With fax technology still in place at businesses after decades of service, the question remains: Do I need a fax machine?
The short answer is: You don’t need a traditional fax machine, but you do need digital faxing.
From ride-hailing apps beating up the taxi industry to business messaging platforms giving email a run for its money, the introduction of new technologies typically comes with the abandonment of older ones.
The fax machine itself is part of the abandoned lot. However, faxing technology is holding steadfast with modern implementations like the Electronic Faxing features of VirtualPBX Business Phone Plans.
The biggest challenge for proponents of traditional faxing is realizing how easy it can be to switch from traditional to digital, and how complete the switch can be. Today’s blog will look at a few of the biggest reasons that businesses should still use fax as a primary tool for some of their most essential communications needs and how VirtualPBX fills that need.
Do I Need a Fax Machine? Not Exactly.
Faxing is still one of the most commonly used forms of communication across the globe, but domestically it has gotten a stereotyped as a dated technology. The unimpressive status that fax has been relegated to couldn’t possibly be farther from the truth, though, and these are the biggest reasons why businesses should still use fax-
- Security A fax is still one of the most secure forms of file transfer in the world. A fax travels over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) that is inherently more secure than digital methods. Additionally, it’s also converted into base64 binary encryption before transmission and reassembled only once it has reached its prescribed destination. This means that the message would have to be personally intercepted at the physical location where the fax was sent. Any attempt to interrupt that transmission would result in a failed fax send or would only yield an indecipherable garble of sounds.
- Global Reach Ironically, none of the latest high-tech products would ever hit the shores of the United States without a network of reliable fax machines. Globally, faxing is the standard for business communications. This is especially prevalent in the international logistics and shipping industries when trade routes cross into parts of the world where high-speed internet is rare and the only reliable communications lines are over the PSTN.
- Legal Clearance Some organizations will no longer accept documents that haven’t been faxed because they know the transmission is secured and because the source is always verifiable. Unlike the ability to mask email signatures and sources, faxes come from known originations and are delivered securely. In fact, most government agencies rely heavily on fax for public communications and the CIA doesn’t even accept Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests unless they are sent via fax machine.
- Small Footprint For many newer businesses with space and expense concerns, the notion of buying a bulky fax machine is as impractical as it is embarrassing. Faxing has been around a long time now, though, so advances in technology have effectively eliminated the need to own a physical fax machine and still benefit from the secure and global benefits of fax communications.
- Confirmation of Receipt Unlike email read receipt requests that are as irritating as they are easy to ignore, faxes come with two ways to confirm the message was received. First of all, because the message is sent in the aforementioned encryption, only the entire message can be delivered and partial messages due to service interruption or interference are canceled in their entirety. Secondly, a confirmation page can be requested that will only print if the receiving number completely receives the incoming message.
- Modern Polish Some exceptional modern fax services are as clean and user-centric as the most popular consumer applications. The recently updated VirtualPBX Dash Plans faxing service is totally paperless and can be sorted, searched, and managed as easily as a modern voicemail interface, as pictured below.
Users of Dash can even send faxes directly from the totally updated Fax Manager. Plus, faxing is natively integrated into the award-winning Dash interface so every employee can manage a unified communications system as well as if they were an IT engineer.
Icing on the Cake
There’s one final, stand-out reason why you need digital faxing: Cost.
Faxing a document is less expensive than sending certified mail, it’s more secure than email, it’s better at reaching more corners of the globe than anything else, and it’s something that already exists in the gold standard for hosted business communications; VirtualPBX Dash. Plus, not that all of the VirtualPBX Dash Plans have been adjusted to include even more budgets than ever before, there isn’t a reason to not use fax!
Do I need a fax machine? You don’t if your goal is to send and receive faxes to your partners and customers. The new face of online faxing is sleek and efficient and ready to add an additional arrow into the quiver of your business, and it doesn’t rely on an outdated piece of machinery.
