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Whether your institution is elementary, secondary, or tertiary, you need a safe and efficient way to send and receive sensitive school data. Using online fax services is the way to go.
An online fax solution such as eFax allows you to fax education records and disclosures via email from your computer or mobile device. When you start using the best online fax services to fax from email, you can stop using:
- Bulky desktop fax machines
- Expensive telco lines
- Costly in-house fax servers
Your school staff can send and receive faxes from any tablet, smartphone, or desktop as long as they have internet. And if you’re not ready to retire your existing fax infrastructure, you can integrate eFax with your networked Multi-Function Printers. Imagine enjoying such faxing convenience with enhanced security without huge upfront costs. That’s online faxing for you.
The Importance of Online Faxing in the Education Sector
A standard workday in the educational sector involves sending, receiving, and storing various documents such as:
- Academic transcripts
- Student transfer requests
- Special education plans
- Student registration forms
- Student records
- Financial aid requests
Even if you have a small student population, your fax workflows will soon overwhelm your staff if you only use traditional faxing with its dedicated fax telephone lines and fax machines. If your school staff can only access inbound faxes from the fax machine, you’ll have a lot of avoidable traffic in your offices as employees go back and forth to the fax machine.
And this would be chaos if you have a large student population, and it’s a busy time such as admission day. Thankfully, online fax services help you avoid such unpleasant situations by empowering your school staff to send and receive documents online from within or outside campus using internet-connected devices.
Benefits and Advantages of Online Fax Services for Educational Institutions
Businesses in regulated industries benefit from using fax services given the sensitive information they hold. Here are five top gains learning institutions get from using fax services online:
1. Streamlined Communication and Document Exchange
Educational institutions have different academic departments and administrative offices that collaborate daily. For instance, the finance office may share a student’s financial records with the admin office. Also, the registrar’s office often processes requests from former students to share their academic details with a third party such as a hiring manager.
Whether internal or external communication, fax solutions such as eFax provide a centralized platform for sharing information. This way, every person with access permission can follow and contribute to communication threads in real time. Better yet, eFax allows you to send and receive various files, including PDF files. You can select the file type that’s most compatible with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
eFax enables everyone in your organization working on the same business processes to fax from computer and communicate efficiently without time or location limitations. It also allows you to simultaneously share large files of up to 3GB with 20 people, making mass communication faster.
2. Enhanced Data Security and Privacy
If your learning institution receives funding from the U.S. Department of Education, you’re mandated by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to protect the privacy of your student education records. But even if your institution is not subject to FERPA, you must uphold the confidentiality of your student’s personally identifiable information (PII) and other crucial school records.
Fortunately, top online fax service providers such as eFax offer a FERPA-compliant solution for sending, receiving, and storing faxes. eFax utilizes super-advanced security and encryption protocols to enhance the security of your faxes when in transit and at rest.
On top of this, online fax services ensure only your intended recipients view your inbound faxes by sending fax messages straight to their email inboxes. This is unlike traditional desktop fax machines, which print out incoming faxes and leave them on the fax tray, where any staffer can view the fax’s content or take the printed copies by mistake. Also, an outgoing fax can be exposed if the person sending it leaves the fax machine before the fax is delivered. But when you fax online, you avoid such data security risks.
3. Improved Administrative Efficiency and Workflow
Online fax service platforms give you more control over the faxing process. Top solutions like eFax give your admin personnel the power to:
- Create and manage user accounts for different faculty members
- Create and oversee fax user groups
- Assign and withdraw access privileges
- Manage fax cover pages
Your IT managers and other managers with access permission can administer these functions online without waiting for approval from higher-ranking executives. This way, managers can execute their administrative tasks more efficiently.
Additionally, eFax’s electronic fax signature solution enables the relevant staff members to electronically sign crucial school documents such as transfer requests or student transcripts. These documents must be duly signed to be legally binding. Online fax solutions allow your staff and students to sign documents online without collecting wet signatures.
4. Cost Savings and Reduced Paper Usage
Research done by eFax Corporate shows that businesses utilizing online fax services in which faxes are delivered to a recipient’s mail in PDF format save about 85% of the labor costs of handling incoming faxes.
If you also add the cost savings due to reduced paper use, you’ll find that your operating costs decrease substantially. Besides the direct cost savings from using less printing paper, you’ll also save on fax machine maintenance costs.
And if you choose to retire your faxing hardware altogether, you’ll have zero maintenance costs. Ultimately, the cost savings you make from online fax solutions are much more than the monthly or annual subscription fee you pay. With significant cost-saving margins, you’ll retain more of your profits, boosting business continuity in the short and long term.
5. Increased Accessibility and Mobility for Remote Learning
Thanks to online faxing technology, educators can fax important learning materials such as lesson plans and course syllabi by email. Students can sign attendance records and enrollment forms online using their mobile devices or computers. With such functionalities, learners and teachers rely on fax solutions to continue remote learning without administrative drawbacks.
Elevate Your Educational Institution’s Communication With Online Fax Services
Although these five benefits may prompt you to embrace online faxing right away, you should ask yourself these three questions to establish the most suitable fax solution for your school:
- Is my existing fax process encrypted?
- Is my existing fax process compliant with FERPA guidelines?
- Is my existing fax process the most efficient faxing method?
You’ll be glad to know eFax provides encrypted faxing for schools and educational institutions in the U.S. and globally. Even better, eFax can customize a fax solution for your institution to advance your communication and operations efficiency. So, regardless of how you answer the above questions, rest easy knowing that eFax will fit the bill.
