Sometimes paperwork is needed by yourself or a client and you’re not near a fax machine. That’s where the beauty of Email to Fax comes in. Learn how it works.
Fax is a bit of tech that just won’t die, especially when you connect email to fax.
Fax fits a key role other tech dinosaurs like vinyl and dot matrix printers don’t. Faxing still stands as a legally recognized way of sending documents securely, instantaneously and conveniently.
It’s also the preferred medium of sending important or official information for several industries.
Fax is becoming more relevant in the digital age by integrating with email to fax technology.
This is how you can make the most of both of these most important forms of communications to business.
Why is Fax Still a Thing Anyway?
It would appear that email has taken over the world of written communication. About 269 billion emails are sent every day. Plus, many employers hiring millennials have to train their new hires on how to use a machine they may have never seen before.
Yet, fax is still the preferred means of communication for major industries including the healthcare industry, the legal industry, the manufacturing industry and government agencies.
Here’s why.
How Faxes Work
Faxes send information through an analog transmission. This means that there is a relay of information that is created by something physical.
When you call someone on traditional phone lines, the sound waves of your voice are transmitted as information that’s then replicated by a speaker at the other end of the call in real-time.
When you send a fax, you are asking your fax machine to call another machine in a very similar way to a phone call. Your machine calls and the receiving machine answers.
Once there is an answer, your machine will being to scan your documents, and nearly instantaneously begins “talking” with the other machine, telling it how to reproduce a series of black and white patterns on a piece of paper.
In a nutshell, it’s like photocopying a document to another location.
This is extremely helpful when delivering documents that require a physical signature or need to be delivered quickly.
What Makes Them Secure
A fax is very secure by default without any additional cryptography. To manipulate it, you would need to get access to the actual wires being used to send the fax.
Since the information going on the wire is the audio version of an image, it would require specialized technology to turn that data into something intelligible.
This is why industries that put a premium on privacy love fax. These include industries like healthcare, where the federal government puts a huge penalty on providers that compromise health or personal information by accident.
It’s also very popular amongst government agencies. Information that is either privileged or sensitive is sent between agencies all the time. It provides a safe and fast way to share that information.
In manufacturing, when you get an order via fax, you have something physical telling you in real time that a new order arrived. From there, you can show, distribute and even send back a confirmation with the original documentation.
Not Sure Where to Find a Fax Machine?
That’s fine. Technology allows both email and fax technologies to coexist with each other.
The convenience with email is that you can quickly produce, format and share information. You can couple that with all the other benefits of fax.
Here’s how.
What is Email to Fax?
Email to fax allows you to send documents from your computer to a fax machine. It’s that simple. This is usually accomplished by using a service provider that receives your emailed documents, converts your documents to a fax and then faxes your documents to a fax machine or to a Fax to Email service.
What email to fax does, is it connects computers to faxes in a way that allows the service provider’s computers to “listen” to the incoming fax information, receive it and then convert it into a format that can be used digitally.
When you send an email, you are essentially copying a file to a server that then copies your email to other servers. The power of the internet is that it can replicate information on other servers until it gets to the place you want it to go.
That means information may be copied on a number of servers by the time your email reaches its final destination.
Fax to Email has been around for a while. Faxes are sent from a fax machine to your fax number. But, your fax number is not connected to your fax machine. It is connected to a service provider that receives your fax and converts the fax to a PDF and then sends it to you by email as an attachment. Instead of getting a piece of paper that’s like a photocopy of a document, you get a nice, clean and easily shared portable document format (PDF) file.
Email to Fax and Fax to Email combined is called Desktop Faxing.
Added Security and Convenience
Emails are about as secure as postcards and present security challenges in getting documents delivered and signed.
With faxes, you simply send the fax and the receiver signs it and faxes it back, keeping the signed copy. With email, you need to find a service that certifies signatures and plays well with file types for your documents.
Email to fax overcomes security concerns by providing the convenience of email with all the perks of faxes.
Admittedly, a server has to enter the picture at some point. But limiting how many servers get involved with emails limits exposure to a data breach. Remember, the fax machine talks directly to the server and the server sends you the information.
Also, you don’t even need a fax machine anymore. You can have those digital documents easily converted into fax language and send them from the convenience of your email.
Call the Pros for Expert Support
American Voice Mail focuses on providing telecommunications to business. Founded in 1977, our company has seen the changes in the industry of telecom as well as in the business world, through our work with many clients over the last 40 years.
Contact us today to see how you can build your business and make it more efficient when dealing with major legacy companies.