Advantages of Internet Fax Services

Internet fax is the latest facsimile technology innovation that employs a scanner to convert a paper document into digital format, and sends it to a fax machine in digital format so you can save it on a computer or print a paper copy.

The operational advantage of sending a digital document over the Internet, instead of over the phone line, is affordability and professionalism. By sending a digital copy to customers, you're giving them the option to save it on their computer or print a hardcopy to archive.

Other manifold advantages of using an Internet fax include:

• Eliminating the need to buy a fax machine that only takes up space in your house, and requires ink cartridges.
• There can be significant savings here because you'll no longer need to keep purchasing consumables like paper and toner. Cutting down on use of these resources also contributes to environmental protection.
• Internet fax saves occupation of physical space as the Internet fax is performed on the already present desktop or laptop computers of the company.
• Apart from the already known cost-cutting effects of Internet fax, there are also indirect savings by making the office work more productive. Internet fax is more efficient because documents do not have to be printed out and then sent through the fax machine; they are sent in as-is from a computer document.
• Sending faxes directly from a computer also eliminates the cumbersome tasks, like feeding pages into the machine and dialing the receiver number. In fact, an Internet fax service even enables documents to be sent from a Microsoft Office application, to recipients in an Outlook address book. This obviates the need to maintain multiple address books or keep a manual record of numbers.
• Certain Internet fax services like RingCentral (News - Alert) Internet Fax also come with advanced, time-saving features that traditional fax machines cannot match. For example, alerts can be set to pop up on the user's computer screen whenever a fax message arrives. That means the user knows exactly when that important fax arrives, instead of indefinitely waiting by the fax machine to ensure the document does not reach the wrong hands.
• A key benefit of Internet fax is security. Internet fax allows you to send and receive sensitive documents as the account management can be used to make sure each document is seen only by its intended recipient.
• Companies that regularly send and receive a lot of non-standard sized documents may find using traditional fax machines challenging. But with an Internet fax service, electronic documents do not have to be converted to paper and there are no restrictions on sizes.
• You can receive your faxes at multiple email addresses simultaneously and send and receive faxes while traveling.
• Some virtual fax numbers are toll free so that no matter where your customers are, they will not pay any additional long distance charges.
• No software to download or hardware is necessary.

The other advantages of Internet faxing are: good-bye to paper-jams, no buying extra phone lines, no annoying busy signals, not having to deal with bulky fax machines.

Today's big question is - can your business continue to remain competitive without an Internet fax facility? There's no denying that those using Internet faxing services have a competitive advantage over their business, especially if faxing is a critical element to your business.

Tags: technology innovation, fax machine, address books, laptop computers, internet fax service, traditional fax, physical space