Now, with the advent of cloud fax, financial institutions enjoy the efficiency of faxing sensitive documents right from their computers, without needing any clunky equipment. Far more agile and flexible than traditional faxing, cloud fax is like the NBA All-Star player of office technology, and it’s proven to be so effective, many Fortune 500 companies have already made the switch.
Cloud Faxing vs Emailing
If everything is going digital, why not just use email to send attached documents? To stick with the athlete analogies, email is like a contortionist covered in baby oil. Sure emails are ultra-flexible and can be accessed from any device, but they can also be easily hacked, therefore they lack the stability/security to send documents as safely as a virtual fax system.
Legality is also an issue. Both traditional and cloud faxes are automatically admissible to use in a court of law. However, it takes some work to authenticate emails since it’s possible to tamper with an email system, so they are not always admissible. If keeping a good paper trail keeps you out of hot water, you’ll want to send and store your documents appropriately.
Here are 5 more reasons cloud fax is the MVP of the financial industry:
1 - Cloud Faxing is more secure and reliable than traditional fax processes.
While the transmission of traditional fax is quite secure, the process on a whole is not nearly as secure as cloud fax. Cloud fax solutions, such as mFax, is the Lebron James of digital defense, protecting documents every step of the way. Not only is it impossible to interrupt the transmission, but it can only be viewed by the intended recipient. Conversely, traditional fax machines pump out documents as soon as they are received and can be seen by whoever gets to them first. Unlike cloud fax, where the entire document is transmitted at once, pages are often unaccounted for with traditional faxes, excluding up to 10% of the document. It’s the difference between a player who can play and a player who can win.
2 - Faster faxing means shorter sales cycles.
The capacity to increase a sales pipeline and make more money is in direct relation to the bandwidth needed to manage that pipeline effectively. Some things will always take time, like building good customer relationships. However, cloud fax makes it possible for financial institutions to shorten their sales cycle, allowing more time to focus on the customer and the ability to successfully help more customers.
Take the example of a mortgage loan officer (LO):
Any LO can tell you the number of documents required to process a home loan these days is mind-boggling. We’re talking six consecutive months of bank statements, two years of tax returns, pay stubs and retirement account statements, in addition to copies of the sales agreement and the appraisal and the survey and signed disclosures from the bank. Just one loan can produce a honking pile of paperwork and much of it is received by fax. When these documents are received by traditional fax, they are collected from the machine (and sometimes off the floor), and then scanned and sent securely to the LO. Often this is done by an assistant, who was hired specifically because this process is so arduous. Cloud fax, however, instantly and securely sends documents directly to LO, which can be uploaded to the application and sent within a few clicks of the keyboard. So instead of managing a pipeline of file folders and a very bored assistant, the LO can process more loans.
We said there are 5 good reasons to upgrade to cloud fax, but would like to point out the bonus benefit that a fast and seamless sales process raises the customer experience to courtside seat-level status.
3 - Cloud Fax saves dollars and resources.
While a fax machine won’t necessarily break the bank (a la 2008), it’s not the only expense included with traditional fax. You also have to pay for dedicated phone lines, compatible software, licensing agreements, ink, toner, paper, and repairs.
In addition to saving you every single one of the costs associated with the analog fax process, cloud fax also saves on the cost of personnel. Remember the assistant you hired to collect papers off the floor who has to painstakingly go through each page to see if anything is missing before scanning and filing those papers? Yeah - you can either bench your assistant or give them something to do that honors their brilliance and utilizes them to their full capacity.
4 - Cloud fax shows you’re a team player!
Big business often gets a bad rap when it comes to environmental concerns. Considering “e-waste represents 2% of America’s trash in landfills but equals 70% of overall toxic waste” (1), it’s clear we all need to be more mindful about purchasing unnecessary equipment as well as how we recycle the things we no longer use. In A Paperless Office Makes a Healthier Planet we take a deep dive into the benefits of going paperless. Cloud fax reduces the toll on our environment while traditional fax machines create substantial pollution due to the industrial pulp production used to make paper, toxic inks, and loading up landfills with outdated or broken equipment. Coupled with e-Signature solutions like mSign, for example, cloud fax helps you completely digitize your office and do your part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
5 - Cloud fax is liberating!
Not so long ago, no one in the financial industry would have dreamed of working remotely. Concerns about security and compliance, access to all that industrial-sized office equipment and file cabinets and free pens kept most folks bumper-to-bumper twice a day for the 8-5 grind. But since cloud fax can be used from any computer, without the need for a separate machine or reams of free paper, many employees have been liberated to do business from home. They’ll just have to snag their free pens when they swing by the office for quarterly meetings.
Why mFax is the All-Star player you need in your financial institution:
Over here at Documo we created mFax with the financial industry in mind. That’s why mFax uses supreme encryption technology to keep documents secure and has a simple, easy-to-learn interface. To help you make the switch as seamless as possible, our in-house customer service team is meticulously trained to guide you through the process. Our favorite part of the job is hearing our customers tell us how much ease and efficiency mFax has brought into their businesses.
Check out why mFax is a slam dunk and book your demo today.
Sources:
- Slade, Giles. "iWaste." Mother Jones, 2007. Web Accessed April 11, 2015.