SAGG Computers and Electronics and RightFax
The Problem
SAGG Computers and Electronics, Inc., a New York-based systems integrator, was using modem-based faxing that had many drawbacks.
SAGG wanted to give users one interface to send and receive documents through their Lotus Notes/Domino R5 system and save
money overall.
The Solution
SAGG Computer and Electronics, Inc., implemented RightFax fax server software and the RightFax Gateway for Lotus Notes. SAGG
users send and receive faxes from the Lotus Notes e-mail systems, improving productivity. SAGG has reduced paper consumption
by 70%, reduced mailing costs, and is saving on hardware and software costs.
The Benefits
Desktop fax capabilities result in labor savings.
Integration with Lotus Notes/Domino R5 centralizes company communication and eases administration.
RightFax Intelligent Least-Cost Routing™ reduces faxing costs by eliminating long distance phone charges.
RightFax OCR features recognize users and routes faxes appropriately, maintaining document confidentiality.
The Challenge
Based in Forest Hills, N.Y., with 50 employees and several offices throughout New York state, SAGG Computers and Electronics,
Inc. is a VAR, software developer, and systems integrator.
Like its Fortune 500 customers (which include companies like Seagate Software and their business intelligence customers ),
SAGG must receive and deliver documents quickly and efficiently in a number of ways, including fax, e-mail, and Internet delivery.
Those documents include proposals, quotes, purchase orders, and marketing brochures. Originally, SAGG relied on stand-alone
fax machines and manually faxed documents. These proved to be inefficient and did not guarantee timely delivery. “We get many
customer requests for information. We had to maintain paper-based documents to be printed out and then faxed. The documents
would stack up at the fax machine, waiting to be sent out,” relates Kleyner.
To solve this problem, they migrated from stand-alone fax machines and installed fax modems on each employees desktops. This
solution also had big drawbacks. It did not allow SAGG to track which documents where sent to which customers. In addition,
it did not meet Kleyner’s goal to find an alternative to making employees and customers deal with several interfaces in order
to send and receive documents—print, phone, fax, e-mail, and so forth. His objective was to find a solution that would enable
his users to send and receive documents from one interface—ultimately one that could integrate tightly with Lotus Notes and
their CRM/SFA solution (ME4N), which SAGG and its customers use extensively.
The Solution
To meet SAGG’s document delivery challenges, Kleyner implemented a RightFax network fax server. RightFax not only integrated
with Lotus Notes, but also provided a host of other features that made it easy to use, install and manage. “RightFax scales
beautifully,” he points out. “We don’t have to rip out big chunks of our infrastructure in order to expand our RightFax system.
And it means our employees have to use only one interface to send a fax or e-mail.”
On a daily basis, SAGG’s current RightFax installation averages 300 inbound and 500 outgoing faxes. The RightFax FaxUtil interface
helps the company track which documents were sent to customers and when they were sent. “This way we know what information
customers are looking for and what they’ve received so far,” says Kleyner. “Before, only our sales reps knew that information.”
As for the newest release of RightFax v7.0, integration with Lotus Notes/Domino R5, Kleyner says, “For us, the most important
feature of the release is support for Lotus Notes/Domino R5. It extends RightFax even more for us.” According to Kleyner,
the company is always looking to expand their capabilities and RightFax has continually been able to help them do this.
“RightFax is a perfect fit for us. It integrates with Lotus Notes as well as other applications and provides reliable network
faxing capabilities we need.”
SAGG benefits from using RightFax for Lotus Notes/Domino R5 by being able to address an e-mail and fax recipients in the same
message. Other features include an option to modify the mail template or preserve it and users can choose from multiple fax
domains, assignable per fax address.
According to Kleyner, RightFax also helps ensure that documents are delivered to customers. If RightFax encounters a problem
delivering a document, it generates an error message for the user sending it.
Kleyner has taken advantage of the RightFax OCR and Least-Cost Routing capabilities. “For inbound, computer-generated faxes,
I can specify that RightFax look for certain fields such as my name and phone extension. It uses OCR to recognize my name
and extension. RightFax then routes the document to me via e-mail,” says Kleyner. “This means I don’t have to have a private
fax machine or have other office personnel handle what might be highly confidential material.”
The RightFax Least-Cost Routing feature has greatly reduced the cost of faxing for Kleyner. Least-Cost Routing is a feature
for enterprise customers that allows the company to communicate between servers via a WAN instead of over traditional phone
lines. This reduces costs by eliminating long distance phone charges.
Kleyner says that SAGG also finds the RightFax PDF Module highly useful. “RightFax can recognize the PDF file format and convert
it into a format for faxing.”
“RightFax has not only made life easier, but it has reduced costs as well,” says Kleyner. “We’ve probably reduced paper consumption
by 70 percent just because we no longer have to print out documents in order to fax them. We have also reduced printing and
mailing costs—especially with our online delivery and fax-on-demand systems. Now that we no longer have fax modems in every
desktop computer, we’ve saved a tremendous amount in hardware and software costs as well.”
For more details on this implementation, read the article that appeared in the January 2001 issue of Domino Power Magazine,
"Network Faxing Solutions: Faxing through Lotus Notes and Domino R5."
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