PhilMur's thoughts on biz/tech/money/life

My original title for this post was “Is faxing dead?”  But upon typing out those words, the answer was obvious: yes and no, and so I changed the title to “Why isn’t faxing dead yet?”. If the ancient 20-something-year-old art of placing a paper in a machine that will send the image across phone lines to a fax machine or server elsewhere in the world was entirely dead, then people would disconnect all fax machines, stop purchase fax software, and most importantly they would stop placing the numbers on their business cards.  But those things haven’t happened across the board as of yet (in fact, the idea for this post came to me as I was entering an attorney’s contact info off of her business card, fax number included, into my computer the other day).  Nonetheless, many DID turn their back on fax machines long ago and so as far as they’re concerned the answer is “yes”.  But for the reasons I will detail momentarily, one cannot claim the total death of faxing quite yet.

THE OBVIOUS ALTERNATIVE TO FAXING

With Internet access and Internet use now more ubiquitous than a nearby fax machine, one would think the simple act of scanning and emailing a document would have replaced faxing years ago.  The idea of emailing a scanned image, and more importantly the idea of receiving a scanned image attached to your email (as opposed to pages falling off of a fax machine in the next room) is extremely attractive.  The electronic, scan/email approach is so much easier (in my opinion) that at one point when I worked at an office without a scanner but that had a fax machine down the hall, I would fax a document to my e-fax number on my computer, walk back to my computer and then forward the email I received from that fax machine on to the intended recipient via e-mail.  I did both myself AND the eventual recipient of my fax a big favor by keeping our correspondence digital by converting the hardcopy document into digital format.  This would allow us both to access and view the document then and in the future from anywhere and at any time.

REASONS WHY FAXING ISN’T DEAD

All this having been said, why is it then that fax numbers still exist, and fax transmissions continue?  I would propose that the jump has not yet happened for 3 reasons:

Reason #1: Scanner manufacturers (i.e. Brother, Canon, HP, etc.) and computer manufacturers (Dell, HP, Apple, etc.) have not done a good enough job of simplifying the act of sending an image to someone else, thus making it as easy for everyone to throw out the fax machine for good.

Despite my obvious preference for scanning as described above, even I must admit that sitting down at a computer, finding the scanning software, and making it all happen together with the device at hand is not as easy as it should be, with different processes, software, and things to consider.  Less-comfortable computer users will often find it easier and quicker to use a dedicated device – a fax machine – to send several pages of images.

Even if the Windows and Apple operating systems got their act together, you still have the issue of the scanning device itself.  Until the recent popping up of The Neat Company kiosks in airports all over the country, I haven’t seen one vendor get the device small enough, simple enough, and integrated with scanning/filing software well enough to really push scanning into the mainstream.  Again, The Neat Company has done a pretty good job with this, although my impression is that their filing system is still proprietary, but their flagship desktop scanning device and system is listed at $399 on the first page of their website — a price too step for most people to consider a dedicated device.  Instead most people will stick with a Brother multi-function device or similar (great machines, by the way) and that would be fine, except many of them will never figure out the scanning technology and system well enough to use it smoothly and productively.

Reason #2: Services rose up to fill in the fax -> technology gap, thus prolonging the total death of faxing technology.  Efax.com, a leading online fax service provider, gives people free fax numbers and lets them receive a limited number of faxed pages per month at no cost (I use this service, in fact, as some people still want to fax me documents from time to time).  For a monthly fee, Efax.com provides outbound faxing, a local phone number of your choice, etc. etc.  Within corporations, IT departments have long been acquainted with fax server software made by companies such as GFI which allows for the routing of incoming faxes straight into employee e-mail boxes.

These services have kept people tolerant of the old fax-to-a-phone number approach, largely because people often send and/or receive faxes through these systems without ever touching a fax machine.  The tragedy here is that money is spent on fax server software and phone lines are tied up in the transmission and receiving of faxes with this technology.  Despite the obvious benefits to these services, over the long haul they will become unnecessary.

Reason #3: The move from transmitting hardcopy documents over the phone lines via faxing to the outright irrelevance of paper documents in many of our homes and companies has created something of a “leap frog” affect. Ironically, I believe one reason few companies have ever gotten serious about giving the average personal/home user an easy, consistent, and inexpensive way to scan, email, and organize paper documents on their computer is that very few things even come to us in hard copy form any more. Bank statements, newsletters, daily news, and correspondence all come to us and are available for later retrieval by us in a web browser. As a result, there almost wasn’t enough time and profit incentive for hardware and software companies to kick out fax machines for good by creating an inexpensive, easy-to-use device that could be successfully sold and marketed to millions.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, this is what I believe:  faxing will “die” once and for all when desktop scanners become cheap, small, and easy to use– AND when paper document flow slows to such a crawl that an email address will be more than sufficient on a business card for all professionals — even attorneys.