E-mail and fax machines initially served similar purposes and have been around for about the same amount of time. They were intended primarily to transmit information between two communication points. The fax machine was good for pictures and illustrations, ordinary text, and handwritten messages that required a low resolution. It provided connectivity via the phone system. E-mail provides its connectivity through Internet, and it was good in the beginning only for text.
However, the information transmitted through e-mail had the advantage that it could be stored or deleted.
Since the early days of both technologies, both e-mail and fax have dramatically improved. Nowadays, e-mail can include multimedia attachments and has grown to the point that it has replaced many traditional fax machines for organizations in sending documents. Faxing is not limited by requiring a phone line anymore; online faxing has expanded the original capabilities in many ways.
In fact, online faxing has a few solutions to some of the common problems that users find with standard e-mail. Below are some of those problems and the ways that online faxing can help.
Dealing With Documents Requiring Signatures
Important business documents, such as those that require signatures or those that are time sensitive, often have to be faxed. In professional and business environment, there are some traditional organizations that need to be contacted by fax, especially for certain transaction types. Online faxing incorporates signature approval technology, which makes these online documents easy to share with team members, the same way as physical documents. This is an essential feature for regular contracts, invoices, and elaborate proposals, which otherwise cannot be executed via e-mail. In some situations, it is still necessary to print documents on paper, however online faxing can reduce the amount of wasted paper, speed up information exchange and lower operating expenses.
In order to improve sales conversion rates, it is important to exchanging information quickly. This way, when the customer is ready to buy, sales can turn entirely on capturing the attention of the buyer. Once you capture the potential customers’ attention, you need to provide all the forms that they need in order to complete the transaction.
Efficiency and Organization of Records
Online faxing provides a number of efficiency improvements over regular e-mail or traditional fax machines by:
• Handling a wide range of different document types. Filters can sort the digital faxes by importance or client.
• Delivering multiple copies on multiple points of retrieval
• Keeping sent confirmation receipts that can be archived and searchable
• Providing lifetime storage of faxes
By separating correspondence that involves documents to online faxing and keeping regular communication to e-mail, this can reduce the time it takes to find items of importance.
Office space is often expensive nowadays. More office space that is devoted to storage makes less space for operations and sales. For this reason, many organizations are trying to move to business solutions where faxes and other relevant business documents are stored online, close to the ideal of a paperless office.
In today’s business world, there is always a motivation to find a variety of solutions for different problems that are encountered. Alongside e-mail, online faxing has re-emerged a dominant communication channel used in business environments for customer service or sales. The meeting of fax and e-mail has resulted in the creation of online faxing, an effective business technology. Businesses are turning to online faxing in order to give themselves advantages. Moreover, when a successful business finds something that works it usually sticks with it. For this reason, many organizations still depend on faxing in order to quickly exchange their most important documents that otherwise cannot be just sent on regular e-mail. Online faxing is a technology that open up more business avenues while it lowers costs, and for this reason it is still of paramount importance for the business environment.
Naturally, finding the best online fax service to fit your business needs is important. For comparisons between what the various online faxing service offers, your best option is to visit http://www.findafax.com.
About the author: Edrick Hypolite manages a small business of his own, and frequently has to send and receive faxes to keep business paperwork in order. He turns to online faxing to help offset cost and streamline operations. To learn more about Edrick you can visit on Google+.