Online fax provides a convenient way to send documents fast. Although faxing may seem like outdated technology, many companies rely on it to send and receive documents, particularly those that require a signature.
Brief Background Of Online Fax
When the paper fax technology emerged in the 1970s, it changed the way businesses sent documents. Mails that took days to send could be delivered immediately by fax. Despite this benefit, paper fax presented various challenges. The process was costly, slow, and cumbersome. The amount of paper generated was also overwhelming and challenging to store.
Over the years, technological advancements have transformed traditional paper fax into online fax. Also known as electronic fax, online fax allows businesses to upload electronic documents to a digital fax portal where they’re converted and sent securely to the specified fax numbers. Similarly, incoming faxes are sent as electronic documents to selected email addresses.
Online fax addresses the challenges posed by paper fax by enhancing transmission speeds. With this faxing technology, employees can generate documents they need to fax, sign them digitally, select files on the virtual fax program, and send them to recipients.
Top Reasons To Use Online Fax In Business
If you own a business and are not using online fax yet, here are five reasons why you need to start using it:
1. Highly Affordable
Another reason your business should use online fax is that it’s much more affordable than paper fax. A traditional faxing system is not just costly to acquire but also to maintain. A company must spend thousands of dollars to get a high-capacity faxing machine then contract a vendor for maintenance.
Since a paper fax line can receive regular calls and fax calls, businesses that use these machines have to hire staff to attend to those calls. Other indirect costs that companies bear include energy bills, the purchase of paper, and the training of team members. If your business uses paper fax machines, switching to online fax reduces such costs.
The best way to eliminate unnecessary costs is to work with an electronic fax provider for online services where you’ll only be getting charged. This way, your business won’t be required to pay for additional phone lines, paper, or extra power. If your company uses the Google workspace suite, visit here efax.com. By doing so, your employees will work more efficiently from their desks without sending and receiving paper faxes.
2. Extreme Convenience
Online faxing offers businesses high portability by allowing them to fax documents from any location. For companies that have staff working remotely, this is highly convenient. A good example is businesses that have external sales executives. Using Google fax, sales teams can send signed contracts and applications from their mobile devices.
Once the documents are sent, a digital record of the transmission is established from start to end. Previously, salespersons had to wait until they got back to the office or access a fax machine to process documents. Online fax marries fax technology to give businesses the convenience they need to transact.
3. Friendly To The Environment
Another reason online fax is right for your business is that it’s friendly to the environment. Paper fax machines were terrible for the environment because companies had to print every document they sent or received via fax.
Also, fax machines need to be connected to a source of power to run. Even worse, they had to be left on throughout to receive faxes sent outside the regular working hours. All this harmed the environment.
Electronic faxing is environmentally friendly because it works through online networks. It reduces energy consumption significantly and eliminates the need to print out documents.
4. Advanced Security
Document security is a concern for many businesses. Some consider paper faxes safer because they’re sent via phone line, unlike email attachments and networks that are susceptible to hacking. This concern is valid as hackers target the vulnerabilities in networks and emails.
However, hard copies from paper fax machines are also prone to security vulnerabilities. Once printed, documents can be passed on to anyone within or outside the office. It might be the cause of this to be prone to leakage of the confidentiality of the documents.
Online fax addresses the document security challenge by allowing businesses to store documents in secure, encrypted, and accessible cloud databases. Also, companies can enhance document security by leveraging credible online faxing services that use safer communication channels. Such fax services protect documents through email confirmations and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryptions.
5. User Friendliness
Online fax is a great fit for companies because they’re user-friendly. Although paper fax machines may seem easy to use, they’re only accessible to people who’ve used them for years. Anyone who uses them for the first time will experience difficulties because they’re not intuitive.
In a world where business functions are performed digitally via touchscreen devices, virtual platforms, and cloud technology, struggling with a fax machine is a daunting task. New fax machine users have struggled with questions about area codes, places, and confirmation messages after sending messages.
Still, some struggle with getting an alternative mode of communication in case the fax fails. Electronic fax eliminates the challenges that come with troubleshooting, maintaining the fax machines, and training staff to operate them. Unlike paper faxes, online faxes are highly intuitive, thus allowing users to share, retrieve sent or received documents.
Final Thoughts
Whether your business has just started or has been established, you’ll need to fax documents at one time or another. Your sales and marketing teams will also find themselves in situations where they need to send or receive documents from clients, colleagues, or other stakeholders while out of the office.
Online faxing comes in handy for organizations’ teams due to the convenience, speed, and efficiency. Unlike companies that use traditional faxing services, businesses that switch to online faxing services enjoy document security, affordable costs, and user-friendliness. If you’re yet to make up your mind to shift business operations to online faxing, these are key reasons why you should.
