Amara Chen, founder of a 18-person SaaS startup, lost a seed runway extension because a stalled integration slipped three weeks and delayed a $480K contract. The root cause: fragmented task ownership, overloaded inboxes, and no one proactively driving cross-functional milestones.
This article is strictly about the ROI of hiring a virtual assistant for project management and how that single hire—when structured as an Executive Assistant with project responsibilities—recovered time, reduced slippage, and prevented revenue loss.
Hiring a Virtual Assistant for project management is not a cost-center plug-in; it’s a leverage play. A vetted Executive Assistant offering Administrative Support can reclaim founder hours spent on scheduling, stakeholder follow-ups, and status synthesis—work that scales poorly when done by the CEO or head of product.
Compare labor economics: a freelance assistant at $30–$50/hour versus an in-house project manager at $100–$150k/year fully loaded. The VA model converts fixed overhead into variable, outcome-driven spend while delivering measurable throughput improvements.
We introduced the Sigrid R.O.I.T. framework to quantify value quickly: Reclaim, Organize, Implement, Track. Each stage maps to specific tasks an Executive Assistant or Virtual Assistant Services team executes to generate ROI.
ROI is straightforward when you track three things: hours reclaimed, cost of the VA, and incremental revenue or avoided cost from faster delivery. Use this baseline formula: (Value of Hours Reclaimed + Avoided Costs + Incremental Revenue) ÷ Cost of VA.
Example: a VA at $40/hour working 20 hours/week = $41,600/year. If the founder’s time is valued at $200/hour and they reclaim 6 hours/week, the value recovered is 6×52×$200=$62,400. Add avoided contract losses of $50,000 from one expedited launch, and total benefit is $112,400—an ROI of ~170% in year one.
BluePeak Media, a 12-person digital agency, hired a MySigrid Executive Assistant for project management at $38/hour, 25 hours/week. Their stack included Asana, Slack, Calendly, Notion, and Zapier automations.
In 90 days BluePeak reduced project slippage by 60%, recovered 320 billable hours for senior staff (worth $48,000), and lowered client churn risk—resulting in an estimated $72,000 net benefit against $49,400 in VA costs. Those numbers came from time logs, Asana cycle time, and client renewal rates tracked in HubSpot.
Start with a 90-day pilot: week 0 document baseline metrics (founder hours on coordination, current cycle times, project backlog age). Week 1–2 deploy the VA to reclaim calendar and inbox tasks and implement a single Asana template for three active projects.
Weeks 3–8 shift the VA into Implement and Track: run biweekly stakeholder standups, own risk registers in Notion, and export a weekly KPI dashboard. At day 90 compare hours reclaimed, cycle-time reduction, and any early revenue or avoided loss to calculate ROI against the actual VA bill.
Prioritize tasks with high time-cost and low strategic value: scheduling, meeting notes, follow-up emails, status consolidation, and client comms. These are precisely the Administrative Support tasks Executive Assistants excel at and where a Freelance Assistant can repay their cost within weeks.
For technical PM tasks—like deep architecture decisions or capacity planning—use the VA to prepare briefings and manage the process rather than replace domain expertise. That hybrid approach preserves delivery quality and maximizes ROI.
ROI collapses if the VA introduces risk or if knowledge is siloed. MySigrid enforces documented onboarding, role-based access, and async-first handover docs so the Executive Assistant can operate across Asana, Slack, and Google Workspace without interruption.
We layer AI-enabled systems—GPT-powered meeting summarization, automated follow-up workflows via Zapier, and RAG-enabled knowledge cards—to ensure continuity even during transitions. Those systems reduce onboarding time to 7–14 days and keep ROI positive when assistants rotate.
In client-facing projects, a VA who owns stakeholder communication and action items shortens feedback loops. For a consultancy converting a $120k deal, shaving two weeks off delivery can mean earlier invoice milestones and faster recognition of $30k–$50k in revenue—directly attributable to improved project management.
Measure these benefits by tagging project tasks to revenue-bearing milestones in your CRM and comparing days-to-invoice before and after the VA engagement.
ROI declines when roles are undefined, when VAs act as replaceable task runners, or when leadership expects domain-level PM decisions without accompanying authority. Avoid overloading the VA with strategic decision-making that requires product or technical context.
Set clear SLAs, success metrics, and escalation pathways. Use MySigrid outcome-based management templates to align expectations, preserve confidentiality, and ensure your VA elevates impact rather than creating rework.
Once ROI is validated, scale by adding capacity—either more hours for the same Executive Assistant or an integrated support team. MySigrid’s Integrated Support Team model bundles a VA with specialist backups and access to our AI Accelerator for workflow automation, preserving ROI as project volume grows.
Teams under 25 consistently see the fastest payback because coordination overhead bloats quickly as responsibilities cross functional lines; the right VA compresses that complexity into repeatable, documented processes.
For more on our role-based Executive Assistant approach, see Executive Assistant. To model pricing against expected ROI, review Plans & Pricing.
Ready to transform your operations? Book a free 20-minute consultation to discover how MySigrid can help you scale efficiently.