Virtual assistants—the human ones, as opposed to voice-enabled bots—are more popular than ever. The shift to all remote work dissolved the biggest barrier executives faced in hiring remote administrative assistants, and there is no looking back.
If you haven't thought (yet) about how a virtual assistant could save time by taking on administrative tasks, you might need some help knowing what a VA can do and what kind of skills and experience they need. This article covers the essential software tools VAs should know.
Hiring a VA is all about saving time and money. As the saying goes, you can't manage what you don't measure. Time management software tells you where your VAs time goes.
Time Doctor is one of the leading time management platforms. Its key differentiators are:
Virtual assistants need to use the tools that executives prefer, not the other way around. Usually, the skills are transferable between platforms, and VAs can quickly learn new software.
Other time management software platforms are:
No surprise here since Zoom has become the Coke of colas and the Kleenex of tissues. The brand defines the video conferencing category. Video conferencing is now an essential skill for everyone, especially remote assistants who need to meet with executives and their teams from anywhere.
Zoom shot to stardom because it simplified video conferencing into a one-click application that even grandmothers and churches started using during the pandemic. Key features include:
Other video conferencing software platforms:
No surprise here either—Slack is the communication method of choice for most of the business world. Email use is declining for quick communication because it isn't speedy. Messages sit in people's inboxes, and expectations for response times are longer. Slack enables swift, real-time communication.
That said, it is essential to set expectations for response times with instant messaging. Do you expect a virtual assistant to reply immediately? Guaranteed response times can be a challenge if an assistant has more than one client.
Key Slack features include:
Other communications platforms for instant messaging include:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is the lifeblood of most businesses. It's where all your customer contact information and activity reside, and when used properly, provides a powerful 360-degree view of your business. A CRM is essential for most businesses, but the best software choice here is less clear.
Yes, Salesforce is the gorilla in this category, but its prohibitive cost and steep learning curve have made room for other increasingly popular solutions. A critical capability of Salesforce is that the platform is customizable and can be programmed to do and record anything a sales team needs.
Key features of the Salesforce CRM include:
HubSpot is an increasingly popular alternative to Salesforce that combines simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and scalability. The free version is a highly functional CRM for small businesses with:
HubSpot's CRM is even more powerful when integrated with its marketing automation platform. From HubSpot, you can build email campaigns, qualify and score leads, call and email, generate popup lead forms and landing pages, build marketing workflows, and run social media campaigns.
Other CRMs that are popular include:
Here we have the clash of the titans: Microsoft and Google. Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) and Workspace (formerly G-Suite). It is not a clash, though, because most of us need to be fluent with both platforms. That is because, while businesses typically standardize on 365 or Workspace, emails, documents, and invitations get shared between companies using both platforms. Virtual assistants will need to open Google docs and sheets, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint docs.
Workspace and Microsoft 365 have their pros and cons. Workspace was born in the cloud and is more transportable. It is also more flexible—you can convert Google docs to Word docs and open Word docs in Workspace. Microsoft apps were born on floppy disks and are easier to use offline because they can live on your computer.
The primary uses of these platforms by virtual assistants are:
Both platforms are essential for virtual assistants.
Other productivity platforms include:
Concur has emerged as the leading business travel planning and expense management platform. Since the independent Concur was acquired and integrated into Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) giant SAP, it can be compelling for SAP users. But Concur is also the leader as a standalone travel and expense management solution.
Concur automates travel and expense planning. Companies can set policies that restrict travel choices based on cost and convenience. Below are some key features Concur offers:
When you compare fares, routes, hotels, rental cars, it takes 12 hours to plan a door-to-door business trip. That is why travel and expenses are among the most common tasks delegated to virtual assistants. Standalone flight and booking apps like Google Flights and Kayak can take on the travel planning part but do not offer integrated expense management, one of the more significant headaches of business travel.
With 46,000 customers, Concur is the leading travel and expense platform. Other platforms include:
Finding qualified leads is not difficult if you know what you are looking for, but it is time-consuming and easy to delegate. If you know your ideal customers' industries, job titles, locations, and other characteristics, a virtual assistant can do the prospecting and list building for you.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the gorilla in the prospecting space. It is not everyone's favorite prospecting platform. Still, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the most popular simply because of the size of its contact database—some 600 million users dwarf other popular options (ZoomInfo has 100 million contacts). LinkedIn also lets you triangulate based on people's postings, interests, who they follow, and companies they have worked for in the past.
Key features include:
A knock against Sales Navigator is that LinkedIn makes it tricky to build email lists to use outside of the platform. Even then, most LinkedIn contacts use their personal email address because it is more permanent than a work email, so if you reach out via email, you will be doing the equivalent of calling their home phone.
Other prospecting platforms include:
HubSpot is the market share leader in the marketing automation space. Businesses use it to build lists, launch email campaigns, create drip workflows, integrate social media outreach, and more. HubSpot also simplifies lead qualification and scoring, enabling you to target high potential contacts based on their behavior on your website and interaction with your emails.
While a virtual assistant will not draft your emails or social posts for you--they are not content creators--they can do the backend work of setting up, running, and monitoring campaigns. A VA can:
HubSpot leads the market in part because of its free CRM. Once a business is comfortable with its CRM, HubSpot's marketing automation platform is an easy choice for email marketing. That said, if a virtual assistant has experience with one platform, they can learn another very quickly. Other marketing automation platforms include:
Graphic design, like content creation, is subjective and requires skill and experience beyond which most VAs will have. Platforms like Adobe Creative Cloud are complex, professional tools for trained designers. That said, VAs often manage graphics after professionals create them. A great tool to do that with is Canva. Canva is easy to use, has a free version, and has plenty of stock images, stock video footage, and templates. You can upgrade to a paid version for higher-quality assets.
A virtual assistant might not be able to create brand-friendly graphics, but they can:
A picture is worth a thousand words, and good imagery is key to getting your message across. As your VA gets to know your business, story, and customers, they can perform higher-level graphic work. Just do not expect them to be designers.
Managing multilingual communication and content can be daunting for virtual assistants who must manage diverse client needs. Centus is a powerful translation and localization platform that streamlines this process, enabling VAs to deliver polished, multilingual output efficiently.
Centus simplifies translation workflows with automation and a user-friendly interface. It helps virtual assistants save time and focus on other priorities, making it a game-changer for those who handle global clients.
Key Centus features include:
Other translation platforms to consider include:
Whether it's translating marketing content, product descriptions, or internal communications, Centus empowers virtual assistants to deliver high-quality multilingual solutions with ease.
The software platforms mentioned here are some of the most used by VAs to support executives. While each is built to save time, many tasks are time-consuming and do not require executive-level skills. However, the projects still need to be completed by someone competent, who pays attention to detail and is accountable for quality and deadlines.
These are by no means the only tasks a virtual assistant can do, but they are the most common starting points.
To learn more about how to work with a virtual assistant, check out this guide.