Faxing Remains a Necessary Business Tool for Reaching Traditional Industries

Just as the fax did not replace the telephone, email has clearly not replaced faxing as an essential tool for business communications. Each form of communication has its own strength. Maintaining a fax number, especially a local number in the markets where you do the most business, gives your company a competitive advantage. When you are ready to expand, start with a new fax number in the area code where you want to do business.

It comes as no surprise that three of world's biggest economies – Japan, the US, and Germany – are also the world's top fax users. Fax is absolutely essential for a contemporary business. There are a number of good reasons for this:

• Although email is fast and simple, faxing produces documents with the amount of detail that most businesses require in order to conclude major deals.
• The ease of sending an email is actually a problem for busy executives, who might receive hundreds or even thousands of email messages every week. Faxing is often the only way to reach these critical decision makers.
• Traditional industries like banking, insurance and transportation prefer to have paper documents that are easy to review and share in meetings.
• Governmental organizations have relied on faxing documents for decades. One thing you can rely on is that operational bureaucratic processes don't change unless they are forced to do so.
• Industries like construction need paper documents that they can take with them to building sites and make notes on as necessary.
• Developing nations and remote areas in developed nations may not have reliable Internet service but they can certainly have phone service to receive a fax.
• Contracts and requests for proposals often must go through several layers of management approval, requiring manual review and sign off.

The great news for Australia is that it is near the top in terms of fax use, coming in at number 11. This positions Australian businesses to take advantage of new markets nationally and abroad through efficient use of faxing.

Although your suppliers and customers may be old fashioned, you can reach out to them through the new, high tech way to manage your faxing. Faxing by email produces faxes that are indistinguishable from those sent by traditional fax machines. On your end, however, you can take advantage of the cost savings and administrative simplicity of sending and receiving faxes right from your email. There is no need to return to your office or leave your desk. Faxing over email bridges the gap between efficient technology and traditional business.