Have you ever even heard of the term virtual office space?  Neither had I, until yesterday.  We had a big office conference meeting yesterday; the topic of discussion was about expanding the business into different marketing areas while minimizing the expenses.  One of the participants in the meeting brought up the suggestion that the company consider using a virtual office space.

She explained that with a virtual office space, our company would, in essence, outsource the basic office needs to another company.  The company she was familiar with is called Davinci.  They have hundreds of office locations throughout the United States.  Their services include providing their customers with live receptionist service, access to conference rooms for meetings, and a variety of other business associated services such as toll-free or local telephone and fax numbers, electronic fax, online command center, email, digital voicemail, fax to email, voicemail to email, unified messaging, call screening and forwarding, outbound calling, order taking, and customer service.

This is a solution that a lot of companies have been using when they are considering expanding into an area without making a large investment early on, setting up a test market area.

The receptionist does not just answer calls and takes messages, but also schedules appointments and is well versed on the company so the receptionist can also answer questions about the business that he/she is representing.  Part of the service includes being able to use their locations as a physical office address for the purpose of printing on business cards, and being able to use their conference rooms for meeting with clients.

I went onto the website of the Davinci company after the meeting to see where their locations are; they have about ten different office locations in the general area that our business is considering expanding into.  So I think that this is a definite possibility.