Internet Services

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InfoWeek

October 14, 1996
Issue: 601
Section: Internet.Intranet

To Send A Fax, Click Here

By Barbara DePompa

One of the hottest developments in Internet faxing is fax-on-demand systems that deliver online documents straight from your company's Web site to a fax machine.

Documents are delivered from a fax library that resides on a separate server. Visitors to a company's Web site can view a list of documents available via fax. Receiving documents via fax can be faster than downloading them from the Web. Another plus:Employees can fax online documents to someone else-a customer or supplier-with a simple click.

Analysts see this capability, usually offered by a fax services provider, as a way to add functionality to corporate Web sites. "Documents can be delivered in formatted form, not just as E-mail ASCII jumble," says Pete Davidson, president of Davidson Consulting in Burbank, Calif., and editor of FaxWire, a daily fax news bulletin.

Epigraphx, a San Carlos, Calif., company that offers a document library server as part of its Internet fax service, estimates the cost to set up the fax template on a Web page at $1,000. The company charges subscribing companies 35 cents per minute for fax deliveries. When a visitor wants to receive a fax from the site, he or she clicks on an on-screen fax button, and a template set up by Epigraphx will request his or her name and other information, including fax number. The server routes the information to the visitor's fax machine, often within five minutes.

"The market is telling us we need to be able to provide information whenever customers want it, in whatever form they need it, and at whichever device is most convenient-phone, fax, mailbox, or PC," says Scott Edwards, president of Epigraphx.

While the cost is higher than most long-distance telephone charges, companies find faxing from the Web is often cheaper than printing and sending the literature.

"We wanted to integrate fax-on-demand with our Web page and other information-delivery systems, since it seems we are constantly creating custom information in print and in electronic formats," says Dan Mallin, electronic marketplace manager at Imation, a 3M spin-off in Oakdale, Minn., that has been using the Epigraphx service for three months.

From a customer-service perspective, giving customers the option to have information delivered to their faxes from the Web speeds response times. Says Mallin:"Even our distributors use it to send faxes to customer prospects."