Networks & connectivity

Despite the rise of e-mail and the Internet as alternative ways of communicating data, fax continues to be important for business communications. Fax server systems such as network fax or LAN fax products provide small, medium-size, and enterprise businesses with a solution that automates the delivery and receipt of fax documents in electronic format, and provides direct integration with e-mail or other office productivity tools. Fax servers provide a means of integrating fax with these other electronic data delivery systems. Businesses can save significantly on long distance costs, increase worker productivity, and streamline their business processes by simply connecting a fax server to their local area network.

One recent trend in the network fax market is the growth of Linux-based fax server applications. This growth is being driven primarily by end users who choose Linux to run their fax server applications due to the affordability offered.

Enterprise customers now perceive Linux as offering major reliability benefits in terms of price/performance. Software vendors offer equally robust fax server systems on a lower-cost server platform. One of the key requirements in any fax server application, as we'll soon see, is not just reliability in terms of making sure the fax gets through, but also ensuring the fax server has little or no downtime.

While end users today have a choice among a multitude of Linux-based fax server applications, there are two primary types of fax applications available: desktop fax and production fax.

• Desktop fax enables end users to send and receive faxes confidentially and securely from the desktop, a function particularly important for health care, legal, financial, and government environments.
• Production fax enables businesses to integrate their existing file and mail servers, hosts, ERP systems, or CRM systems with fax to automate the electronic delivery of purchase orders, invoices, order confirmations, loan and mortgage applications, and financial reports.

The Cost Benefits of Bringing Fax to the Desktop

One of the key benefits of desktop faxing is the cost savings it provides. Each time a fax is sent manually, it requires the user to print the document, walk to the fax machine, write out the cover sheet, type in the fax number, and then stand around for the fax machine to send and confirm delivery. This process can easily take five minutes per fax. If the person responsible for sending faxes is paid $12-$18/hour, then the cost of manually sending faxes can range from $1-$1.50 per fax. Multiply that by the number of faxes sent per day, per month, per year, and the labor cost involved with faxing can easily climb into thousands of dollars. Table 1 highlights the costs of manually faxing documents.

These costs are conservative in that they do not take into account hidden costs such as paper to print out the fax, long-distance charges to send the fax, and fax machine maintenance costs, such as replacing toner cartridges.

In addition, with desktop fax end users can send faxes to multiple destinations in a matter of minutes, reducing their time away from their desk and increasing their efficiency. Unlike traditional walk-up fax machines, where users must enter multiple fax numbers to send to multiple faxes, desktop fax allows users to fax to multiple addresses the same way multiple people are sent an e-mail message.

Most important, desktop fax applications integrate easily with existing e-mail infrastructure, making the addition of fax to an end user's e-mail applications as simple as e-mail attachments.

Desktop Faxing Offers Added Security Benefits

With desktop fax, end users can send, receive, view, print, and save faxes from their PC or laptop computer. Desktop fax provides small, medium-size, and enterprise customers safe, secure, and confidential fax to and from the desktop through integration with e-mail applications.

Desktop fax also provides end users with security and confidentiality in sending and receiving faxes to and from their desktop with receipt confirmation. Because the fax is received on the desktop PC, faxes are not left out in public view on traditional walk-up fax machines where other people can view them. Confidentiality is further assured with Direct Inward Dial (DID) routing, in which end users are assigned a personal secure fax number that sends faxes directly to the desktop.

In addition, signed documents transmitted by fax are legally binding. Despite the signing of the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (E-SIGN bill) in 2000 by President Bill Clinton, which legalized digital signatures, the Internet has not replaced fax as a means of business communications as the experts had predicted. This is because many businesses still have concerns regarding privacy, security, fraud, and identity theft with the Internet. Bottom line: fax is still one of the most highly secure mechanisms for transmitting important and confidential information.

Effective Document Delivery with Production Fax

Production fax is a key requirement for any company whose day-to-day operations consist of manually delivering large numbers of paper documents to customers and partners. Production fax allows companies to automatically deliver business-critical documents electronically, such as purchase orders, invoices, statements, order confirmations, loan applications, loan approval/ denial, bills of lading, financial reports, and mortgage tables, without the need to print, mail, or manually fax a document.

The electronic delivery of documents saves companies time and money. Mailing a document involves printing out the document, stuffing it into an envelope, and mailing it out, which can cost almost a dollar per document with postage. As covered above, manually faxing documents is costly as well. If part of the day-to-day operations of your business involves sending out multiple documents per day, such as invoices, order confirmations and inventory ordering, then the cost per year can be a significant piece of a companies operational expenses. With production fax, a company can reduce these costs by up to 90% by automating fax delivery and reducing the administration costs to print, mail or fax a document.

Table 2 highlights the savings a typical enterprise would experience with a production fax solution versus the cost to mail or manually fax a document.

The other key benefits of installing a production fax solution are:

• Increased efficiency: Improves document delivery efficiency through the electronic, automated, batch-driven delivery process
• Ease of integration: Enables the integration of existing CRM, ERP, and file and mail server applications with fax
• Improved customer satisfaction: Provides efficient order and information processing resulting in improved customer relations and improved customer satisfaction

Summary

The simple process of setting up a network fax server can significantly increase a company's efficiency and productivity. Network fax servers enable companies to save thousands of dollars per year in worker productivity costs alone. With a Linux-based fax server customers get the benefits of a fax server plus excellent price/performance benefits, providing a robust fax server system on a lower-cost server platform. In addition, a fax server solution can provide the added security and confidentiality required for today's business environment.

Case Study 1

Universal Weather and Aviation Inc., a Houston, Texas-based corporate aviation and weather services company providing up-to- the-minute weather and aviation trip planning information, has implemented a production fax application from Biscom Inc., called the Linux FAXCOM server. The server is developed with Red Hat Linux Enterprise version 2.1 ES and uses Brooktrout Technology's intelligent fax boards. By utilizing FAXCOM version 5.04, Universal Weather is able to send via fax timely weather data as well as trip-planning and travel information to thousands of subscribers automatically, as soon as they've processed the information.

In choosing a network fax solution, Universal Weather and Aviation Inc. considered reliability and robustness the driving factors. Due to the nature of the business, and the need for 24x7 server uptime, Universal Weather and Aviation Inc. requested a Linux-based solution. FAXCOM offered the solution that best met their needs.

Case Study 2

EMSI Inc., a Dallas, Texas-based medical and data information services provider, utilizes iFax's HylaFAX Enterprise Edition Red Hat Linux-based fax server with the Brooktrout's TR1034 series intelligent fax board. HylaFAX enables EMSI to quickly provide a centralized faxing and digital image storage and retrieval capability to all their examination offices and insurance company customers. The centralized solution significantly reduces the amount of time it takes, from days to minutes, to provide digital images to their customers and significantly reduces EMSI's document-processing costs. EMSI chose a Linux-based solution because of the reliability that their customers have come to rely on.