The concept of “paperless offices” gained popularity when PCs began to proliferate in the mid-1990s. But even though nearly every office worker in the nation now has a computer at his or her desk, there’s no less paper in the corporate world than there was 20 years ago.
One reason is faxing. Because the fax machine has yet to fade to obsolescence, many offices still consume reams of paper sending and receiving faxes. Good news, though – while faxes may be a fact of life, you can manage them much more efficiently (and save a few trees, to boot).
Making the Switch to Online Fax
Online fax is the key to changing how your business sends and receives faxes. With the right internet fax service, you can migrate all of your faxing activity onto your computer. Printing documents, therefore, can become a thing of the past.
And, by controlling faxes through your PC, you’ll be able to not only reduce paper consumption but organize customer and vendor communications much more effectively. Digital faxes can be stored as PDFs and indexed for easy searchability.
A third benefit of internet fax is that it’s much less expensive than traditional faxing. By allowing users to do away with their fax machines, online fax eliminates machine maintenance costs and toner cartridge purchases.
RingCentral and Online Fax – Boosting Productivity and Reducing Frustration
One feature included in every RingCentral plan is RingCentral Fax. RingCentral Fax allows full digital control over faxes: every received fax arrives as an email attachment (which can be forwarded, downloaded or archived as needed) and includes a text message notification.
In addition, with RingCentral’s new Cloud Touch platform, users can manage faxes from any web-connected device. The platform’s CloudFax feature allows faxes to be sent directly from cloud storage services like Box, Dropbox and Google Drive – so with a few clicks or taps, you can send files you’ve stored in the cloud to partners, vendors and customers.
And by integrating with the rest of the RingCentral Office suite, RingCentral Fax can streamline how your office communicates. With RingCentral fax functionality, you can respond more quickly to customer requests and take the initiative in closing deals.
Rick Stillman, the owner of E-Link Appraisals in Aurora, Colorado, switched to RingCentral Fax in 2007 and is thrilled with the quality of the service. “It makes my job so much easier,” he says, “you can’t believe it.”
As long as documents require signatures, faxing will remain a necessity. But even if faxes aren’t going anywhere, your business can manage them much more proactively. Switching to online fax can simplify recordkeeping, increase connectivity and save money, making it worthy of consideration for any business.
Originally published Nov 15, 2012, updated Aug 07, 2020
