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| Beyond Faxing:Integrating Fax Communications into an Internet-Enabled Economy |
2008-2-14 |
Despite our rapid advances in technology, we are all creatures of habit and continue to do business as usual. Technology is just the facilitator towards accomplishing our business goals faster and more efficiently. Wireless devices and cell phones allow us to communicate with one another anytime, anyplace but we are still just sharing ideas and asking questions that could have been handled over a land line phone, or even in-person. The emergence of fax machines provided an alternative to communicate, send and receive documents, and conduct business. Scanners, combined with email and fax servers are taking document delivery to the next level, further reducing the related time and costs. These technologies all reinforce the crucial role of document delivery in setting the pace for business today, Among the communications options available, fax continues to drive business, especially as it pertains to supply chain management, order processing and e-commerce.
To help your business thrive and operate more efficiently, we need to examine how you accomplish everyday tasks. The next step is to introduce tools and best practices that enable you to conduct these activities faster, easier and more cost-effectively.
Believe it or not, fax communications streamline communications and workflow, and are very much a part of the fabric of business today. Who could have predicted that in today¡¯s wired and wireless world of email, web access, cell phones, and SMS, sales of fax machines continue to increase annually?
IT professionals rarely send and receive faxes and may struggle to understand why anyone would still use a fax machine or fax server (see table A for common processes done via fax). To fully understand the continued need for fax communications, we need to examine the types of documents that are sent and received via fax by organizations. For example, engineering firms still rely on fax for sending drawings while brokerage houses need to fax statements, trade orders, and confirmations. And, for any business, there will still be contracts, purchase orders, invoices and other documents that need to be sent via fax to keep them in business. Without fully comprehending the inherent value of fax communications, those individuals with pre-conceived notions could prevent an organization from implementing technology that has the potential to create significant gains in efficiency, accountability and cost savings.
If your organization does not currently have a fax server, then the gains will be exponential. If you already have an automated fax solution, there are newer systems that maximize the power of the Internet and utilize Microsoft¡¯s .Net platform to provide universal access to the documents that drive business.
Peter Davidson, president of Davidson Consulting, has been at the forefront of documenting the advantages of using a fax server and predicts that the majority of the market growth will be in the area of ¡°production faxing.¡± Davidson Consulting specializes in newsletters, market research, consulting and conferences covering the convergence-of-messaging and fax-related technologies. Davidson explains that: ¡°Fax servers can be integrated with applications so that once, to cite a couple examples, when sales confirmations and purchase orders are completed, the application can automatically fax them. In fact, with EDI and e-business applications, fax is widely used to handle cases where e-mail cannot.¡±
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Passive Components
