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Virtual Office is like having a parallel office
on the web and making it accessible globally.
The interface is intuitive with decent graphics
and interactive feature. About our concept of
Virtual: A common concept about virtual reality
is like a walkthrough where you see just walls
and furniture. At most the experience is made
more realistic by controlling climate (may be
the smell/ fragrance also) and the visuals. When
we talk of virtual reality, we believe that this
should be a replica of the whole real experience.
Virtual Office, in this case will have both the
virtual look and feel of the office, and also
should have virtual personnel. One should be able
to use the virtual office just like a real office.
This is a complete collaboration tool. Virtual
office is the ultimate solution for organizations
that have their presence spanned over multiple
locations.
Following
are the features/ components of the virtual office.
1.
Basic Features: A 3 dimensional look and feel
of a real office with interactivity built in.
Users across the globe can visit your office and
interact with the staff. The office has the replica
of real rooms, and there is a small site map provided
for maneuvering through the rooms. Real World
Images of the rooms are can be made available
for the users to view. Visitors when log in to
the virtual office, they can see the staff members
(and other visitors) in the particular room they
are in. The staff can discuss with the visitors,
and invoke processes remotely on the visitors
PC (if he so wishes), which can be used to showing
demos to the user. Thus by simply entering a few
commands, the office members can give the visitor
a feel of visiting the real office. Office can
be custom designed (spanning many floors and multiple
locations)
2.
Collaboration tool: The virtual office can
be used for sharing files/ documents and even
working on them together. The Document management
component of this suit lets authorized users (possibly
from other branch of the organization) visit the
office, and also search and view the documents.
Not only can you share documents, but you can
even share various applications remotely.
3.
Team Task Tracking: As described above as
a separate product, this tool is a part of Virtual
office, where the management can assign tasks
and track progress. This essentially frees the
project managers from being bound to the location
for managing the operations, thus increasing the
efficiency of the individuals and processes.
4.
Communication: This tool can be used for interoffice
communication, be it closed group secure messaging,
internal mailing, broadcasting of notices/ messages,
voice mail/ voice chat etc. The natural extension
of the virtual office is …
5. Virtual Conferencing: In the distributed
offices scenario, often one needs a joint meeting/
interaction among the managers, one needs brain
storming sessions, and also sometimes conduct
education course for some staff from all the offices.
This process involves a great loss of resources.
This would include traveling, lodging, boarding
for the people, and more importantly a great loss
of their time. With virtual office, you are free
from all this. You can just set up a Virtual Conference,
invite people (or may be even distribute the virtual
entry passes). You can select the ambience for
the Virtual conference room (Could be historic/
antique look, could be a modern room or could
be an open discussion on the beach) You have everything
that is needed in the actual conference and more!
The Virtual Conference room is equipped with a
white board, where a speaker can take control
and draw graphs, flow charts, regular diagrams,
and this will be transmitted in real time to all
the members even on the smallest of bandwidths.
If you have video conferencing equipment, you
may join in video conferencing (which again could
be a 1 to 1 or a round table conference) otherwise
you may be able to get in with voice/ text messages.
As this is a scaleable solution, you can be a
part of the conference irrespective of the infrastructure
limitations. The minutes of the conference/ meeting
are automatically recorded, and can be used for
future references.
6.
Virbot (Virtual Robot): The virtual office
can have unmanned, artificial intelligence based
robots or Virbots, who can interact with the persons
logging in. For example a Sales virbot will be
able to give sales talk, show presentations and
interact with potential customers. A technical
virbot can be used for technical problem solving,
technical support etc. An insurance virbot will
be able to show different insurance schemes, showing
pros and cons and giving right suggestion to people.
(Thus doing the work/ helping many insurance agents,
describing things to the customers) A virbot can
be equivalent to thousands of people doing the
work. Virbots can be used for various fields,
like marketing and sales, tech support, Banking,
retail shopping, Education etc. |
