Virtual PA services have seen exponential growth over the last decade as Managers enjoy the benefits of their own dedicated PA, without the responsibility of employing a full-time member of staff and enabling them to pick up and put support as they and their business need. VASS, Virtual Assistant Strategy Support, work in the same manner, providing necessary support when you need it, and without the formal SOW as a consultancy piece.
A VASS is essentially a C-Level member of your team without a day job, a manager without portfolio to keep focus on the areas you need to drive forward.
Each VASS is a MBA Qualified Consultant, previously working at C-level, 15+ years experience, to ensure that what you receive is supportive, relevant insight, and added value rather than just formulaic data presentation, giving you confidence to outsource elements of your strategic planning and get support on items you need.
Why is a VASS different to a normal consultant? – They facilitate what you need to do strategically, including research, interviews, monitoring, road-mapping and organising – giving you the extra hours you need in a day.
Large organisations often manage this challenge with an appointment of a key C-Suite role such as a Chief of Staff, Chief Strategy Office and Planning or Director of Innovation. Strategy is owned by numerous people across an organisation, but these key pivotal roles play a central co-ordinating role, conducting the orchestra of different teams and programmes to ensure that new avenues are explored, underpinning market and company research and data is available to support key strategic decisions and the strategy is communicated, operationalised and brought to life throughout the whole organisation.
Small and Medium sized organisations do not generally have the level of resources to commit to this. While most people recognise the need for these outside skillsets in turnaround, in-trouble situations, those that are fast-growing in a recent survey showed they were most likely to think they didn’t need it versus other key resource such as delivery optimisation or marketing support, however in reality, fast-growing organisations benefit from this equally, if not even more than those in turnaround. Fast growth organisations are typically changing and growing with such a cadence that the organisation can easily become out of synch and fail to optimise on all of the opportunities, or the quick fixes needed to grow at such a pace suddenly become a bottleneck which doesn’t scale to the next level. Having this supportive structure means that they accelerate much faster and rapidly pivot as needed, especially in unprecedented times like we are seeing now where agility and differentiation is going to be key to competitiveness.
Engagement models include:
- Intervention – A short term, defined project. Often research or communications-based to support In a particular period.
- Retainer – An agreed charge per month, to be used as call off-hours as needed, or ongoing support services to support day to day business under a set of KPIs.
- Flexible – No minimum monthly engagement, pay by hour used when needed, same day services available at a premium.