The benefits of a digital faxing service for your business

Many businesses need to send paperwork to other companies, clients, and vendors as quickly as possible. This paperwork can include receipts, orders, medical records, and other sensitive information. Using a fax machine has been a method for sending this paperwork for years. However, digital faxing provides the same service along with additional benefits to help the sender and the receiver.

What is Digital Faxing?

Digital faxing is basically sending faxes over the internet. One company that provides this service is mFax. Just like traditional faxing, all paperwork is sent directly and conveniently to the recipient to allow important documents and forms to be received, processed, and even returned in a timely manner that allows businesses to keep moving.

Traditional fax machines required connection to a telephone line. Paperwork would be scanned into the machine and then a call would be made to the receiving machine. The scan of the paperwork would then be sent to the receiving machine where the pages would be printed by that physical fax machine.

With digital faxing, an actual machine is not necessary but can be used. The send can either scan the materials with the machine, a scanner, or even a smartphone. The information is then sent over the internet to the recipient. The paperwork can then be sent to their fax machine, their computer, or even their email for easy viewing.

Easy Transition

Many companies may be hesitant to switch to a digital faxing option due to the time, effort, and cost that may be required for such a change. However, it is very simple to make the change, and little time is needed to set up a digital faxing system.

In some cases, businesses can easily create an account for digital faxing and use their already established printer or scanner to perform the necessary functions to fax information. Those who have fax machines can easily connect them to the internet using a fax bridge.

The fax bridge allows a company’s current fax machine or machines to be connected directly to the internet. They utilize plug-and-play technology to allow easy setup by anyone. The bridge converts the analog fax signals into digital signals to send documents and then converts them back to analog to receive a fax.

Eco-Friendly

Conserving resources and improving the environment of the planet is the goal of everyone. However, a large burden is often put on companies to change the way they do business to meet eco-friendly standards. One major step in becoming more eco-friendly is reducing the use of paper products.

Traditional faxing requires that individual pieces of paper with the information needed are sent or received by the company where the information is printed on new pieces of paper. Throughout the workday, thousands of pieces of paper may be transmitted and printed at a business.

By converting to digital faxing, companies can maintain all these materials digitally. Documents and other paperwork can be stored on the computer. Received faxes can be kept in a safe file without the need to use paper to print them. This greatly reduces the carbon footprint of a company.

Cost Effective

For a business to send faxes traditionally, it would require a lot of costs to maintain this service. The fax machine or machines would need to be regularly serviced and updated to ensure they continue to provide efficient faxing operations. Large stores of paper would also be needed to ensure the faxes are printed properly. Ink would also need to be replenished from time to time and repairs provided as needed.

In addition to maintaining the actual machine, businesses would also need to have a dedicated phone line or lines for their fax machines. There is also the cost of electricity for the machines. Also, if the information transmitted is sensitive, a special area with security features may be necessary to keep the information private.

With digital faxing, many of those problems can be avoided. Since the fax is over the internet, there is no need for a dedicated phone line or lines to send and receive faxes. If businesses choose to go completely digital by receiving the faxes using a specific file or email, they can eliminate the cost of paper, ink, and maintaining a physical fax machine altogether.

In addition, there would be no additional cost for electricity due to the faxes being sent to a computer that's already being used. There would also be no need for maintaining a secured area to keep the fax machine. Incoming faxes can be sent directly to the proper recipient securely.

Safe and Secure

In any business, there are confidential materials that must be kept safe and secure at all times. This could be private banking information, personal details about employees, proprietary information, or even medical records. If this information gets out, it could be ruinous for the business.

Sending traditional fax is relatively safe and secure. It is highly unlikely that someone can intercept the transmission. However, there may be security weaknesses on one or both ends of the transaction that could leave this information vulnerable.

HIPAA is a federal law that protects sensitive patient health information. Any business that handles healthcare information must stay compliant with the standards demanded by this law. Although HIPAA does not address faxing patient information specifically, the possibility of the information falling into the wrong hands could create non-compliance issues for that business.

For example, if the company’s fax machine is in a public area of the office, anyone in that office is able to access the information that comes in on that fax machine. Also, if the company is not assured that the intended recipient is next to their fax machine when sensitive information is sent, they could potentially send it to the wrong person.

Digital faxing can remove these vulnerabilities. First, there never has to be a hard copy of the sensitive information. It can be safely and securely stored on the company’s computer system. It can also be kept password-protected to ensure only authorized individuals have access. Sending the information to another entity can be sent digitally to them without worries about anyone seeing the information.

Receiving sensitive fax data is also protected because it can be set up to send directly to the individual’s account or an email address. This helps to prevent unauthorized personnel from purposely or accidentally viewing sensitive information.

Digital faxing options are available to meet the needs of almost any business. This can help a company perform its functions more efficiently, securely, and in a cost-effective manner with one simple change.