Hosted Fax Unleashes Full Value of Hosted Business VoIP Services

When shopping around for a hosted VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service for your small to medium sized business, consider a service that includes hosted or Internet fax as an option, because it will help you realize a better return on investment.

Nextiva’s "Office VoIP" business phone system, for instance, offers a hosted fax service that can be bundled in for a minimal incremental cost. But the return on investment can be dramatic, as hosted fax is a proven way of increasing employee productivity and reducing operating costs. As such, hosted fax has become one of the most popular hosted business applications.

How does hosted fax boost employee productivity

So how does hosted fax boost employee productivity and help companies cut operating costs? The answer lies in a comparison between traditional fax and Internet fax.

Hosted fax -- not to be confused with IP fax, which in general refers to on-premises fax systems – helps SMBs reduce their communications costs, as it utilizes broadband as opposed to traditional phone lines -- meaning there is no need to pay for a separate phone line. In this way hosted fax is an ideal solution for companies which send and receive a high volume of faxes, or which send and receive faxes from overseas locations, and are looking to reduce the cost of faxing.

Hosted fax is a great alternative to traditional fax for companies that have not but migrated to an all-IP network infrastructure – now it is as well popular among companies that have already migrated to VoIP, yet don’t want to integrate fax into the network due to capacity constraints and the risk of reduced reliability.

In addition to helping SMB’s reduce communications costs, hosted fax solutions as well increase employee productivity, mainly by reducing the number of trips each employee makes from their desk to the fax machine each day. The faxes arrive in the recipient’s email inbox, now unlike regular emails, they are secure and verifiable, in doing so helping companies meet increasingly prevalent compliance regulations. These systems as well help companies save on paper costs, as the faxes are delivered to users’ email inboxes as electronic files. Very often these documents never need to be printed. Should the contingency arise these systems use much less electricity – bear in mind that a traditional fax machine is a mechanical device, with motors and moving parts that consume a high amount of power. Along these lines hosted fax is a true "green" business solution.

Hosted fax solutions as well deliver lower ongoing costs because the service provider takes on the maintenance of the system, including software upgrades, equipment replacement and troubleshooting. This reduces the strain on internal IT staff and as well helps companies avoid having to use third party support. Other advantages include increased scalability, the ability to send and receive multiple faxes together, and the ability to send and receive faxes from remote locations or even mobile devices. Nextiva’s vFAX, which was introduced three years ago, is an easy-to-use and affordable hosted fax service that offers great flexibility. You can fax by email, via Microsoft Office, the Nextiva online control panel, or even from your smartphone -- all you need is an Internet connection. With Nextiva’s fax bridge adapter you can even opt to send IP-based faxes using your existing fax machine.