Distributed Scanning Goes ‘Back to the Future’ with Fax

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of faxing’s death have been greatly exaggerated. The recently published Davidson Report on Computer-Based Fax Markets found that computer-based faxing expected to grow at an average rate of 8.2% over the next five years. Not bad for a technology once considered to be dead. The use of email has not eliminated the need for fax as was once predicted, given the advantages that fax has over email in the areas of document security and guaranteed delivery. Fax also won’t be eliminated by distributed document scanners, because of their high cost of acquisition, maintenance and training and their lack of bulletproof security.

Inbound documents are one of the key factors driving the growth of fax servers. The need for distributed scanning solutions is on the rise, and fax remains the easiest, most cost effective and most ubitiquous technology for scanning a document and sending it to someone else. Everyone has access to a fax machine or multifunction all-in-one device (MFP), and everyone knows how to use a keypad and press Send.

Fax addresses compliance and security issues. Sending a document to a fax server is far more secure and reliable than transmitting it over the Internet or via email. A fax server also provides the most basic yet most important piece of metadata – identification of the document sender via the fax number. This information is obtained without the use of any complex capture software and easily passed on to a line of business or document management application. A fax server such as Captaris RightFax includes the ability to route incoming documents to an email inbox – a very common form of document routing.

When should you use fax for distributed scanning? Here are some tips.

• When the application requires document capture from outside your corporate firewall, and you don’t want the hassle of authenticating external users. Examples: accounts receivable; accounts payable; contracts.
• For ‘many to one’ capture, where you have many external sources coming into one application. Examples: loan origination; pharmacy orders; patient scheduling; real estate agents.
• Where black and white image files are acceptable for your business processes. There are many business documents and forms where fax resolution is perfectly acceptable.
• Where there are far-flung remote offices in the organization. Example: multi-national corporations.
• When the application requires a foolproof audit trail from the moment the paper is scanned. Example: any legal document; documents under control of a compliancy process.
• When the cost of purchasing document scanners and training staff is an issue.