In a nutshell

Client: leading domestic service provider in the industrial rights industry
Number of users: tens
Solution area: document circulation, fax communication
Products applied: ExtraFax, Lotus Notes

Implementation time: 3 weeks
 
Initial status
The client is a leading domestic service provider in the industrial rights industry (patents and trademarks). Fax is a major communication channel in this business involving a huge quantity of paperwork and a large number of communicating entities.

The client used two separate systems for fax communication and document circulation at its two offices in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The fax communication was performed by means of standard fax machines and the Fax for Domino platform that, however, was not supported any more. The circulation of documents was managed by an information system based on the Lotus Notes platform. Transferring information between the fax and information systems was only possible through digitisation of paper fax documents and subsequent saving of the same in the information system. The client's fax traffic involved tens to hundreds of faxes a day and the system was used by tens of users. The key goal of our solution was to make the system more effective.
 
Implementation description
We analysed the fax communication processes at the first stage. The client used several independent fax machines at its branch offices and departments for its fax communication, which resulted in the following series of problems:

fax messages mainly take the form of paper documents
the existence of several “deposits” of paper fax messages for the respective branch offices/departments
ineffective distribution of fax messages to employees
no statistics were available to prove the history of communications with clients
Having considered all important aspects relating to the problem, we chose ExtraFax by ExtraComm as a base for our software solution, primarily because of its flexibility and the existing integration into the Lotus Notes system. The ExtraFax product was installed on the central Lotus Domino server.

As far as hardware is concerned, we recommended Intel Gammalink fax cards, mainly because of their stability and flexible support of a selectable number of phone lines. The same special fax cards were also installed onto the central fax server.
Stage 1 involved a load test of the proposed solution (software combined with the fax card) in the client's environment. The test lasted two weeks and as the solution proved to be OK, we installed it to the target server.

Then we made headers for various types of fax messages, taking corporate identity elements into account.
Selected components of the old software were then migrated to the new solution. User training was provided at the end of the implementation.

The operating efficiency of the whole solution was then subject to increased supervision over about a month after the system commissioning.
 
Key benefits
Simplified transfer of information between the fax and information systems
Fax messages have become part of the IS based on the LotusNotes platform – they have been integrated into the e-mail system, which has made the entire communication system significantly simpler and more transparent; if necessary, messages are retrieved within a single “deposit”.
Fax communication integrated with office applications
The user can write a fax message and send it right from the office application in use, without having to use multiple applications. That saves a lot of time required for message transmissions.
Possibility of simple central archiving of fax messages
The digitisation of the entire process of fax communication and its unification with the e-mail system makes it possible to set up a simple central system of archiving e-mails and fax messages. That significantly reduces the risk of fax messages getting lost or disvalued (e.g. fading text printed on thermo paper).