Expert Articles

The construction market is very susceptible to the laws of supply and demand, and in an economic slump, construction contractors are often hit hard. In order to survive, construction companies need to take advantage of new technology and find new ways to get work and complete construction jobs more quickly.

There are, of course, a number of ways to do this, but sometimes the most effective methods of finding and completing new business are quite simple. Internet fax systems, for instance, can have a major impact on the day to day activities of construction businesses at nearly every level.

An internet fax service works like a normal fax line, except, as its name implies, everything is sent and received through a user's internet connection. Faxes are emailed to users or retrieved from an online control panel, and there is no paper copy of each fax received (unless a user decides to print out the received fax). Since the faxes are received in common formats like PDF, there's no learning curve. The process is simple and straightforward and there is no additional equipment required. If a person at a construction office can use an email system, he or she can use an internet based fax system easily, without any additional training.

There are a number of tangible benefits to using an internet fax service in place of more conventional fax lines, beyond the obvious savings on ink and paper. For one, internet faxes received through email can be accessed anywhere with an internet connection, on construction sites, during meetings with clients, during lunch breaks, or at home. This is very advantageous for construction companies that use fax services for new contracts, as it allows documents to be easily read, signed, and transferred back to a client without any downtime. After-hours faxes can still be processed efficiently, giving a construction business a definite edge over its competitors. Received faxes through internet fax systems are still secure, as each fax can be password-encrypted.

Every email received through an internet fax service can be easily searched for certain keywords, terms, or job numbers, making it easy to find documents, forms, and communication relating to a certain construction job (or hundreds of similar jobs) almost effortlessly. This makes file cabinets obsolete, which can clear up space in crowded offices, and when paired with modern smart phones like the iPhone and the Blackberry, it's easy to pull up a variety of forms, blueprints, and more at a construction site, minimizing the possibility of poor communication and speeding up each new construction job considerably.

On top of all of this, internet fax services are usually quite inexpensive, especially when considering the amount of money that modern construction companies pay to simply have land based fax lines set up and operating. It's a cinch to claim that a fax service pays for itself, but that's precisely what it does; monthly costs are low, and it works over existing internet lines, with very little setup involved and no down time.

There are few modern technologies that can make those sorts of claims, and even if a construction company doesn't use fax very often (it's difficult to find a construction company that operates without fax), internet fax is simply a necessary improvement over existing technology. Standard fax machines aren't as fast, they can't be automatically cataloged, and they can't be accessed at any location without a phone line. Nearly every aspect of traditional fax machines is improved via an internet based service.

That's not to say that internet fax is a magical technology, or that it will immediately make a construction company profitable. It simply gives businesses a set of tools that allows them to operate more efficiently, and in the world of construction, this can be vital.

Regardless of whether a construction business builds properties, provides consulting services, or sells buildings, internet fax services can help in every step along the way. They're an important new tool for construction companies, and in a bad economy, they can be an especially helpful resource.