The Why & When of Online Faxing
Twenty years ago, faxing was one of the most effective ways of transmitting forms and contracts from one organization to the next. It’s how your company did business, with faxing relying heavily on plain old telephone service (POTS), something every business typically has in place.
But with more companies moving away from POTS due to telecom eliminating antiquated, analog copper lines and increasing prices for the service, what does that mean for those who rely on faxing? For organizations using faxing for any type of need, you don’t need to completely eliminate it, but now is the time to move away from the use of traditional phone lines to do so.
The Next Step in Your Analog Exit Strategy
As you work to proactively mitigate risks within your organization, chances are good you will need to address the continued use of traditional phone line-based faxing. Simply, it exposes companies to data loss and interception by third parties. More so, it’s costly to maintain existing phone lines. The drastically rising costs of plain old telephone service (POTS) are unnecessary and can often be eliminated with an effective switch to more affordable, more secure digital methods.
Analog lines are on their way out, but if faxing is a part of your everyday business, online faxing solutions typically cost far less — around $10 to $20 a month and do not require any complicated setup. Consider how online faxing, a service that has been around for some time, can help push your business into the digital age.
Why Online Faxing Works
Online faxing, or fax apps, work much the same way POTS versions of faxing work but with a fully online method. The data from a document is scanned into a digital file that is then sent across the internet to the desired end destination.
Using fax apps offers some pretty powerful benefits that other data transmission methods often lack. The bottom line, there are many reasons why you’ll want to transition to online faxing.
Top Reasons to Transition to Fax Apps
🛜 It’s cost-effective
Hands down, money matters, and the move to a fax app means cost savings. It eliminates your current need to continue with POTS. A comprehensive technology expense management audit can show you how the proactive move away from analog offers significant savings over time as traditional phone line costs continue to rise.
In addition, using a fax app means no more running to the office supply store for a $50 box of printer paper, or worrying about ordering paper or ink. There is also no longer a need to have the fax machine and printer repair techs on speed dial. All of these costs are eliminated.
🛜 It’s mobile
When you make the move to online faxing, you’re also able to be more mobile. That is you, your customers, your employees, partners, and any other stakeholder can receive these important documents anywhere. If they have an internet connection on a tablet, laptop, or smartphone, everyone has access to the fax app tool.
In an environment that continues to operate remotely, providing each one of your employees with a fax machine is a costly waste of time. With online faxing, your team has access to faxing at their fingertips.
🛜 Customer service improves
With online faxing in place, your team can respond to customer inquiries immediately, and that means more efficiency and better customer service. As your competition continues to make the move, you cannot afford to be left behind because you’re still trying to track down a faxed document from two weeks ago.
🛜 It’s reliable
Yet another important benefit (and one that any long-term fax user can appreciate) is that eFax is more reliable. Simply, faxes are delivered to where they need to go without any paper getting lost in the shuffle, or the wrong people getting their hands on the important documents you have.
🛜 Security is vastly improved
Those lost documents from a traditional fax machine expose your company to risks, but with fax apps, that threat is also eliminated. Online faxing providers use encryption for the transmission of all faxes, which protects the data being transmitted, including personally identifying information.
In a healthcare or finance setting, where compliance risks are a constant concern, online faxing eliminates those risks. The tools are fully within regulations within these and other industries.
🛜 Storage improvements
Another benefit is ditching all of those files in your office through a digital file system, which also helps to improve productivity for your team. After all, there’s no filing, no manual faxing, and no long periods of time trying to find faxes or making sure the machine works properly.
Making the Switch Makes Sense
While there are certainly other methods available today for transmitting documents, contracts, and other pages of content, faxing still fits within the narrative for many organizations. You do not have to ditch faxing, but you should up the game and move to a digital format that fax apps offer. Very simply, online faxing is a cost-effective move, one that could save your organization substantially over the coming years as analog phone services continue to become more expensive. At SpyGlass, we can help pinpoint all of the added costs that lead to expensive technology service overhead weighing down your company.
Are you ready to end your reliance on costly POTS by transitioning to online faxing?
Start a SnapShot Audit to see the big savings.
Contact SpyGlass to inquire about a no-costs-up-front SnapShot Audit.