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  Fax Features Article

Advantages of Internet Fax

December 06, 2006
What is Internet fax? It’s the twenty-first century version of traditional facsimile technology, which uses a scanner to convert a paper document to digital format, and sends it to a fax machine in another location which translates the digital information and prints another physical copy.

 
With Internet fax, a digital document is sent directly over an IP network—i.e. the Internet—instead of over the phone line. For many companies, especially small to medium sized businesses (SMBs), Internet fax is a more affordable and convenient way to present a professional image by exchanging documents with customers and clients.
 
To start off with, using an Internet fax service means no fax machine must be purchased and maintained. Simply by switching to Internet fax, companies can save a significant amount by not having to purchase paper and toner. Cutting down on use of these resources has a positive side-effect on the environment, too.
 
Also, using Internet fax saves physical space, because no room is needed for a fax machine—the functionality lives on the already present desktop or laptop computers used by the company.
 
Aside from the most obvious cost-cutting effects of Internet fax, indirect savings also can be achieved by making the office more efficient. On the simplest level, Internet fax is more efficient because documents do not have to be printed out and then sent through the fax machine; they’re sent as-is from a computer document.
 
Sending faxes directly from a computer also eliminates fax-machine-based tasks, like feeding pages into the machine and dialing the destination number. In fact, an Internet fax service like RingCentral Internet Fax enables documents to be sent from a Microsoft (News - Alert) Office application, to recipients in an Outlook address book. This means there is no need to maintain multiple address books or manually copy down numbers.
 
Internet fax services like RingCentral (News - Alert) Internet Fax also come with advanced, time-saving features that traditional fax was not able to provide. For example, alerts can be set to pop up on the user’s computer screen with a fax comes in. That means the user knows exactly when that important fax arrives, without having to camp out by the fax machine to make sure the document doesn’t end up in the wrong hands or get misplaced.
 
Internet fax is also more secure for sending and receiving sensitive documents. That’s because account management can be used to make sure each document is seen only by its intended recipient.
 
Another useful feature of Internet fax is its flexibility. For example, companies that send and receive a lot of non-standard sized documents—such as architects—may find using traditional fax machines challenging. But with an Internet fax service, electronic documents do not have to be converted to paper to be sent, so there are no restrictions on dimensions.
 
Overall, an Internet fax service like RingCentral Internet Fax is an excellent choice for companies of all sizes, but especially SMBs. Learn more about how this type of service can save time and money by visiting RingCentral’s TMCnet.com channel, Internet Fax.
 
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Mae Kowalke previously wrote for Cleveland Magazine in Ohio and The Burlington Free Press in Vermont. To see more of her articles, please visit Mae Kowalke’s columnist page. Also check out her Wireless Mobility blog.
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