city area for use on all their marketing materials. This is when a Singapore virtual office provider will come in. These virtual office operators will provide them with a registered business address for use on their marketing materials, and notify them when there are any mails for them to collect. Extension of such services will include mail forwarding, mail opening and scanning; call answering, fax 2 email services, virtual assistant A few of them will also provide other services such as incorporation of companies, web hosting, web design, and business consultancy.

Singapore virtual office can generally be divided into 2 categories. The premium categories include international operators such as Servcorp, Regus and Cityhub etc that have physical presence in several countries. They are well established and offer both service office and virtual office packages. Their premises are well done up and they are usually located in premium grade building. Expect to pay more than S$100 per month for a Singapore virtual office hosted by such a company. Their client base includes MNCs and well established local companies due to the higher cost of service.

The second category of Singapore virtual office is the budget category that is very popular among Singapore entrepreneur and even some cost conscious foreign companies. This is the category that we will be focusing on. Generally these operators do not offer service office. In fact, some of these operators will be operating out of a small office they have rented in the corner of a building or might be sharing the premises with other companies. It is important to go down to visit your Singapore virtual office provider. If you do not have the time to visit the virtual office premises, at least make sure you see some photos of the premises before signing up. It not unthinkable that somewhere down the road, your associate/clients will need to drop something off at the office for you to collect. Also most of Singapore virtual office providers will include some free meeting hours in their package and you don’t want the scenario of not being able to use the meeting facilities because you are too embarrassed to meet your customers there. While some of these operators run full time Singapore virtual office business, a handful will be running business that is totally unrelated to the service/virtual office and is just using this as a side line to supplement their income. We will exclude the last group of virtual office operator as they are definitely not the one you want to sign up with. Quite a few will be companies running secretarial services such as incorporation of companies as their core business and at the same time offering virtual office services. These companies are generally okay to use.

For Singapore virtual office in the budget category, you can be expected to pay between S$5 to S$20 per month for a basic package with just registered address. Bear in mind like buying all other products and services, expensive does not mean good and cheap does not mean bad. Do your homework and visit the office to see how they are set up and its possible to get a good deal.

After discounting the various categories that you should not go for, there is really not much to choose from.

Checklist (In order of importance)

1. Location- Best if located within 5mins walk of the nearest MRT station if you are going by public transport. If you are driving, check to see if there a convenient place to park for collection of mails.
2. Service- I put this as the 2^nd factor because generally speaking, if you avoid those dodgy part time virtual office providers, you are pretty safe and nothing much can go wrong. If you are looking for more sophisticated services such as call answering, then this will possibly be more important to you. Piece of mind is what you want to have here. Look for larger companies with at least 1 year of operation.
3. Price- Price range is not too big among the providers. You can expect to pay S$5 per month to S$20 per month for a basic virtual office package with just registered address. Prices will increase if you include other services such as mail forwarding and call answering. You can also be expected to pay more if the company has a longer history and track record.
4. Meeting Room- While its convenient to work from home, you never know when you might have to meet that client or supplier of yours. It will then be good to have a nice cosy meeting room to meet him/her. Have you seen the meeting room? If in doubt, ask the virtual office operator to send you photos of their meeting room and office. For more meeting room resource in singapore you can visit, www.meetingroom.com.sg
5. Online Order and Payment- This can be important for some of you that do not want to have the hassle of going down to visit the premises. While I highly recommend going down to visit their office if you can, you can do a search on Google or Yahoo for “Singapore Virtual Office” if you want a provider that supports online ordering and payment.
6. Other services- I will consider this to be the least importance of all the factors. After all, you are paying the company to provide you with virtual office services and not to design your webpage etc. Of course it will be nice to have a one stop shop where everything is done for you on the spot, but other services can easily be source from the web.

Steve Chua
CEO
Uber Studio Offices
www.uberstudio.com.sg
60 Tras Street #02-01
Singapore 078999

Uber Studio is Singapore's leading virtual office provider. They offer a comprehensive suite of services including mail forwarding, fax 2 email, call answering, virtual assistant. They also hold monthly Business networking session for Singapore Business and Singapore Entrepreneur.