OFFICETECH®: a new paradigm in office services?

officeTech® is a start-up company providing office assistance over the Internet. It certifies assistants’ skills, matches them with potential clients, supervises the quality of the work done and provides software tools for on-line collaboration. The founder, Gayle Barr, believed that this type of assistance would soon be the predominant model due to a convergence of several trends. First, advances in the Internet technology GroupWare and their acceptance by managers and professionals coupled with growth in the amount of coordination across time zones due to globalization and expansion of the number of telecommuting workers indicated that clients would be willing and able to work in a virtual relationship with their assistants. Second, extensive corporate downsizing and a large number of home-based new business start-ups had created a large pool of clients who did not have adequate permanent assistance available. In addition, many companies were now using large numbers of part-time and contract workers on an ongoing basis for clerical and professional positions. Thus, Barr reasoned, the technology was accessible, the need for part-time and temporary administrative assistance was apparent and clients were now sufficiently comfortable with such arrangements that the officeTech® concept should be feasible.