Musings of a Marketing Maven

I just paid the last phone bill for my fax machine. Sidelin­ing the fax… It feels like the end of an era — yet another unin­tended con­se­quence of email and web-based ser­vices on a small busi­ness like mine.

The fax used to serve an impor­tant role, for reg­u­lar client inter­ac­tions, con­tract sign­ings, credit appli­ca­tions with new sup­pli­ers, buy­ing from cat­a­logs, and so on.

I remem­ber when any new con­sult­ing project involved lots of fax­ing back and worth, espe­cially dur­ing the info gath­er­ing phase. Or when clients wanted to see Pow­er­Point drafts by fax, because their email gate­ways would block large attach­ments… In its hey­day my fax enabled a key project mile­stone: when clients faxed their pur­chase order or for­mally autho­rized the kick-off for a new engagement.

Lately its pri­mary — and unap­pre­ci­ated func­tion — has been receiv­ing junk faxes. Who needs to waste time or paper on junk faxes from Rus­sia or Nige­ria? So it was time to ter­mi­nate the ded­i­cated phone line for the fax machine.

Nowa­days eFax works just fine for those occa­sional faxes that I really want to receive.

I’ll hold on to the fax machine itself, for the rare occa­sion when I need out­bound fax ser­vice… Prob­a­bly fewer than a dozen occa­sions next year.

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