Simplifying your business with fax as a service

One of the easiest ways to save time, money and resources with software as a service (SaaS) is to replace your traditional fax machine with an online fax service.

Doing so will deliver some immediate benefits to your business

- save the cost of fax line rental

- save the cost of paper (and ink)

- receive incoming faxes immediately wherever you are, via email

- send faxes from anywhere, not just from the office

- easily generate activity reports and keep track of what is being sent and received by whom

- avoid confidential information sitting on a traditional fax machine in the general office area

- avoid the wasted time standing over your fax machine making sure a fax got sent successfully

We've recently evaluated a number of online fax services for a client and have summarised our comparison of these.

How does fax as a service work?

To send a fax, you simply email the document that you want to fax to your chosen service provider. The email address tells the service the number of the receiving fax machine. For example 0280064465@faxservice.com.au will send your fax to 02 8006 4465. You will then receive a response email indicating if the fax transmission was successful or failed.

When receiving a fax, the sender will send their fax to your nominated fax number (you can keep your existing number or the service provider will supply one). This will be received by the fax service, and a copy of the fax will be forwarded as a PDF file to the email address you specify when setting up the service.  You can specify a shared mailbox, or a group email address if you want multiple people to see faxes as they are received.

How to choose the best fax service for your needs.

When considering the service that is right for you, you need to consider some of the following factors;

Quality: some fax services use high levels of compression to reduce their transmission costs. You need to be sure that the quality of fax is going to be good enough to support your needs. The best services can offer higher quality faxes a premium option allowing you to choose between cost and quality.

Features: there is a wide variation in the features offered by different fax services. Choose the service that has the best feature match for your needs. 

Cost: costs and cost structures vary. Pick the best option based on the volume of faxes you expect to send and receive and the frequency of fax use. Services that bundle fax volumes into a monthly fee may be best for frequent fax users where pay as you go services may suit infrequent use better.

Security: depending on the materials being faxed, you may want to choose a service that is encrypted and does not store your documents online once transmission is complete.

API: If you still rely on a large volume of fax and are going to integrate fax as a service with your own computer applications, availability and flexibility of an API will be important.

Support: having great support either as online guides or via a support desk will make for a great experience in transitioning to a fax service.

We believe its important to be able to maintain your existing fax number to avoid the costs and hassle involved in changing company letterheads, business cards and directory listings. Our evaluation was therefore limited to Australian services that support number portability.

Once you have selected the service provider there are various different implementation options depending on the size of organisation and volume of fax in use.

We can assist in planning your implementation, so if you are considering fax as a service please get in touch for an evaluation of which provider would be best for you.

If you would like assistance in simplifying your business with cloud computing solutions, please contact us for cloud computing advice and support.