In a time where so many businesses are concerned about their environmental impact, I find it surprising that the fax machine is still used as a day to day communication tool.

The Problem with Faxing

Consider the situation where I have a document typed in Microsoft Word and it’s been requested that I fax it to someone. I have to print the document at my location, then I have to fax it to the recipient where it is printed again. More than likely, my original copy goes in the garbage (I don’t need a hard copy), along with the fax report that my machine printed for me. Additionally, the receiving fax machine will print a cover sheet, the document, and a report. In the end, 5 sheets of paper were generated in order for the recipient to receive a single document. Had I used email instead, zero sheets of paper would have been used. Not only is it more eco-friendly to email, but it can save you money on paper!

In the situation where the document is already in hand as a printed document, it’s still ideal to scan it and email it instead of wasting 4 sheets of paper for the two reports, the cover sheet, and the duplicated document. Most all-in-one or business class scanners can be configured for one-button “scan to email” – ask your IT department about setting it up.

Additionally, faxes are very often printed in poor quality and end up crooked or cropped. There’s no need to settle for a degradation of quality in this day and age!

Finally, a common misconception is that faxing is secure. While one may be able to make the argument that faxing is more secure than unencrypted email, faxes are certainly nothing that any security firm would be willing to certify as a means of sending sensitive information. Also, encrypted email communication, which is becoming much more widely used (transparently to the senders and recipients), is considerably more secure than a fax transmission.

Making the Change

There are some situations where faxing is such an integrated part of the business process that it’s not going to disappear overnight. In the IT industry, we would refer to this as “legacy” infrastructure. However, now is the time to start thinking about a gradual shift away from fax-centric procedures and move toward scanning and email. Make it part of your goal for the next year to do less faxing.

Fax Alternatives

As indicated above, the ideal fax alternative is simply to email a file directly from your computer to the intended recipient. Most people in the business world have the ability to view Microsoft Office documents, but even more common are Adobe PDF (“Portable Document Format”) files. In fact, you can create PDFs right from Microsoft Word by downloading the free Save as PDF add-on directly from Microsoft.

If your recipient insists on faxed documents, you can still save yourself from having to print & fax the document by using an electronic fax. This is a simple process that can be accomplished via services such as EFax.com .

Tags: business, eco, green

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Helpful Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.