The Fax Machine

Everyone’s heard of it, but it’s increasingly fallen out of vogue with a new generation of employees entering the workforce. While younger workers are moving increasingly towards electronic communication for mail, financial information, and sensitive information, faxing still remains a safe, secure way to exchange information from afar. Below are some of our favorite reasons to still use fax machines.

1. Many businesses still use fax

While this may seem redundant, the simple fact that other businesses use fax may force others to as well. Working in B2B markets means establishing a level of trust and compromise throughout your exchange of services. If one party is using fax, and the other is not, it may sew seeds of distrust, confusion, and inefficiency over time. By using fax machines to share information, you may build a stronger relationship with your supply chain partners and realize the benefits for your own business.

2. Faxing is a secure method – sometimes required by law

If your business deals in healthcare, HIPAA may require you to send and receive patient information through a secure process, with faxing being one of them. Companies are able to use email, but it requires end-to-end encryption, which can be a time-consuming, difficult process. Faxing, on the other hand, is much harder to “hack” into, and,  as a secure method of sending and receiving documents, can be a much more efficient, cost-effective way to share sensitive information. 

3. Faxing is trusted

Faxing creates a traceable paper trail due to fax and call logs. This record can be useful in court to confirm the sending and receiving of messages between businesses. Faxes also cannot be read as plain text like an email. Faxes require someone to have physical access to one of the endpoints, or the line between them in order to intercept the message. They cannot be breached by hackers and therefore can be much more secure than email communications.

4. Fax can serve as a backup in emergencies

Large banks still keep fax machines on hand just in case of network crash to enable larger transactions to be processed. Beyond banks, any electronic system that crashes will leave a company in the dumps until it gets up and running again. Faxing enables companies to maintain communication with their clients and partners even when their network is down, providing a strong backup for a whole host of potential situations.

5. Faxing is convenient

A fax machine can scan, copy, and send all from one device. To replicate the features of one fax machine, you would need to connect your laptop to a scanner, scan the image, rename the file, attach the scan to an email, and send. This process is much more time consuming, and requires two different machines, along with physically moving from one machine to the other. While it seems insignificant, that time spent moving and switching from machine to machine reduces efficiency and slows down an office.

Fax machines overall are still very much worth the investment in them. They are multipurpose machines that exist outside of the new communication network, yet can still serve a very effective role in any office.