Buyer Case Studies

Business Challenge:

Hire technical and admin staffing in a highly-competitive job market

O'Connell Meier began developing websites for clients in the mid 1990s.  In 2004 the company expanded into creating company-owned websites marketing subscription services.

Additional staffing was required to support this initiative, creating a major obstacle to overcome.  Due to its location just outside of Washington, D.C., finding and keeping talented employees is difficult and costly.  The federal government, defense contractors, major law firms, national associations, and other companies all compete for skilled employees.

"This area really hasn't been hit hard by economic issues," said Lynn.  "It's difficult for a small company to offer the level of benefits and stability good tech and admin support people can command from big employers like the federal government."

To support their new initiatives, the company needed additional support and development capacity but the company's staffers were already fully utilized and the difficulties recruiting full-time staff threatened to stall the new initiatives.

Solution:

Utilize Elance virtual assistants

O'Connell Meier decided to use Elance to create a virtual assistant team after reading about Elance in Tim Ferriss' book "The 4-Hour Workweek".  Initially, they planned to pair assistants with individual executives. After working with several firms, Lynn realized that the assistants could be far more effective if they worked together as a team to implement larger projects. She decided to use Elance provider TransForm Solutions on a consistent basis. 

TransForm assigned a dedicated team lead and four employees to work with O'Connell Meier.  Training was critical:  The remote team was trained using a task list and tools like Central Desktop software sharing and web conferences with the company's product experts.  After three months, Lynn decided the team could handle more of their needs and Transform has continued to add team members.

Results:

Dedicated virtual assistant team creates increased efficiency

• In addition to handling administrative tasks including creating sales proposal templates, site documentation, internet research, and e-mails, the TransForm team created instructional training videos for O'Connell Meier's websites.  Company salespersons now spend less time training customers and the "clients love the videos", says Lynn. 
• TransForm also provides support for company executive staff on an as-needed basis, creating special presentations, developing spreadsheets, and even making travel plans.   The TransForm team is now in the process of developing a technical support center for web clients and will be taking on more programming and user support functions.
• "Hiring the TransForm team has allowed us to do a lot more in a shorter period of time than we could do otherwise," said Lynn.  "We now have a dedicated team who has learned our product well enough to add to our website and assist with tech support - we really trust them."