Being one of the first companies in Latvia to start providing virtual office services in Riga, we would like to share our knowledge and experience in this industry.
What is a virtual office?
Development of the Internet and communication technologies makes doing your business remotely ever more simple. Nowadays, the presence of a company in a foreign market no longer requires costly rent of premises and maintenance of a dedicated office. Thanks to the availability of remote communications, entrepreneurs often resort to creating virtual offices of their companies in foreign countries, letting professionals take care of the practical issues, thereby saving their costs considerably.
A virtual office helps maintain a company’s operations remotely, even in a foreign country, with no need for permanent personal presence on site. Commonly, the standard package of virtual office services includes:
- Rent and registration of a legal address in Riga: the address used by a company for the official registration of its business. It can often be a prestigious address in the centre of the city
- Mailing address and correspondence forwarding: All mail received at the legal address may be forwarded to the address specified by the customer.
- Virtual phone & fax number in Latvia: when calling the office, the company’s partners and customers talk to the secretary, who introduces him/herself as an employee of the company, accepts the call and leaves a note for the recipient or forwards the call to the predefined number. Another frequently offered option is the automatic call forwarding, while large customers are even provided with their own remote call centre.
- Rent of conference premises in Riga: in order to have a meeting with business partners, a n entrepreneur can rent fully equipped conference premises at the address of his/her virtual office.
What are the advantages of a virtual office?
As it was mentioned above, one of the main advantages of a virtual office is the considerable economy resulting from the lower maintenance cost thereof as compared to a physical office. Usually, a virtual office is available for rent for just a small share of the price that would be payable for the rent of premises, the utility costs associated therewith and the salary of a secretary.
Secondly, a virtual office is one of the most convincing ways to prove the activities of a company in a specific country or city. For instance, having a virtual office in Riga, a foreign company thereby declares its presence in the Latvian and European markets, not just through the registration of the company in Riga, but also by means of having an active local phone number and other office attributes.
Whom is a virtual office suitable for?
Primarily, a virtual office is ideal for small and young enterprises that do not require their own office premises, yet need an address in the centre of the city to receive mail, an office phone number with a secretary and the opportunity to use a conference room in Riga. Apart from that, a virtual office may prove useful for companies that prefer to work remotely.
Secondly, thanks to a virtual office in Riga, foreign merchants planning on doing business within the territory of Latvia get an opportunity to maintain a subsidiary enterprise, a branch office or a representative office without having to hire local employees or paying excessive rent for costly premises while still having access to the incoming correspondence, maintaining a legal address and having a local phone number.
What matters when choosing a virtual office?
First of all, the virtual office service provider must have a convenient infrastructure for controlling the virtual office, which includes call forwarding, mail forwarding and other ways of communicating with the customer. Thanks to ten years of experience and the usage of cutting-edge technologies, BBCRiga can offer its customers high-quality service combined with the employment of the most up-to-date technologies and tried and true processes, which makes the quality of our services exceptional.
Secondly, choosing a wrong partner to maintain your virtual office may not just cause unnecessary headache for you, but even ruin the image of your company as well. For example, certain companies providing virtual office services do not examine their customers preliminarily, which may result in “sharing” a virtual office with disreputable companies using this service as a cover for their activities, which can also be illegal in many cases. That is why BBCRiga always performs the customer identification procedure, which helps us reject customers practising suspicious business activities at an early stage. This procedure lets us maintain good image and the prestige of the rented address.
Another important aspect when renting a virtual office in Latvia is a secretary skilled in numerous languages. Therefore, in order to ensure the availability of our services to local and foreign business partners alike, experts working for BBCRiga speak Russian, Latvian and English.
Please check our website for more information on our proposals regarding the rent of a virtual office in Riga and other services associated with business registration and guidance in Latvia.
