March 1998

BY DALE PAULIN

In a recent survey among Fortune 500 companies, fax was the preferred method of delivering urgent documents by 34 percent of those surveyed — over courier services, e-mail, phone, voice mail, and surface mail. Companies that do a lot of faxing, particularly from high-volume production applications in the back office, have learned that leveraging the power of new fax technologies can mean a return on investment measured in weeks, as opposed to the months or years associated with other methods of business-to-business communications.

To take advantage of short ROI, a change in mindset is occurring. Fax activity is shifting from the fax machine to strategic enterprise-wide back-office electronic commerce communications. Fax-enabling the enterprise means integrating fax with mainframe, client/server, and LAN computing environments and communicating directly from applications in any of these environments, not just the LAN. It also means leveraging the features available through new fax integration technologies, including: support for high-volume faxing with forms overlay capabilities; EDI (electronic data interchange) to fax conversion and delivery; fax functionality from the LAN; the union of fax and interactive voice response (IVR); and delivery of fax over the Internet as a low-cost transport mechanism.

By integrating various production fax technologies on a scalable NT platform, companies can also add new communication functionality as the need arises, further leveraging ROI. And, because new fax technology is integrated with single or multiple servers, it provides new accessibility and value to a wide variety of users throughout the enterprise. From purchasing to marketing, customer support to accounting, fax is emerging as a vital integrated link in the back-office, business- to-business communication chain.

HIGH-VOLUME, FAST TURNAROUND
For large companies, the strategic advantage of using production fax technology lies in the ability to automate existing high-volume, mission-critical applications. Each month, for example, Mitsubishi Credit receives and processes 20,000 loan applications from 500 auto dealers nationwide. With a production fax solution integrated with the consumer lending solution on its IBM main-frame, Mitsubishi dramatically reduced the time it takes to respond to loan requests. As a result, it has garnered a larger share of the consumer lending market. Mitsubishi’s production fax server also allows the company to save on printing and mail costs because it is used for automatically faxing statistical reports in batch-mode directly from its IBM mainframe to dealers at night, when phone rates are lower.

Carnival Cruise Lines uses production fax technology to streamline high-volume operations. The company used to spend $15,000 to mail confirmation details and itineraries to thousands of travel agents worldwide. Now, with a production fax solution integrated with applications on its Unisys 2200/900 enterprise server, a Unisys 6000/75 UNIX server, and networked PCs, Carnival distributes that same information for less than $3,000. The company also uses its fax server to distribute 9,000 purchase orders monthly, and by integrating the solution with an internal e-mail system, expedites the processing of change requests.

CONVERSION CAPABILITIES OVERCOME INCOMPATIBILITY
Another common use of emerging production fax technology is the conversion and delivery of EDI documents. Companies that rely heavily on EDI (a series of standards that allow for the exchange of documents between PCs at different companies over phone lines), but conduct business with some non-EDI- capable trading partners have long sought the ability to simply deliver EDI documents as faxes. Converting EDI documents directly to fax for delivery to non-EDI-capable trading partners helps companies reach all their trading partners with equal efficiency and eliminates the expense of maintaining separate systems for both fax and EDI communication.

One large federal agency used to mail 2,500 purchase orders daily to non-EDI-capable suppliers. But by integrating a fax solution with its Unisys mainframe-based purchasing application, the agency now faxes the same letter-quality purchase orders for one-tenth the cost. The result is a $150,000 annual savings. The agency also uses a related solution on the same server to provide fax-on-demand services, enabling customers to use their touch-tone phone to have documents automatically faxed back to their fax machine, avoiding the cost of employing additional customer-service representatives.

LEVERAGING FAX, E-MAIL, AND LANS
Another strategic implementation of fax technology in the enterprise is via the LAN and on desktops. New fax technology enables users to fax directly from existing desktop applications such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, and SMTP programs, eliminating the time-consuming process of manually faxing documents. In addition to traditional PC-based fax software, these technologies support high-volume, individualized faxing, inbound and outbound fax management, and automatic routing of inbound faxes directly to the desktop. At a large HMO, for example, a solution implemented in a Windows NT Server-based LAN environment enables physicians to write rush prescriptions in e-mail, but deliver them to pharmacies as fax documents using the same e-mail interface they are used to.

New fax technology also uses integrated IVR to provide the rapid fax-back services which are so vital to customer- support organizations. In a typical fax/IVR solution, customers use a touch-tone telephone to interact with a series of automated voice prompts to order up-to-the-minute account statements, ad hoc reports, bank rate sheets, updated price lists, and other documents. The solution automatically and immediately delivers the selected documents to the user’s fax machine.

HOW THE TECHNOLOGY WORKS
Host-based, production faxing works by essentially transforming every fax machine in the world into a remote printer linked directly to a company’s legacy, client/server, and LAN applications. A set of fax command language (FCL) APIs is embedded into the print applications on the host with instructions for formatting and delivering documents received in the print file. The solution emulates printers in various environments and uses the FCL commands to pull up the necessary background forms residing on the server, places graphics and signatures on them, overlays the data to build each unique document, and delivers them to any fax machine automatically. By emulating native printers and other devices, the solution can be integrated with applications on any host system.

The ability to convert EDI documents to fax for immediate delivery is a solution that is easily integrated with a company’s existing EDI translator software. Such software accepts, as input, standard ANSI X12-formatted output from any EDI application. After confirming delivery of the fax, the software automatically generates a functional acknowledgment and delivers it to the EDI translator so that all EDI-document tracking takes place within their existing EDI application.

In a LAN environment, employees deliver fax documents directly from their desktop through integration with their existing desktop applications and e-mail package. Desktop users send and receive faxes just as they would e-mail, and can respond, print, store, or forward, the fax. Fax on demand and interactive voice response support is implemented through a fax server and software that interact with host-, server-, or desktop-based applications to build and fax documents back to users. Broadcast-fax technology retrieves and faxes static documents, while IVR systems query host-based databases to extract and format data on the fly. Such "live data" dynamic IVR systems complement production fax applications by enabling recipients to access frequently updated documents as needed and immediately receive the information via fax.

Another emerging fax technology is support for Internet transport. In one approach, documents are converted into MIME format and delivered to an Internet address over standard phone lines. Some systems deliver faxes over the Internet as e-mail instead of image documents by sending GIF files in MIME "envelopes," with MIME viewers displaying fully formatted documents for recipients.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR
Companies in search of a strategic approach to integrated back-office communication should consider a number of factors in addition to cost benefits when selecting fax technology. One factor is the architecture of a solution as it relates to the environment in which it will be deployed. Ideally, a solution for an IBM MVS environment, for instance, should be able to emulate 3270 and 3770 devices and TCP/IP, and should support AFP faxing to provide users production-fax functionality with the same control over formatting mixed text-and-image files that is available when printing AFP documents. Solutions designed for a Windows NT Server should run as a true Windows NT Service, and employ various links to popular databases.

Additional considerations depend on the environment. For instance, companies using line-of-business applications from vendors such as Oracle, SAP, and/or Sterling Commerce should seek a solution that integrates well with existing applications. They also should look for support for industry standards in terms of fax cards, graphic formats, network connectivity and topology, routing options, print types, and EDI formats.

Functionality is key, of course, and different solutions provide different levels of functionality in selected areas. Purchasers should consider the kind of work they’ll be doing with the solution — now and in the future — to best evaluate support for intelligent inbound and outbound e-mail interfaces, fax-on-demand, IVR, Internet capabilities, and EDI conversion. Productivity features that enhance functionality include automatic document batching, which combines multiple documents bound for a single destination into a single fax session to minimize call set-up time, and host-notification, including host-based capturing and communication of performance statistics for automatically updating applications and databases on the host.

Following the lead of enterprises moving to client/server environments, solutions based on emerging production fax technology include a number of sophisticated administrative capabilities. Such capabilities enable users and administrators to fax both static and dynamic documents directly from desktop or production applications on the LAN, to route inbound faxes to individual desktops without manual intervention, and to execute large broadcast-fax runs from the desktop.

Other administrative capabilities include remote diagnostics and alerts to provide feedback such as tracking statistics between the fax software and the host, and desktop capabilities for viewing, enhancing, printing, routing, resending, forwarding, and deleting inbound faxes. Also beneficial are centralized capabilities for monitoring, resending, advanced sorting and storing, building large phone books, faxing large broadcasts, querying lists, sorting transmission logs without Windows memory constraints, alerting an administrator when a fax is processed, and tracking fax traffic from individual PCs and from the fax server.

Performance is fundamental to the ability of any fax solution to fill its strategic promise. Hence, companies considering such a solution should look at support for forms caching that limits form-and-data merge time to an average of two seconds per page. For fast transmission, a solution will ideally use G/3 and G/4 compression methods, MR, MMR, load balancing, and a driver level software/hardware interface.

FAX AS A STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE
With the vast array of capabilities offered by today’s emerging fax technologies, large companies are finally in a position to deploy electronic-commerce communications strategically, just as they have long done with EDI and, more recently, with e-mail and the Internet. Whether they’re fueling production faxing, forging a link between EDI- and non-EDI-enabled companies, supporting LAN-based fax routing services, founding a customer-friendly IVR/fax-back system, or employing the Internet for fax transport, these technologies create robust solutions for mission critical, business-to-business communications. A company deploying such technologies — becoming "fax enabled" — learns the strategic value of fully automated back-office electronic commerce: the ability to do business with anyone, anywhere, without the traditional limitations of information format or document type. From purchasing to marketing, customer support to accounting, fax is emerging as a vital integrated link in the back-office, business- to-business communication chain.

Dale Paulin is the director of marketing for CommercePath, Inc., a subsidiary of Applied Voice Technology. CommercePath (formerly AIFP) specializes in enterprise-wide solutions for back-office electronic-commerce communication. Since 1990, servers running CommercePath products have been installed worldwide, supporting applications such as invoicing, purchasing, loan processing, and order confirmation. CommercePath customers include Bank of America, Carnival Cruise Lines, Federal Express, Ford, Harley-Davidson, PepsiCo, Reynolds Metals, and Toro. For more information, contact the company at www.commercepath.com. 

Toro is one company taking full advantge of the benefits of emerging fax technology in both high-volume and EDI-conversion applications.   At one manufacturing plant, the company faxes its just-in-time reports to vendors directly from their host applications - saving seven hours each week on mailing time.   The company also faxes a high volume of reports notiying vendors and international distributors of the arrival and timing of large shipments, thereby avoiding time-zone and tother delays it encountered when using phone and surface mail.

In addition, Toro is using a CommercePath server as an EDI supplement to reach 4,000 non-EDI capable customers - 80 percent of its customer base - more efficiently and lucratively.  In the past, the comapny relied on surface mail to deliver up to 15,000 invoices, statements, and purchase orders to trading partners and customers.  By integrating Commerce Path with EDI solution on its existing IBM 3090 mainframe applications, Toro delivers these documents by fax, cutting delivery and processing costs by 90 percent.  As a bonus, fax delvery means promotional material reaches Toro dealers immediately, enhancing their ability to take advantage of time-sensitive discounts.