The consumerization of IT has had an incredible effect on the general population. Consumers these days expect instant gratification, fueled in part by the powerful mobile devices owned by a vast majority of them. Smartphones have set an incredibly high bar for business performance, and as a result more organizations are looking for ways to streamline their operations. In this sense, Forbes contributor Rich Karlgaard believes that companies need to be maneuverable. The rules have changed for enterprises, and an inability to keep up with business flexibility can bury an entire company in an instant.
Businesses have to maintain speed and agility in the present day, and that means streamlining their practices whenever possible. One of the biggest timewasters in the world of enterprise is the process of faxing. The fax machine still has a vital place in many industries, but using it is an involved ordeal. By pairing fax services with the cloud, organizations can improve the sending and receiving of important information that is too sensitive to be emailed. Cloud-based faxing should be a priority for any company trying to improve their pace and reaction time.
Downtime especially important to prevent
Even worse than slow enterprise progress is no progress at all. Downtime is the scourge of every business out there, and many times it is completely unpreventable. According to CloudTweaks, recent research indicates that 90 percent of companies have suffered some unexpected critical system failure, and a third of organizations deal with these kinds of outages every month.
But downtime is not always digital in nature. Faxing as it is traditionally known has not translated well into the present day. Give a professional a file to send via email and they'll probably handle it no issue, but bring faxing into the equation and human nature starts to take over. Either the process will be circumvented entirely or else it will run into continued trouble along its journey.
First, something must either be printed off or filled out. Then it has to be scanned into a fax machine and sent to its destination. The original message will either be destroyed or filed away somewhere. The faxed copy will reach its destination, and most likely it will have to be stored electronically. This means taking the fax, scanning into a different system and then either recycling or filing the physical document itself.
If that sounds long, arduous and totally unnecessary, that's because it is. Not only that, but there's no guarantee that faxes aren't piling up on someone's desk, waiting to be scanned into a computer and remaining unfiled. Physical copies can also be lost or damaged. Any one of these scenarios can lead to downtime and confusion in the fast-paced climate of today's enterprises. Everything has to be digital to ensure maximum efficiency and speed in business, so why are we still faxing on paper?
Supporting modern needs
Given the instant nature in which things need to be accomplished in the workplace, it may be time to reconsider the fax machine. But rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater, it is important not to write off the notion of faxing just yet. Faxing is still required by law in several fields because the concepts behind it are just as relevant as ever. The mobile age needs a secure, direct means of document transmission, and the answer lies in cloud-based faxing.
Business tools these days don't need to be considered in terms of hardware, but applications. It is possible to take many of the siloed functions of aging assets – like desk phones – and repackage them as software-defined solutions. Documents can be uploaded to an app, where they are then sent over fax servers and received by other clouds or legacy fax machines. In fact, should the situation be appropriate, they can even be forwarded to email accounts. Not every professional is able to be near a fax machine at all times, but chances are that they have their smartphones on them at any given moment. By using caution and following best practices, faxes can get squeezed through as emails when the situation arises. This ensures that, no matter what, everyone is in the loop.
Staying light on your feet
Given how advanced consumer IT has become, it's not surprising that businesses need to move more quickly than they have historically. Keeping up with the pace of the times is important, especially when it alters the expectations that customers have of your business. This is why things like cloud-based faxing are important to obtain. Cloud-based fax helps to trim some of the excess from daily operations while also helping them to run more smoothly in general. Speed and flexibility in business are the kinds of qualities that enterprises should be looking for in their tech investments.
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