Fax servers can help usher in paperless office

The notion of the paperless office has been one bandied about for decades; but it remains fanciful, something highly unlikely ever to happen.

This is especially so given the clear growth in volumes of paper being printed out in all offices around the world.

But major progress can be made towards such a goal, with the right attitude and solutions, says Boudje Giljam, sales and marketing director of AmVia, local distributor of RightFax, the fax server solution from Captaris.

"Fax, e-mail, workflow, multi-function printers and Web servers can be combined and integrated in such a way as to eliminate vast amounts of paper from corporates' daily working procedures," says Giljam. "With the right approach, thousands of people can work together without generating paper, and with a dramatic improvement on their productivity and improvement in processes."

This was precisely what Rosen Hotels & Resorts, a US-based luxury hotel company, has achieved. The largest independent hotel company in Florida, Rosen operates seven luxury properties in the Orlando area and two subsidiaries: Provinsure, an insurance agency, and Millenium Technology Group (MTG), a networking company that provides telecommunications and IT services to the hospitality industry.

Many paper documents are shared among Rosen facilities, including reservation confirmations and banquet event orders. Rosen also manages its own medical clinic for employees, dependants and students, and the handling of their patient records must meet HIPAA privacy standards.

When MTG developed the IT architecture for Shingle Creek (Rosen's new property that opened in 2006), the goal was to create a paperless environment with a centralised document management capability that could subsequently be extended throughout the organisation.

Rosen installed Captaris RightFax at Shingle Creek and has since extended it to more than 870 end-users in all seven hotels, the medical centre and the insurance agency.

RightFax was integrated with Microsoft Exchange, Cisco CallManager and Canon multifunction peripherals (MFPs), to provide a central document management solution that has immediately improved the guest experience by increasing productivity and streamlining communications.

"RightFax is the next step in the process for a paperless office due to its integration with Microsoft Exchange, Cisco CallManager, Canon MFPs and eCopy," says Jim Bina, MTG president and director of IT for Rosen.

Central fax management automatically creates more legible files, supplies a reliable audit trail and creates easier access to documents and HIPAA compliance security for medical records.

With RightFax, employees now send faxes from virtually any software application on the desktop or right from the MFPs. All tasks are completed without touching paper.

Rosen also uses Microsoft SharePoint for collaboration and sharing documents. Faxes are filed into SharePoint, where they are readily accessed by various departments. All faxes are also remotely accessible because of the RightFax integration with Cisco CallManager. RightFax also supports a mobile workforce, providing immediate notification when important documents are received - a feature particularly useful to the events and catering staff who are often out of their offices.

"Thousands of dollars are involved in servicing events," says Kevin Drinan, Rosen's convention technology manager. "With RightFax I receive immediate notification on my Blackberry, which allows us to implement work orders right away."

RightFax is now an integral component of Rosen's digital document management system. The paperless fax processes are saving money and time. The faster response to customer requests leads to a better guest experience. And the 870 employees who now use RightFax are enhancing their productivity by eliminating hours of fax-related paperwork every day.

"Such benefits are available to any organisation with insight, vision and the right partners," says Giljam. "It reinforces the fact that integrating fax into corporate processes can unlock vast amounts of value."