Press Release

Killing the Corporate Fax Machine
Outsourced Faxing For Enterprises
How to Make Sure Your Employees Read Their Faxes
Killing the Corporate Fax Machine
BOSTON, Oct. 30 – P.R. Newswire
In today’s fast-paced corporate world, the fax machine poses a
direct threat to business efficiency. Its limited abilities in
receiving and sending messages causes bottlenecks in document
transfer, while its lack of automation demands high levels of
dedicated manual labor. For enterprises that require streamlined
communications, the machine only slows down crucial functions, while
stripping away valuable resources that can otherwise be allocated to
a company’s core competencies.
The problem is that, no matter how inefficient fax machines are,
faxing itself still plays an important role in communications.
Faster than sending information by post and easier than using
scanners to email electronic documents, faxing is far from obsolete.
In many cases, corporations might conduct business matters with
individual customers, small businesses, and global offices that only
have access to fax machines.
What, then, can enterprises do to retain faxing capabilities, while
getting rid of the physical machine? The answer to this paradox is
found in replacing the technology with either in-house or outsourced
solutions. Both alternatives enable client users to send faxes
directly from their desktops and receive faxes in their email
inboxes. Faced with a choice that will impact core functions,
customer relations, and operating budgets, corporations want to be
sure that they are making the right decision.
As Joseph Sciberras says, “Faxing for large companies is different
from consumer faxing. Corporate clients will need to broadcast faxes
to hundreds, if not thousands, of recipients simultaneously. Of
course this information can be time-sensitive and extremely
confidential. That’s why fax machines just won’t cut it – and
neither will in-house solutions”.
Mr. Sciberras has spent over 37 years as a salesperson for the
electronic fax industry. Currently working for Graphnet, Inc., he
personally believes that the best service available for corporate
clients comes from small- or medium-sized outsourced providers.
“Outsourced solution vendors are the ones that will pay enough
attention to the needs of large business clients because they depend
on the revenues month after month. They aren’t selling a one-time
product. They don’t require clients to house and train technicians
and staff. They don’t make clients purchase new software, hardware,
or upgrades, in order to stay up-to-date with the newest technology.
Plus, the smaller providers actually try to develop cost-efficient
custom solutions for clients, instead of offering some packaged
fluff like the bigger giants."
Mr. Sciberras’s employer, Graphnet, Inc. has played a vital role in
eliminating the fax machine from various Fortune 1000 companies.
With expert inbound and outbound outsourced fax solutions, as well
as email, telephony, and SMS capabilities, the company has over
three decades of experience in the data transport industry.
When it comes down to it, corporations need something better than a
fax machine. They need alternate solutions that retain faxing
capabilities, while streamlining business processes, automating
non-value added functions, and enhancing overall productivity.
However, one must keep in mind that deciding between in-house and
outsourced services should be left to the individual companies and
their management, as the needs and budgets of each company varies.
*****
Graphnet, Inc. is a global telecommunications provider that focuses
on outsourced, enterprise data transport solutions. Having pioneered
the information transfer industry for over 30 years, the company
provides inbound and outbound fax services for broadcast and
point-to-point purposes. In addition, Graphnet also offers email
broadcast, along with voice broadcast and inbound/outbound SMS
services. With its own R&D department, proprietary network, and
capabilities as an Application Service Provider, Graphnet
specializes in developing integrated and unified solutions for
various industry needs.
^ top
^
Outsourced Faxing For Enterprises
Article Provided By: Graphnet, Inc.*
Faxing can get frustrating, especially for corporate businesses. Fax
servers get overwhelmed and experience downtimes due to usage,
bandwidth and capacity issues. Fax machines are limited in the
amount of documents that can be sent or received at a certain time.
Both require constant monitoring, maintenance, and upgrading – as
well as physical storage space. Clearly, heavy amounts of labor and
effort must be dedicated to fax functions, when using in-house
solutions or fax machines – taking essential resources away from
core business areas.
The problem is that even though faxing is a pain, it is a necessary
evil when it comes to transferring important documents. Banks need
to send and receive statements, healthcare professionals need to
share medical records, insurance companies need to deliver quotes,
associations need to connect with their members, and stock traders
need to broadcast time-sensitive information. Whatever the industry,
fax functions play a crucial role in communicating with and
providing services to customers, investors, and partners.
Thankfully, in-house fax solutions and fax machines alike can be
replaced by a simple and efficient outsourced solution.
Unlike in-house fax servers and fax machines, outsourced solutions
don’t take away any human resources from the core business. Instead,
by moving fax functions out of the corporation, outsourcing frees
employees and IT personnel, enabling the company to reallocate them
to well-needed areas. These external solutions also help automate
messaging processes, and in doing so, increases worker productivity
and decreases the use of manual labor. For this reason, many
enterprises have been able to focus more on customer relations and
product/service research and development after moving away from
traditional fax machines and internal fax solutions.
Financially speaking, outsourced solutions can also be much more
cost-efficient than the alternatives. While fax machines are not
cost-efficient at all for large enterprises that require bulk data
transport, in-house solutions do save corporations a lot of money.
However, the initial investment for in-house solutions can be
massive because hardware, software, and training all require
capital, whereas the initial investment for outsourced solutions is
much less – especially when various outsourced solutions providers
compete for customers.
In the long run, in-house solutions can prove to be a good financial
investment, provided that cost and usage expectations are met. Yet,
often, unexpected costs occur when companies find themselves
maintaining their system internally, revising their legacy software,
and paying for frequent staff trainings. Additionally,
overestimating capacity demand for the in-house technology may
result in overspending. For these reasons, outsourced solutions are
usually a safer choice. With little or no extra cost, they can
provide expert support staff, software and system integration
services, and external maintenance and management.
Outsourcing faxing processes, as well as general information
transport processes, achieves business-to-business and
business-to-consumer communications in an optimized and
cost-efficient manner. As technology continues to advance, keeping
up with the newest developments can prove to be a hassle for
enterprises who want to maximize their ROI. Thankfully, external
vendors offer services that remove the need to sacrifice time and
resources. A good outsourced solutions provider will use only the
latest technology, ensuring that client business processes are
streamlined. In essence, in-house fax solutions and traditional fax
machines lack the adaptability that outsourced solutions can
provide.
In the end, it is up to the individual enterprise to decide what
type of faxing solution is best suited for company needs. Fax
machines provide a cheap solution when businesses rarely fax
anything, but will fail to perform when usage increases heavily.
In-house solutions can replace fax machines and simplify messaging
processes, yet can cause long-term liabilities when unexpected costs
and problems arise. Outsourced solutions seemingly offer the best
value, hosting its own facilities, developing its own technologies,
integrating and customizing services and products to meet client
needs, and streamlining enterprise business processes – at the sole
price of direct company control over fax and messaging
technicalities. If businesses are willing to leave these functions
in the hands of outside providers, then outsourced faxing just might
be the best solution for the corporate world.
*Graphnet, Inc. is a global telecommunications provider that focuses
on outsourced, enterprise data transport solutions. Having pioneered
the information transfer industry for over 30 years, the company
provides inbound and outbound fax services for broadcast and
point-to-point purposes. In addition, Graphnet also offers email
broadcast, along with voice broadcast and inbound/outbound SMS
services. With its own R&D department, proprietary network, and
capabilities as an Application Service Provider, Graphnet
specializes in developing integrated and unified solutions for
various industry needs.
^ top ^
How to Make Sure Your
Employees Read Their Faxes
Leading Business Solutions Provider Introduces New Service Feature
New York City (DATE) – Graphnet Inc., a pioneer in the data
transport industry, today announced the addition of a new feature to
its inbound fax-to-email service. The feature, called the Failsafe
Delivery Service (FDS) option, ensures that incoming electronic fax
messages are read in a timely manner.
Allowing clients to specify a timeframe during which received faxes
should be read, FDS monitors such messages, so that if they are not
opened within that period, duplicate messages will be sent to an
alternate failsafe address. Clients can incorporate their business
hours and vacation days into the system, configuring the FDS option
to only count working hours and not after-hour periods, weekends, or
holidays.
This means that if a client company wants its employees to read
their electronic fax messages within 2 hours of receipt, it will set
a timeframe of 2 hours. If the company’s hours are 9am-5pm, Monday
through Friday, then messages received, for example, by 10am
Thursday will have a timeframe that ends by 12pm that same day.
Meanwhile, messages received by 4pm on Friday will have a timeframe
that ends Monday at 10am, not Friday at 6pm – allowing employees the
flexibility to check their messages on Monday morning, instead of
being hassled with duplicate messages over the weekend.
“This is revolutionary because, as far as I know, FDS is the first
feature of its kind that basically tracks when a fax email is opened
and consequently undertakes a failsafe procedure when that message
is not opened within a specified timeframe or if that message is not
delivered properly,” says Larry Cohen, Graphnet’s Product Manger.
“It’s amazingly useful because electronic delivery of faxes is never
guaranteed – sometimes a user’s inbox is full and the fax bounces,
sometimes the email program filters out the fax as spam, and
sometimes the message gets blocked or experiences errors.”
Inbound fax-to-email services work by linking a fax number with an
email destination. All faxes sent to that specific number are
thereby converted into an email message by the service provider, who
then transmits that message to the client’s inbox. The problem here
is that sometimes the email never gets to the client because of
technical issues, such as the ones detailed above. FDS addresses
these shortcomings by protecting this last link between the client’s
inbox and Graphnet’s servers; immediately notifying Graphnet
personnel if an error occurs in message transmission.
What makes FDS unique, however, is not the procedure taken in event
of delivery errors, but rather the procedure taken when the received
message is not opened on time. Able to send duplicate, trackable
messages to alternate emails and failsafe contacts automatically,
FDS takes a step forward in providing customer-oriented, quality
services for fax-to-email solutions.
As Mr. Cohen explains, “Even when messages are received without
technical problems, employees might forget to read their faxes, they
might be out of the office, or the fax could have time-sensitive
information. Using FDS, companies can make sure that their workers
read these documents. That’s the real added-value of this feature.”
For more information, please contact Mr. Larry Cohen, Product
Manager, at: lcohen@graphnet.com.
Graphnet, Inc. is an Application Service Provider that develops
business solutions for enterprise clients. Specializing in messaging
services, Graphnet offers systems integration bundled with data
transport. Graphnet operates and manages its own proprietary IP
network, has its own R&D department, and provides solutions that
never require third-party software.
Graphnet offers consultation and custom development services to
ensure that solutions integrate seamlessly, meet various client
requirements, optimize client business processes, and reduce budget
costs - increasing overall ROI. Our facilities host outsourced
client gateway servers and switching systems, while our support
center is accessible 365-days a year, 24x7.
Graphnet is one of the most experienced and recognized information
technology companies in the business messaging and electronic
document delivery industry. With more than 30 years of experience as
a voice and data carrier, Graphnet provides reliable, scalable, and
secure solutions to Fortune 500 enterprises. Graphnet is a privately
held company.
^ top
^
|