In these challenging economic times, one hears a lot about outsourcing and using third party companies to handle many of their operational business tasks. One area that has gotten a lot of attention is “cloud computing,” which hosts your computer’s files or services on remote computers far from your primary location. Using the Internet or an online fax service is a perfect example where businesses can save money and have a more efficient way to send and receive their faxes.
Basically, all of their fax services are outsourced to a third party for a small monthly fee, usually around $8 to $10. You sign up with one of these fax providers and they provide you with a local or toll-free fax number that you can use. . Your faxes are sent as email attachments using your regular email system. You are also provided with an online account or interface where you can log in to check and send your faxes. Since your account will be online, you can access it anywhere, anytime, as long as you’re connected to the web.
Perhaps the most attractive part of this form of outsourcing, most of these online fax providers have customized corporate plans that can be put in place to cover all of your company’s faxes, especially if your fax volume is high and you need a service solid fax. These providers will design a fax plan specifically designed to meet all of your needs, and many will also offer you special rates if you send a lot of faxes.
This may be an ideal arrangement, especially when you consider that most of these corporate plans can be easily scaled to meet your growing needs. And since there is no additional hardware to install (fax phone lines or fax machines), all this scalability is very inexpensive. Any company can easily increase or decrease their fax numbers, depending on the growth of their business.
Another area of interest is the whole issue of fax transmission, this is where you send a fax to a large number of clients at once. With fax transmission, this can be done with a single click. For a company or business that relies on fax for advertising or sales, this can be a huge benefit.
Still, another issue concerns the competitiveness of using an online fax service. You should realize that this way of sending faxes is not limited to the office environment or even office hours – your faxes are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Which means your business is open and accessible at all times and in this business climate that can mean your business will be more competitive, especially against businesses that don’t use online faxing.
Choosing one of these fax providers will take some work on your part, but there are many well-known providers that offer corporate plans like MyFax. However, don’t rule out smaller, lesser-known fax providers like MetroFax and Faxage. Sometimes these smaller companies will provide more attention to their customers than a large multinational company with countless clients.
So the only question you need to ask yourself is “Is a scalable corporate fax plan right for your business?” It’s your call.