The Fax Machine - An Equipment That Is No Longer A Must At The Office

The fax machine was invented in the 1900s, and has long been a part of the office landscape. A rather cumbersome and large machine, it took up some space at the office, and served businesses with a very useful function. The fax or facsimile machine literally scanned in material and converted it to an image which was then transmitted via an analog line to the recipient whose receiving fax converted it back into an image of what had been sent. Indeed, businesses have used the fax machine for a long time since its invention, but it wasn’t only until the cost of the equipment itself dropped, along with the supplies, that individuals and home offices utilized it. finding a cheap fax machine in somebody’s house is simply common at present.

With the introduction of digital internet fax and email to fax services, the facsimile market has gone to the next level, offering availability of this standard office equipment at prices anyone can afford. At present, there are many online faxing services available and the most common question today is which service provides customers with the best reliability and quality, at a much affordable price. Not all online services are the same; the transition from physical office equipment to digital services can be easy or hard based on the research done in advance.

When looking to transition from physical equipment to digital services, there are some basic things to keep in mind. Your office expenses can be lowered, since you would no longer require a dedicated fax line. Good services provide a unique, personal and local number that can be passed out to customers and clients. This means that telephone expenses are lowered. The dedicated number should be local to you, and an 800 toll free number would also be given to you for your clients or customers who are not situated within your area code.

If security is an issue, investigate the online service’s availability to receive incoming faxes via the website rather than through email. Email is not secure, so if privacy issues are a concern, make sure the service enables for secure sending and receiving of faxes via an encrypted page on their site. There are companies that require such service especially when they transmit financial information or due to HIPPA concerns. An excellent fax to email service must be able to offer this as a part of packaged services.

Should any problems arise, an extensive knowledgebase and troubleshooting ought to be available. As well, there should be good customer support, and a simple method for contacting the online company. Nothing could be more frustrating than experiencing problems and the support that you get is close to nil, with their knowledgebase practically zero. So that you may be able to avoid this, try to navigate through the site before you sign up so that you may see if there is a support ticket service that can handle issues that are not covered in the FAQs, and also take a look if they address the most usual issues concerning the service. While there is a lot more to mull over, one thing that should be taken into consideration is the number of positive reviews from satisfied customers. One good benchmark with regards to the quality and reliability of service is positive customer reviews.

Use Online Faxing And See Substantial Savings

If you own a business, then you certainly realize the importance of doing everything to stay in business, and be competitive. This would mean that you improve business processes. This also entails determining areas that you can streamline so that you may be able to lessen expenses. You might deem it necessary to lay off employees to save money. You might even start out with a small staff but all of them must have to be very efficient. You may not even be managing any employee at all. So you need to find ways and means of streamlining business processes in order for you to save time and money.

This is why you should start considering using internet fax services. Through an online fax service, you would no longer need to use a fax machine, and rid yourself of the rigors of using one. An online fax machine would enable you to use your own email program in sending faxes. Since you most likely spend a good portion of your day on email anyway, you can simply send out another email. You won't have to leave your desk, nor will anyone else. This would surely help save you a lot of time.

With regards to the location, your faxes could be sent to any place where your email could go. So you could really send a fax to anyone and anywhere in the world! If you find that you would like to broaden your business dealings overseas, then using an online fax service is going to be a huge plus for your business dealings and for your expansion plans.

Another reason why online fax services save you money is that you only need to print out the faxes that you need. In many cases, offices will leave their faxes on all the time. This signifies that they will wind up printing out faxes that come in from various advertisers. There is also a very big tendency for faxes to print out many pages. If faxes are printed out through your email account, you may be able to indicate the number of pages that will be printed. Because of this, those pages that you don’t need would not be printed anymore, reducing clutter in the office. This would also allow you to eradicate junk faxes and other advertising that only wastes ink and paper on traditional fax machines.

And, you would not need to worry anymore about the probability of losing essential documents. Have you heard those grievances coming from individuals wherein the faxes they send end up getting lost? Or, have you also heard those men and women complaining about the faxes that they sent were never acquired by their intended recipients because they end up getting lost while in transition? When a fax is sent through email, there would always be an available copy. This is why it is sensible and logical for business owners to replace their fax machines with a more efficient online fax account.