The chairman of General Motors (News - Alert) predicted in 1986 that we would live in a paperless world by the turn of the century. While the iPad and the Kindle may finally do away with paper, the timeline of Roger Smith’s (News - Alert) prediction at General Motors was overly optimistic.
The same holds true for faxes. While eventually fax technology will disappear, predictions of its death have been premature.
That does not mean fax technology should remain stationary until it is phased out, or that faxing does not come with its own challenges. In its white paper, “Fax Servers: Top Messaging Challenges & Ways to Solve Them,” FaxBack (News - Alert) outlined seven challenges fax users currently face and how to eliminate them.
First, there’s the biggie: Missed and incomplete incoming faxes.
“Research studies and actual field use over the last few years confirm that automated inbound routing of fax documents directly to a user’s desktop versus receiving faxes via traditional methods like the department fax machine significantly improves productivity and efficiency,” noted the white paper.
Faxback recommended a direct-inward-dialing trunk, which is a block of telephone numbers a telephone company can assign to a company that then can be used to allow incoming faxes to all go to a fax server that automatically routes faxes to the intended recipient. This eliminates faxes getting dumped at a communal fax machine or inbox where communication errors go unnoticed.
The second challenge with faxes is mixing together technologies to create a seamless workflow.
The white paper suggested an e-mail-to-fax solution that allows users to “e-mail” their fax right from Microsoft (News - Alert) Outlook.
Similarly, another problem with faxing is having to visit a departmental fax machine and possibly waiting in line every time there’s the need to send a fax. The solution: Be able to send faxes from the computer, either by e-mail as noted above or via other software on the client computer.
A fourth challenge is integrating faxes with Microsoft Office. Despite many upstarts and cloud-based productivity suites, Microsoft Office remains the word-processor and productivity suite of choice. The solution to this issue, according to the white paper, is to make faxing as easy as printing documents. Instead of having the file go to a printer, however, have the file go through a digital fax option.
This way, sending faxes is as easy as hitting the print button.
A sixth problem isn’t with faxes so much as with paper in general: Despite email and other digital means, we still live in a world of paper. Less paper, perhaps, but still loads of paper.
The solution to this problem is almost counterintuitive for a white paper about faxes: Get rid of the fax.
Well, not quite. Don’t get rid of the fax, but evolve it. This starts with a technology such as FaxBack’s fax ATA solution, which allows a business to retrofit their fax machines so they are able to use fax-over-IP technology (FoIP). Then as these fax machines start to break, replace them with a fax server solution that lets faxes go right to the desktops of workers.
Finally, the paper tackled the problem of filing and managing all the paper that comes in via fax and other means. It recommended using NET (News - Alert) SatisFAXtion's Workflow Integration suite, which helps companies manage incoming faxes by automatically storing faxes as PDFs, sorting them, and exporting them to other information systems.
So while the paperless office will happen eventually, until it does make the most of your fax.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson