Fax Tit for Tat
No, you don’t need to go all “Office Space” on your fax machine, but do read this article.
By any measure, in the age of Internet and e-mail, faxing technology is quite outdated. From a technical perspective, sending image data over phone lines is almost laughable. However, faxing is so ubiquitous that it seems to just keep hanging around. Unfortunately, for many businesses, fax use can be costly and cumbersome. The cost of a phone line alone can cost a business several hundred dollars a year. The good news is that new technologies allow faxing to join the Internet age and save businesses time and money. I’ve also noticed an interesting phenomenon that is causing many businesses to send and receive many more faxes than they should. Luckily the fix is simple and easy.
What I’ve noticed is that many businesses tend to fax because they believe the other party wants to. Both sides simply assume that each other wants to fax and so they just continue to send each other faxes. It is this “tit for tat” mentality that I believe is perpetuating faxing unnecessarily. If one side would simply ask the other if they would prefer to e-mail documents, more often than not they’ll discover that e-mail is in fact preferred.
I’ve observed that if a business makes a concerted effort to ask each of their common faxing partners to use e-mail, they can significantly reduce the number of faxes sent and received. I’ve seen reductions on the order of 75-90% fewer faxes. If a business can successfully reduce the amount of faxes they send and receive, then they may be able to get rid of their traditional fax machine setup and move to an e-mail faxing service.
E-mail faxing services allow businesses to send and receive faxes through their normal e-mail account, as simply as they send and receive regular attachments, all without the need of a phone line, or maintenance on a cumbersome fax machine. I won’t go into the technical details of how this all works, but suffice to say that these types of services allow for a significant savings on faxing. I have tested a few services and personally settled on a company called SRFax. For light faxing needs, their service starts at $3.00/month. I personally use this level of service, but I have clients that pay $7 or $10 per month for significantly more faxing allowances. If you are a business looking to save money on faxing costs, I highly recommend checking out SRFax.
If you have any questions about faxing in the New World of Technology, please do not hesitate to contact me!