HW Financial Services Improves Fax Confidentiality with MyFax

Business Editors/Technology Editors

OTTAWA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--November 25, 2008--As a top-20 national firm of chartered accountants, tax advisors, and specialist services, HW Financial Services (HWFS) possesses a great deal of confidential and sensitive information about its clients. When that information must be shared with their clients, insurance companies, banks and other accountancy firms, the normal mode of transmission is to fax it. This is due both to the urgency and the nature of the documents themselves, many of which are forms that require authorising signatures.

As concerns over the protection of private and confidential information grew, the branch office in High Wycombe became concerned about the use of its fax machine. The machine served 30 staff members on two floors. Since the machine was located on a different floor than the financial services department, the faxes could sit exposed for a length of time. Realising this was not an ideal situation, the HWFS team began looking into more secure alternatives. After reviewing various options, the team selected the MyFaxInternet fax service.

With MyFax, all users are now able to send and receive faxes directly from their desktops, using their e-mail client or a secure online server. This direct method greatly increases privacy and confidentiality over using a common fax machine in a common area. It also makes it far more convenient for the users since they no longer have to walk between floors or shuffle through reams of paper to find what they need.

“For us the e-mail function is the most convenient solutions to send/receive faxes,” explains Marian Fox, one of the administrators. “An e-mail confirmation is sent to our inbox to say that the fax has been sent. The recipient will receive the fax via their normal fax machine, or if they have MyFax it will be sent to their inbox. It’s that simple.”

MyFax has also improved efficiency in other key areas. For example, HWFS policy dictates that all client documents must be saved on the IT system, subject to client approval. Before MyFax, every fax correspondence had to be scanned and then saved into the relevant client’s folder on the IT system. This not only added more time and inconvenience on the day, but also added risk that scanned papers could easily get misplaced or picked up by unauthorised personnel.

Now, by using the e-mail function to send/receive faxes, all documents can be dragged into the client’s folder, with the added benefit that only authorised users for that account can access the fax records on the system.

MyFax has had a particular impact on faxes sent to or received from insurance companies. Most of the documents are data-intensive, with some being 30 pages long. With the old fax machine, someone on the staff had to stand by the machine, scan each page individually, and wait for the document to be sent. If the recipient’s fax line was busy or a dial tone was undetected, the staff member would have to wait until the fax became available. If there was a mis-feed or the call was dropped in the middle of faxing, the process would have to start all over. Either way it turned a simple job into a protracted and time-consuming process.

Today, users can send faxes instantly with a few clicks of a mouse. The entire process has been streamlined, saving both time and cost.

“MyFax greatly improves the efficiency of any industry that has a great deal of paperwork in their day-to-day operations,” says Joseph Nour, CEO of Protus IP, the provider of MyFax internet faxing service. “But for financial institutions operating under heightened concerns about privacy and security it is really the ideal solution.”

About MyFax

Protus® provides the highest quality software as a service (SaaS) communications tools for small-to-medium-businesses (SMB) and enterprise organizations, including award-winning MyFax, the fastest growing Internet fax service; my1voice, the cost-effective, feature-rich virtual PBX phone service that travels with the user from phone to web; and Campaigner, an email marketing solution with advanced automation features. MyFax is used to send and receive faxes using existing email accounts or the web. MyFax offers services in North America and Europe, including the United Kingdom. More than 15,000 new customers subscribe to MyFax each month. Additional information is available at www.myfax.com and www.myfax.uk.com.