The Ins and Outs of Fax Servers

Integrating cloud fax into your business workflow can bring many benefits; reduced hardware costs, increased
employee productivity, and incredible scale. While fax servers can deliver and receive many faxes in a matter of minutes, they are not easily expandable.

Sending & Receiving Faxes

How many faxes you can send out at once will depend on how many channels you have available to call out on.  Determining how many channels you’ll need for your outbound volume can be easily calculated by your hardware or software vendor.  In reality though, your outgoing faxes will go into a queue and eventually be sent. It may take a little longer, but it will still work out with a minimal effect on your business, unless your documents are time sensitive.

For receiving faxes, it gets a little trickier. Because you have only so many inbound lines available to receive faxes, if you exceed your planned capacity you may not receive some documents. Although most modern fax servers and machines will continue to try for a specified amount of time, you still need to consider the time sensitivity of your inbound documents. If you get overloaded and miss a couple or a dozen sales orders which will go out a day later than they should, what is the cost to your business?

Cloud Faxing Offers Virtually Unlimited Capacity

With a traditional fax server, you’ll need to be diligent about predicting your capacity needs over the course of the year. Planning for capacity well beyond your needs is an option, but the additional expenses make it a costly one. With cloud faxing you receive the benefit of a worldwide network of servers and virtually unlimited capacity to meet unexpected and planned peak periods.

Not only will not have hardware or software concerns, but you can rest assured that your documents will be received and delivered on-time. Retarus cloud faxing solution offers 100% delivery and massive capacity to ensure you never miss a message, coming or going. For more information contact us at 212-504-2978 or info@retarus.com.

 

A Better Way to Approach IT and the Cloud

Today’s IT departments are overburdened and tasked with keeping up with an ever increasing list of requests from the business. More storage, more bandwidth, more availability, more flexibility, and the list goes on. IT not only has to deliver more, but do so at a greater level of austerity than ever before.  Too often in the face of these challenges IT will try and prove they can deliver superior services, storage, and availability rather than outsourcing to a cloud solution. When you reach this stage it may be better to access your objectives in order to bring them more closely in line with business goals.

Adapting to a Cloud Computing Reality

When faced with monumental change, like that which comes with cloud computing, it’s best to approach it by meeting it head on rather than waiting for it to knock you over. Better to become the bringer of solutions than to be bypassed by business units seeking a better way to solve a day to day issue. If you do not, business units and individuals within them will seek answers elsewhere, usually leaving IT with little or no clue as to what services their internal customers are using. This not only reduces your relevance, it decreases the effectiveness of the business as a whole.

Far better to proactively reach out to business partners, discover their needs and do what technology professionals do best; find the best solution regardless if it’s internally sourced or is provided by a cloud service.

Discover a Better Solution

One of the growing challenges in today’s world is managing the increasing number of messages we’re expected to deliver on a daily basis. Today’s communications span multiple touch points like email, fax, and SMS, and have seasonal fluctuations. They also benefit from being targeted, managed and measured in real-time for effectiveness.  Even if you currently manage this process internally you may find that you can benefit from partnering with a cloud messaging company that can bring even higher levels of accuracy and cost effectiveness.

From highly integrated delivery services with a high degree of elasticity, Retarus has been helping companies deliver, manage, and measure cloud messaging solutions for over 20 years. To find out how we can help you, contact us today at 212-504-2978 or info@retarus.com.

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Building an Effective Messaging Strategy

Whether you’re a business manager or a CTO who is responsible for messaging, knowing how and what to measure in your communications can mean the difference between successful programs and simply throwing things against the wall.

Why Measure?

When you plan and send out emails, faxes, SMS, or any other type of communications to vendors, clients, end user customers, or partners, it’s important to understand if they are being as effective as possible. Knowing if they are meeting your expectations means setting up a method and means by which to measure their success.

What to Measure

Discovering what KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) you need to determine success is your first step. What events or reactions determine whether your message was a success or failure?  Each business will have unique situations, but here are some idea starters to get you going. Depending on the medium, typical measurement criteria might include:

•          Delivery success rate
•          Open rate
•          Call to action success rate

All of these can help you determine if you’re hitting your mark or not.  It’s also important to gather information from all involved departments within your company in order to come up with a comprehensive list. This will help you see the bigger picture from your messaging programs and how they impact the entire business.

How to Measure

How you measure will depend in large part on what you are looking to find out and the tools you or your delivery vendor have available.  Most communications are dependent on the delivery success because, if your message did not make it through, then there isn't much to measure.

Again, each business will have different ways of measuring available in order to match the communication method, but here are some additional ways to measure:

• Delivery rate as determined by your internal systems or your messaging provider.
• Work with sales or other departments who are part of a call to action to determine if you had an impact on inbound call volumes or sales.
• Other technologies that can determine desired results; scanning of a QR code, visit to a website or social media site.

No matter what you measure or how you measure, it’s important to remember to do so with input from your entire organization. Failure to do this important step could lead to false success or failure indicators that could render your metrics meaningless, and your messaging strategy less effective.

Retarus can help you build a comprehensive messaging strategy with Email, Fax, and SMS, managed from a user friendly front end, with back end system integration and real-time transparent reporting.  So, regardless of how you want to communicate, Retarus can help you maximize your chances of building an effective messaging strategy.

Contact us today at 212-504-2978 or info@retarus.com.

Cloud ERP, ERP to Fax

According to a recent article in MBTMAG.com, Manufacturing Business Technology magazine, the benefits and evolution of Cloud ERP have arrived. The SaaS (Software as a Service) model allows manufacturers to reduce IT operational costs by outsourcing hardware and software maintenance through the cloud provider.

The article goes on to say that the benefits extend to fast deployment, ease of use, and receiving information from anywhere. Combined with lower upfront costs and scalability, they predict that Cloud ERP will be one of “the most sweeping upgrades in manufacturing technology over the next decade.”

Like many industries, newer manufacturers without heavy investment in ERP systems are the most likely to move to a cloud based system, while some larger, older companies that use SAP or Oracle on premise will show up to the game later.

Taking the First Step

Companies with an on premise ERP system can still easily take advantage of cloud opportunities by tying their ERP systems to a Cloud Messaging provider. Cloud messaging allows companies to take advantage of on-demand messaging, without the hassle of internal integration to outdated fax server hardware and software.

With the vendor data your ERP systems brings, Fax, SMS, and Email communications can be quickly personalized to meet your needs in a matter of hours. With complete control and reporting, the efficiencies gained might even outweigh the money saved by retiring in-house fax hardware and software.

Consider some of the other benefits:

·                     Choice of Delivery

·                     High Availability Cloud

·                     Unlimited scalability

·                     World Class Security

·                     Real-Time or Scheduled Delivery

·                     Real-Time Reporting

With no limits or restrictions on how much or little messaging you want or need to do, you’re in complete control of your costs. With the manufacturing industry growing again, it’s good to know there is a solution you can rely on that will scale as needed with you; without the need for capital expenditure or considerable IT involvement.

For more on how Cloud messaging integration can increase the efficiency of your ERP system, contact Retarus at 212-504-2978 or info@retarus.com.

The Real Winner is Your Company

Of the tens of thousands of companies in the EU, Retarus came in 75 in the Europe 500 list at the European Growth Summit held at the European Parliament! The Europe 500 list only considers companies that can show at least 30% improvement in terms of turnover and job creation. In these days of challenging financial times, Retarus maintained this growth with solid cash flow and without acquisition.

Global Footprint

With 12 international companies and subsidiaries, Retarus maintains a significant global footprint, allowing it to serve the international business community like few others can.

Dedicated Employees

Part of the reason for this growth is due to dedicated employees across the globe, opening new markets, and building and refining the product line. This continuity of employment speaks well of the company and solidifies our ability to better serve our customers.

Why our Growth Means Better Service for You

Experience - You can benefit from our happy employees because we can keep them longer, delivering you a more experienced product, sales, and engineering teams than ever before. 

Stability – Our stability can go straight to your bottom line in the form of increased performance and less time spent educating new employees about your business.

Skilled Educated Workforce – You benefit because our stable growth and satisfied, motivated employees allow us to attract highly educated candidates. Candidates that can hit the ground running and immediately benefit from joining a stable team already in place supporting your account.

No matter how you look at it, our win is your win. We will continue to strive to deliver outstanding results to our customers with sustainable growth and innovations. Retarus is dedicated to growing and creating a focused and highly motivated team to meet your toughest messaging challenges in 2013 and beyond.

Contact us today at 212-504-2978 or info@retarus.com and see what our team can do for yours. 

Getting Noticed in a Noisy World

You may have noticed that the world is getting noisier by the minute. I’m not talking about actual noise from cars, planes, lawn mowers and the like; I’m talking about the ever increasing desire of everyone to get our attention.

More email, texts, pop-up banner ads, billboards on everything, scrolling ads in stadiums and public places, and even automated phone calls. Adding to the problem is that social media makes it all too easy for marketers to identify you for business emails. If you’re on LinkedIn you might be getting 3 to 4 cold calls a day from intelligent marketers who figured out your companies email id schema. It can be maddening.

If you’re like me, your instinct it to delete these unsolicited messages so you can go on with the other insane list of things you actually need to get done. But when the occasional snail-mail or fax reaches your desk, like me, you probably read it- if for no reason other than the novelty.

Planning a 360 degree Marketing Approach

Email and other electronic means of communications will always be important, but planning a broader strategy that includes fax along with email and SMS could make the difference between standing out and getting lost in the noise.

The key is to use the right tool to manage, monitor, and measure your success. Retarus offers just that type of tool, with its integrated messaging approach that can let you send customized marketing messages to your prospects using not only email, but also SMS and Fax.

Our common database approach let’s you target potential customers with precision, delivering the perfect message at just the right time. We then give you the tools you’ll need to monitor delivery and success through our truly transparent real time reporting system.

This is the perfect solution for Financial Organizations, Travel companies, Investor Relations, PR & Marketing Departments, and Healthcare & Pharmaceutical companies looking to message doctors and hospitals.

Find out more about how Retarus can help you cut through the noise. 

Contact us today at 212-504-2978 or info@retarus.com.

Handle the Spring Mortgage Season with Ease

A recent journey into refinancing my home reminded me once again how important fax is to the banking industry. Upon filling out an application, I was prompted to fax or scan a PDF back to the loan officer. I looked at the fax/scanner and decided fax. Faxing only required me to do one task, and I could leave the room once it started, rather than having to wait for the scan to finish and hit send on the email message. Then I needed to send the requests for supporting documents a week later; paycheck stub, 1040, along with others. Again, it was easier to simply fax them over.

On my end of this transaction it required nothing more than a simple all-in-one printer, copier, and fax device. On the bank’s end they need a receiving system that can handle hundreds, if not thousands of documents and pages per day. All securely stored and delivered to the correct person.

That’s where Retarus comes in. We take the burden off your IT department of worrying about maintaining fax servers on a 24/7 basis. Your bank concentrates on approving loans; we concentrate on receiving and managing your messages. Faxes are received from anywhere in the world and can be processed by individuals at their PC’s or by back-end systems, increasing productivity and reducing costs and errors.

With Retarus you can even use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to turn faxes into data which can be easily manipulated.

Unlimited Scalability

We know that banks have highs and lows in home loan processes, and between an improving housing market and spring buying season, you’re likely starting to see an increased load of loan requests. With our inbound cloud fax solution that’s no problem.  Since we maintain bandwidth and processing power well beyond our customers’ needs, you have the ability to instantly grow and shrink your fax needs as necessary, with no added expense or IT cycles. 

Security to Match

We also know that security is important to you and your customers. That’s why we deliver redundancy and security that is second to none. Globally distributed servers allow us to never miss a delivery, and secure facilities and access processes give you peace of mind that your customer’s sensitive financial data is secure with us.

Up and Running in 48 Hours

With over 20 years of experience in delivering enterprise class fax solutions, we can have you off your high maintenance fax servers and onto our reliable cloud fax service in 48 hours. Make your spring mortgage season easier by contacting us at 212-504-2978 or info@retarus.com, and one of our trained professionals can walk you through our seamless messaging process.