While summer provides a welcome respite from the classroom for students and teachers across the world, it is a busy time still for principals and other district administrators. During these off months, they are able to take stock of everything in the school and implement any needed upgrades. For districts and schools looking to cut costs and increase efficiency, upgrading to a cloud-based fax service may be the best decision they make all summer.
K-12 education is still heavily dependent on faxing. For everything from sending and receiving student files to disseminating text scores, fax machines often reign supreme in schools. Not only are many districts reliant on faxing for compliance reasons, but the technology is also a far more secure way to send student medical forms and other highly sensitive documents than email. As such, there is typically at least one or more fax machines present in any given school today.
The problems with legacy faxing in schools
While faxing is still very much relevant and necessary in education today, that does not mean it is not without its problems. In particular, legacy faxing can be a major drain on resources. Considering that many school districts are strapped for cash at the moment, any savings from a technology upgrade can be huge for the bottom line.
"Fax machines can cost anywhere from $35 to $400 or more."
To start off, consider the costs related to the physical fax machine itself. According to Amazon, fax machines can run anywhere from $35 on the low end all the way up to $400 or more for some more advanced machines, although the enterprise-grade machines that schools use is more often than not going to be on the higher end of this scale. Considering that each school may have multiple fax machines and that there are often dozens of schools in a typical district, procurement costs can quickly add up. This is just to get the initial fax machine in place, to say nothing of the costs related to maintaining and repairing the technology.
This is far from the only way in which legacy faxing affects the bottom line too, as there are also ancillary issues for schools to consider. The phone line to connect the fax machine can set a school back $25 or more a month for each connection. Then there's the price of ink and toner. According to one report from PCWorld, toner cartridges are often around $60 and ink cartridges can run anywhere from $10 to $40 on average. In fact, according to Consumer Reports, an ounce of ink costs more than fine Champagne or high-end perfume. Consider, too, that toner and ink may need to be replaced often for multiple fax machines through a year.
And of course, there's the price of paper to consider here as well. A typical school in the U.S. may spend between $30,000 and $50,000 on just reams of paper every year. Furthermore, according to numbers cited by the National Wildlife Federation, about 60 percent of all school waste is paper-related. While a lot of this is not directly the fault of the fax machine – paper and printed worksheets are still staples of the classroom – any reduction in paper usage within the school would be a huge money saver.
Schools still deal with a whole lot of paperwork.Why cloud-based fax services get an A+ from schools
Instead of dealing with all the costs related to legacy faxing, schools should instead ditch their old machines and opt for a cloud-based fax service. With online education tools like Internet fax solutions, school officials can use the connections they already have in place to send and receive missives from their email or an online portal. Cloud faxing, thanks to encryption technology and dedicated servers for storage, is just as safe and reliable as legacy faxing, but without any additional costs.
The summer is a busy time for principals and other school and district officials, as it is often the only time of the year they can take stock of their assets and make major changes. In the midst of this process, they should look to replace their fax machines with cloud-based fax services to reduce waste and costs. Switching to Internet faxing may be the best thing school administrators intent on stretching the budget even further do in July and August.
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