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We’re not all cyber-warriors with goggles on our heads and USB sockets running down our spines, as a staggering 40 per cent of UK small business employees spend their days battling good old analogue fax machines and their retro “paper.”
According to data released by Intel, which surveyed 3,000 of the UK’s small businesses, hopefully by fax, only 16 per cent of small business workers use their smartphones for any type of “work” purposes, while the old fashioned fax is still very much a core part of how we conduct our (small) business.
Small businesses are also cutting back on upgrading and updating their existing computers, too, with just over a third of IT departments saying they have no plans to buy any new hardware this year, as austerity impacts on the working world. [The Register]
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The reason for this is mainly because Banks will not accept scans of documents sent with e-mail as official documents, so anything with a signature has to be faxed. It has been pointed out to the banks that it’s just as easy to a fake a document, print it out and then send it by fax, but logic and reason are not their strong points.
I had exactly the same problem at the last place I worked. It’s not small businesses choosing to use faxes, it’s big business enforcing the requirement on them. With small business to small business/customer, everything is emailed in my experience.
In addition, I actually had Google requiring me to fax documents at one point. Even they wouldn’t accept scanned email copies.
I work for the NHS and fax machines are one of the main ways of communicating information between departments in other locations. Email may as well not exist.
John Lewis the retailer uses a fax machine
I hate our office fax machine more than most things.
I’ve been trying to get rid of our office FAX machines for years.. Hate the damn things…
Motor trade the same; loads still done with fax (ours are at least digitised).