In fact, the amount of time for task is calculated based on manifold factors of which many cannot be exactly quantificational gauged by time scale. At Bpovia, we take following aspects into consideration:

1 Get familiar with the task and fully understand the instruction.

2 Time spend on communicate.

3 Time spend on task.

4 Time spend on writing report, if necessary.

5 Time spend on quality control, if necessary. We have internal quality control procedure in order to provide high quality service to our clients.

The above five factor together determine how much time should be allocated to each task and ensure that the client will get a satisfactory outcome.

Bpovia has work out project plans for different kinds of task in order to help you with time control issue. For instance, 10 hours are enough for 1-2 researches, simple graphic design, translation etc. Technical support such as Website Maintenance, HTML / CSS modification, Blog / WordPress Maintenance and Online Forms/Widgets are best done on project basis of 40 hours. We also recommend full time (8hours 5days/month) service for clients who wants customized application designs, or is interested in China Business Development. (Click here to see the pricing)

Time is the core issue of virtual assistance service. Therefore both sides–clients and service provider—want to make the most of it. As a leading provider of virtual assistance service, Bpovia ensures state-of-the-art service using proper amount of time. Through years of perspiration and efforts, we won customer trust by integrity and professional way of doing business. We commit to employing client’s time in economical manner and all we want is your trust in our profession intuition.

Geely, an independent automaker that has struggled to raise its profile in overseas markets, has long coveted a stronger foothold in Europe. Coincidently, Ford has been trying to sell Volvo since late 2008 to focus its resources on managing its core Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brands. The deal is China’s biggest overseas auto purchase and represents the most ambitious move by a homegrown auto brand. Geely Chairman Li Shufu said “Today represents a milestone in the history of Geely.”

In fact, it is not only a milestone of Geely, but also an epoch-making point of Chinese national industry and Chinese investors. The acquisition demonstrates to the world that China is ready for overseas expansion, in other words, Chinese enterprises are looking for a larger share of world market with full pocket of capital.

Today’s China surpasses the role of “World Factory” and is moving towards a major “World investor”. If you are looking for investments for your enterprise, China is definitely a must-visit destination. Many people complain about losing direction when searching into China market. The problem can be solved through BPO (business process outsourcing). Bpovia is a leading virtual assistance provider in China. It can help you do market research, find business partner and investors through virtual support. Using advanced techniques such as  online marketing and SEO (click here to check out its services), Bpovia can get you closer to the target market, client customer and financier. There is a sea of business opportunities in China but few foreign business men can fully explore them. Since no one knows Chinese way of doing business better than Chinese themselves, it is to your advantage if you hire a team of marketing personals native to the country.

Since most of our work is done on or through the Internet, lack of interpersonal communication seems a concern for the success of projects. To reduce misinterpretation, we employ every possible means to get in touch with client personally. Phone calls, live chat and conference are daily practice in office. Virtual assistants of Bpovia will timely and considerately make adjustments as long as you tell us about your latest ideas. Effective and Nice interaction and communication will lead to win-win results, this is what we are deeply convinced of.

Worth mentioning is our web construction and graphic design and SEO services. Apart from formatting according to customer needs, we also focus on innovative and original designs for concepts and proposals. If you have a great idea in mind but could not execute it on your own, talk to us and we can help you with it on project basis. Creativity constitutes the core value of Bpovia team and we believe that it is the fundamental force behind company’s development.

Bpovia aims to push the envelope of virtual assistance provider and you will see how hard we are working to offer more than you expect once sign up as our client. It is our honor to support and help you on your way to success.

Pricing is usually a major point that a user pays so much attention to. In terms of the price, it is almost the same among three providers. However, the pricing plans between these three providers are dramatically different. As you can see in the pricing chart, iContact provided more than 12 pricing plans which are the most among the three. More pricing plans mean that they are more likely to meet your own demands according to your own actual email list size, so that enable you to make best use of the plan instead of wasting your money on those redundant size. Another point worth mentioning is Pay As You Go pricing plans of Vertical Response. Pay As You Go allows you to send your email without a time limit, which makes your email marketing more flexible according to your own schedule. Pay As You Go is especially suitable for those companies who have a relatively small email list size to send each month. Besides, speaking of free trial, all the three providers have free trial, in which Constant Contact offers the longest free trial, lasting 60 days.

Basic Pricing	Pay Monthly			Pay Monthly
	Email List Size	Monthly Fee		Email List Size	Monthly Fee	Annual Fee
	0-500	$15.00		250	$9.95	$107.46
	501-2,500	$30.00		500	$14.00	$151.20
	2,501-5,000	$50.00		1,000	$19.00	$205.20
	5,001-10,000	$75.00		2,500	$29.00	$313.20
	10,000-25,000	$150.00		5,000	$47.00	$507.60
	25,000+	Call for pricing		10,000	$74.00	$799.20
				15,000	$109.00	$1,177.20
				25,000	$149.00	$1,609.20
				35,000	$239.00	$2,581.20
				50,000	$379.00	$4,093.20
				75,000	$529.00	$5,713.20
				100,000	$699.00	$7,549.20
				100,000+	Call for pricing
Other Pricing	Time Advance	Price Discount	Nonprofit	NGO Discount
	6 Month Prepay	10% Discount	20% Discount	20% Discount
	12 Month Prepay	15% Discount	30% Discount
Free Trial	60 Days			15 Days

In addition, you don’t pay for office expenses such as utilities, desk, chair, computer, and the office space itself.

20% of the U.S workers’ working time is wasted in surfing the internet and chatting online; in specific, an online survey of 2,057 employees by online compensation company Salary.com found about six in every 10 workers admit to wasting time at work with the average employee wasting 1.7 hours of a typical 8.5 hour working day. Personal Internet use topped the list as the leading time-wasting activity according to 34% of respondents, with 20.3% then listing socializing with co-workers and 17% conducting personal business as taking up time.

This is by no means an exclusive story of America; in fact, it is shared by many other countries all over the world. Those net-addicted workers who spend part of their office hours in non-work related online activities are undoubtedly dragging down the workplace productivity. Then how to plug the problem?

At present, the seemingly “most effective” way agreed and carried out by many companies is relying on some technological surveillance means to track the employees’ use of the office internet. But are those policies really “effective”? Unfortunately, issues related to workplace privacy are triggered due to such special monitoring mechanisms, which in turn, induce to unwanted and costly litigations. Therefore, these policies, in the long run, must fail to boost the declining workplace productivity. Then, can we find a way out that can turn out to be really effective?

“Such temptation is always present, especially in fields of employment where one experiences a lot of down time.” said by a supervisor of a chicago-based trading company. Attention please! The key words here are “down time”. It is exactly due to too many “down time” at the employee’s disposal that the private use of office internet becomes easily available. Thus, can the “down time” be cut down? Or can the time of finishing each specific task be at the managers’ disposal? If this is possible, then the workplace productivity is really promising to be rejuvenated.

Fortunately, BPOVIA virtual assistant is very likely to make the dream come true. BPOVIA is the leading virtual assistant firm in the world. BPOVIA is the first and only virtual assistant service provider in the world ever won the prestigious "Top 100 global companies in 2008" awards by Red Herring magazine and "2008 Red Herring Asia 100 Most Promising Technology Companies" Awards. By hiring such a virtual assistant from BPOVIA, working time can be saved to a great extent! This is because the VA’s working time is totally at the manager’s own disposal. The manager can add, modify, cancel, or suspend any service at any time based on his/her business demand. Furthermore, it is even more cost-saving, for there will be no other extra fees such as staff welfare and taxes compared with a full-time employee.

A double-edged sword as the internet is, it is always likely to reduce costs and increase profits for companies. The success secret, however, lies in those wise users who can make the best use of the most efficient on-line assistance services to create themselves the most profits.

“Several important factors involved with their failure include: Too much competition, little service provider differentiation besides price, high service provider fees, no locality of services, ambiguous project descriptions, cheap Indians, as well as cheap Indians, and last but not least, cheap Indians.

Lets start from the buyer’s perspective. I think I made a pretty decent example. I’m a company CEO (or to dumb me down, startup founder) and I needed a business plan made and my website programmed from the ground up. I go to Elance.com, I submit a project that says I need these things done and I want to work directly with the service provider to make it happen. 50 Indians bid on my project, each going cheaper than the one before him, and I realize that they all suck. They don’t know what I’m looking for, so how can they adequately do my project? I want them in front of me so that we can plan the process out easier, but they’re in India and have a language barrier. Great. Now that I’m frustrated, I leave Elance and wasted over $200 in bidding fees for the service providers who bid on my project.”

Good point! Since post a project on elance is free. There are too many fake or dummy projects out there. Some buyers post projects simply to get an idea of the cost or to try to find free work. But bid on project is not free. Service providers will soon find it is waste of time to use Elance.

“From the service provider’s perspective, let’s say that I’m an Indian. I know that I’m good at programming, I know that I’m good at business, and I know that I speak perfect English. Mr. American goes ahead to post his business plan and programming project request for a really stupid idea. I look at it, nod, and make my bid. 49 other Indians bid with me. Mr. American is thinking, where the hell do I even start? How do I know that Mr. Indian can speak perfect english when I have to interview all 50 of these guys to know which one is right. Too many choices isn’t a good thing. Mr. American doesn’t buy from me, I wasted a lot of time and some money on a lost lead.

Of course, all of this is a problem for both the buyer and seller. The lack of quality service providers steers away the quality leads and buyers. Few buyers means fewer qualified service providers. At this point, the marketplace has failed. Elance has been treading water for the past 7 years and haven’t changed their model at all. They went into enterprise software for a few years, but that didn’t go very far.”

Very good point. The lack of quality service providers steers away the quality leads and buyers. Since most of the bidders on those sites are  typically freelancers, self employed and work at home. The reliability and quality of service are highly unpredictable. Elance is just middleman or marketplace so they have no control about the bidders at all. More and more dispute happened on elance. Serious business can’t depend on freelancers for outsourcing.

Some real life experience about elance users:

http://highfade.com/2008/09/27/elancecomterribleexperience/

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/elancecom-c55889.html

http://www.lawguru.com/cgi/bbs/message.php?i=265026830

BPOVIA takes the concept of “eBay of Outsourcing” to next level. All BPOVIA virtual assistants are full-time employees working in the central service center. BPOVIA brings corporate employee management, state-of-the-art IT infrastructure and sophisticated project management system together to ensure the high quality, reliable and cost-effective service.
Why we are better?

1. Quality and Reliability of Service.
Most of the bidders are typically freelancers, self employed and work at home. The reliability and quality of service are highly unpredictable. All of BPOVIA employees work full time in our central service center. We have dedicated quality control department.

2. Availability.
We are real company. We are always available when our clients need us. You won’t get that luxury when you work with freelancer or part-timers.

3. One-stop solution.
We have the capacity to provide one-stop solution of essential business services like administrative task, website design, graphic design, internet research, market research, data entry, accounting, CAD, word processing etc. Our clients don’t need to deal with multiple freelancer bidders at Elance anymore. That eliminates a lot of headache and management overhead for our clients.

4. Support
Freelancers at Elance maybe suitable for One-Off project。
We are trying to build long term win-win relationship with our clients. When you need us in the future, we are here to support you.

Elance, ODesk and Guru maybe suitable for someone who only care about the price. But if you are more serious business owners who are looking for a cost-effective solution, you should think about BPOVIA.

Pudong New Area

2010 will be such an important landmark that the Pudong New Area will have turned its aims into reality. Firstly, it plans to achieve annual turnover of 70 billion Yuan in software and information outsourcing and an annual turnover of $1 billion in offshore outsourcing. Secondly, 50 software firms each with an annual turnover of over 100 million, 60 biomedicine R&D outsourcing firms, and 30 firms offering financial services outsourcing will have become a part of this area. Last but not least, it plans to have a highly effective industrial development platform.

The Shanghai Outsourcing Research Center which is created by various levels of government in the purpose of making a plan for China’s outsourcing industry, drawing up a national standard and working out an industry report, made its final settlement in Pudong at the end of 2007.

Changning
Changning district, with an area of 37.2 sq km, locates in the downtown area, and it is well-known to all as the Hongqiao Economic and Technological Development Zone, one of the earliest national-level development zones in Shanghai that focus on modern service.

Changning has an ideal transportation system. On the one hand, there lies the Hongqiao International Airport. On the other hand, the under-constructed Hongqiao transportation hub will connect with the Beijing-Shanghai Express Railway, Shanghai-Nanjing Intercity Railway, the proposed Shanghai-Hangzhou Maglev Train, and other expressways, roads and the airport.

Having got the name of the China outsourcing pilot district, Changning is qualified enough to enjoy the fame such as the Shanghai Multimedia Center, Shanghai White Cat Huigu Information Center and Airport- related Economic Center specifically for outsourcing.

Companies in this district do extraordinarily well in IT offshore outsourcing, and a steady climb in engineering design, financial back office, digital games and outsourcing of other professional services. Many important corporates do business in this district, including Shanghai DGT Information Systems, one of China’s top 25 software-outsourcing firms.

As is named by Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Changning is a comprehensive model district for the development and utilization of national information resources. It will take the advantage of information technology to reach a new height in its outsourcing industry and invite more firms to join in.

Its target is to create a good investment environment, especially effective and open government services, fast flow of traffic, logistics, capital and information.

Luwan
Luwan district lies in the north part of the Shanghai city, covering an area of 7.5 sq km, and is next to the Huangpu River which is the future location of the corporate halls for the Shanghai Expo 2010.

Luwan is rich in cultural heritage, and has an advanced traffic system, complete infrastructure and facilities. It’s a place where gathers more 100 of the Fortune 500 enterprises and where lies the regional headquarters to numerous multinationals. Over 20 outsourcing firms, with an annual turnover exceeds 100 million each, settle in this district. And six of the top 20 business process outsourcing firms have a presence here.

The district set its sight to build two clusters, one of which lying in the north aims to deal with high-end outsourcing corporate headquarters and the other of which in the middle and south is to deal with the cooperation of high-end outsourcing firms. It also set its sight to attract three kinds of outsourcing forms: leading outsourcing firms in their special segments; headquarter-type outsourcing firms with the functions of management, settlement and outsourcing; knowledge-intensive outsourcing firms with big investment in human capital, strong innovation and high interaction with clients.

And it attaches great importance to the four fields, i.e. information technology outsourcing, mainly system integration, development and operation; business process outsourcing of professional services such as human resources, banking and accountancy; business process outsourcing of productive services such as logistics, settlement and agency; and knowledge outsourcing of design and R&D services such as construction design, advertisement design.

Finally, it set its sight to build four outsourcing model centers: Shanghai International Information Service Outsourcing Center; Shanghai Outsourcing Standardization Model Center; Shanghai Outsourcing Intellectual Property Rights Model Center, and Shanghai Human Resources Outsourcing Model Center.

Caohejing New Technology Development Zone
Caohejing Development Zone was designated one of the model districts of Shanghai by the Ministry of Commerce in November 2006. This reputation comes without any question. Caohejing Development Zone has spared no effort to push the outsourcing industry forward, an industry that would bring about substantial opportunities. And also, outsourcing, one of the essential elements in modern service flourishes in the zoon with the further-deepening of economic globalization and the adjustment in global strategies by multinationals.

Caohejing avail itself of the favorable government policies, industrial cluster, complete infrastructure and abundant resources to carry out its outsourcing framework in which information technology outsourcing as well as research and development design has been paid special attention.

Caohejing will go on with the development of the outsourcing industry during the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10). The outsourcing, especially global offshore outsourcing, will be taken as one of the zone’s major tasks. The zone has not only always been ready to give a hand to the companies in the zone with more global outsourcing services and to enlarge their services in scale, but also made effort to revise the pattern of the zone’s economic growth and improve its strength.

To see part 2

Are you interested in the business opportunities in China?

China is one of the world’s great growth markets and is likely to be for many years to come. Foreign companies often face difficulties in assessing Chinese market demand and enacting effective strategies because of the language barriers, culture differences, and high expense.

BPOVIA is the leading virtual assistant and Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) service provider in China. BPOVIA is the only virtual assistant company ever been nominated for the prestigious “Red Herring 100 Asia” Awards 2008. Combines international perspective with local know-how, BPOVIA can provide our clients China business development service and help our clients doing successful business in China.

Please visit http://www.BPOVIA.com/ for details about our service.

100 winners are from 20 countries and regions.

BPOVIA is the leading Virtual Assistant and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) service provider in China . Established in September 2007, BPOVIA had already made a big impact on the virtual assistant industry. BPOVIA is the first virtual assistant and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) service provider in China to ever be nominated for this prestigious award.

Red Herring Global 2008, 100 Winners

To see Red Herring Global 2008, 200 Finalists, please click here.