Though fax may seem like a relic of a bygone era, there are certain industries that still heavily rely on fax as a secure means of sending messages. The healthcare, financial services, legal, real estate, government, and education industries rely heavily on fax, especially cloud fax solutions, for secure document delivery.
If you are a UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) provider, an MSP (Managed Service Provider), a VAR (Value Added Reseller) for the industries listed above providing secure faxing technology to your clients is vital. Integrating fax solutions with collaboration tools can significantly enhance communication and collaboration capabilities.
As much as 75% of cross-provider communication in healthcare still happens through fax. This is despite the $30B Obama-era investment in digitizing the internal operations of medical providers with electronic health records. You can bet that if you’re not offering fax as one of the services you provide, your clients are finding a fax provider on their own.
Understanding Cloud Fax Solutions
Cloud fax solutions are an essential component of unified communications as a service (UCaaS) offerings. These solutions enable businesses to send and receive faxes electronically, eliminating the need for traditional fax machines and paper-based processes. By integrating cloud fax solutions into their UCaaS offerings, resellers can provide their customers with a comprehensive communications solution that meets their evolving needs. The benefits are manifold: increased efficiency, reduced costs, and enhanced security. With cloud fax, businesses can streamline their processes, ensuring that document transmission is both swift and secure. This integration not only modernizes the faxing process but also aligns it with the broader goals of unified communications, making it a vital tool for any UCaaS reseller.
Product
Most importantly, you’ll want a product that provides a functional, fast, and reliable cloud fax platform that is easy for the end user to use and integrate with.
Look for a cloud fax solution that is natively browser-based with a modern, easily-learned, and efficient user interface to streamline processes if your clients will be interacting with the product directly.
On the other hand, if your clients are looking to use the underlying fax infrastructure and build their own interface or integrate with their own product, look for a product that also has a modern, complete, and well-documented API, (Application Programming Interface).
Ideally, this API should be based on modern, easily accessible technologies and protocols like REST and JSON as these have largely become the standard mechanisms to provide interconnectivity between systems.
White Label Customization
This may be critical for some organizations and less important for others, but for those businesses that want to present a single, unified brand to their customers, choosing the right solution, such as a white-labeled fax service, is key. Customizing the product’s user interface, logos, icons, and domain names can help reinforce an organization’s brand identity and ownership over a fully integrated solution.
Integration with Existing Unified Communications Infrastructure
Whether or not a browser-based, white labeled cloud fax service is important to your business, it’s important that the proper hooks and interfaces exist to allow the solution to sit seamlessly within your and your clients’ technical infrastructure.
No matter how your end users are deploying their cloud fax products and services, an API integration is likely the most optimal solution for maintaining a consistent and reliable user onboarding workflow experience.
This can be the difference between being able to deploy a scalable and profitable service and one that takes an inordinate amount of labor to maintain and administer.
Integrating various communication tools, including video conferencing, within the cloud fax service can further enhance the efficiency and streamline communication options for businesses.
One other aspect of integration is connecting with existing, on-site fax machines that scan, transmit, and print. Look for partners that also have the hardware, software, and expertise to bridge dedicated fax machines into their own fax machine connectors.
Security and Compliance
Security and compliance are critical considerations for UCaaS resellers. As businesses increasingly rely on cloud-based communications solutions, they require assurance that their data and communications are secure and compliant with relevant regulations. UCaaS resellers must ensure that their solutions meet the highest security standards, including encryption, access controls, and data backup and recovery. Additionally, resellers must comply with relevant regulations, such as HIPAA and GDPR, to ensure that their customers’ sensitive information is protected. By prioritizing security and compliance, resellers can offer communications solutions that not only meet but exceed industry standards, providing peace of mind to their clients and safeguarding their business processes.
Analytics
Experienced providers understand that if you cannot measure the business, you cannot effectively manage it. Look for a cloud fax solution that understands that running an efficient, scalable, and profitable business is about more than just the technology. It is crucial to identify and address customer pain points to tailor solutions and improve communication. Talk with the partner to understand how effectively and efficiently they run their business, dig into what they measure, and make sure that the metrics they use are also easily available to you to manage your own client base.
Service providers who understand their role as business partners and collaborators in best practices are far more valuable than those that are fine with ending their remit at being a commodity technology purveyor.
Customer Experience Enablement and Support
Additionally, take a look at your potential partner’s ability to help you integrate fax into your product or product portfolio, educate your team on how to position and sell the service, and provide the assets necessary to effectively sell and support the offering. This includes everything from sales assets, training, and enablement sessions to responsive, knowledgeable support and solid documentation. Even basic elements like complete, accurate, and accessible documentation should not be overlooked when evaluating potential partners.
Time to Generate Revenue
Initial time to revenue can encapsulate how difficult the process is of vetting the partner, negotiating a contract, implementing and integrating the solution, and training your staff on the solution. This gets multiplied on an ongoing basis with the challenges of securing new clients (for resellers) or promoting adoption (for integrators). An experienced cloud fax partner can leverage their past experiences and provide both the tools and the guidance on how to accelerate this as quickly as possible to minimize time to revenue.
Margin
Finally, whether you’re looking to resell an existing online fax solution as a part of your product portfolio or to integrate it into a larger product you’ve built, you’ll want to be confident that you’re able to do that with reasonable margins on a long-term basis.
While minimizing the price you negotiate up front is a part of making reasonable profit, bear in mind that it’s only one aspect of long-term gross margin. If a fax vendor is only reselling someone else’s service, they are of course expecting to make some margin for themselves.
An online fax service who builds and manages their own network and infrastructure may have more room for negotiation and development of custom pricing plans. More importantly, this sort of partner has much more control over future cost structures and over the long-term performance, stability, and capabilities of their system.
Provider Reputation and Experience
When selecting a UCaaS provider, resellers must consider the provider’s reputation and experience in the industry. A reputable provider with extensive experience in delivering UCaaS solutions can provide resellers with the confidence and support they need to succeed. Look for providers with a proven track record of delivering high-quality solutions, excellent customer support, and a strong reputation in the industry. This due diligence ensures that the chosen provider can offer reliable, effective solutions and act as a trusted partner in the reselling business. A provider’s history of success and customer satisfaction can be a strong indicator of their ability to support your business’s growth and generate revenue.
Scalability and Reliability
Scalability and reliability are essential considerations for UCaaS resellers. As businesses grow and evolve, their communications needs change, and their UCaaS solution must be able to adapt to these changes. Resellers must ensure that their UCaaS solution is scalable, reliable, and can handle increased traffic and usage. A scalable and reliable solution ensures that businesses can communicate effectively and efficiently, without downtime or disruptions. This adaptability is crucial for maintaining seamless business operations and ensuring that the communications infrastructure can support future growth. By choosing a solution that scales with the business, resellers can provide a robust, future-proof service to their clients.
Marketing Resources and Support
UCaaS resellers require marketing resources and support to effectively promote their solutions and attract new customers. A good UCaaS provider should offer resellers access to marketing materials, such as brochures, case studies, and whitepapers, as well as training and support to help them develop effective marketing strategies. Additionally, providers should offer resellers access to lead generation programs, webinars, and other marketing initiatives to help them grow their business. These resources are invaluable for resellers looking to enhance their sales process and improve customer experience. By leveraging these tools, resellers can effectively communicate the value of their UCaaS services and drive business growth.
Customer Support Options
Customer support is a critical component of any UCaaS solution. Resellers must ensure that their customers have access to reliable and responsive support options, including phone, email, and online support. A good UCaaS provider should offer resellers access to 24/7 support, as well as online resources, such as knowledge bases and FAQs, to help customers troubleshoot and resolve issues quickly and efficiently. By providing excellent customer support, resellers can build trust and loyalty with their customers, leading to long-term relationships and continued success. Effective support not only resolves issues but also enhances the overall customer experience, ensuring satisfaction and fostering loyalty.
Choosing Your Cloud Fax Service for Reselling Business
When it comes to refining your strategy around cloud fax, whether you are a UCaaS provider, an MSP, a VAR, or a software developer or integrator, your choice should come down to more than just how much the service costs. While that is an important consideration, oftentimes other aspects can have a much larger impact on the success of your business than just price per page. Consider the following when choosing your online fax partner:
PRODUCT – does the partner have a product that delivers the capabilities that your end users need in an efficient, intuitive UI or with a robust, modern API?
DEPLOYMENT – does the product allow for scalable, zero-footprint deployment that keeps you from the headache of managing the underlying infrastructure?
CUSTOMIZATION – does the product have white labeled fax services that allows you to present a unified, integrated brand identity to your end users?
INTEGRATION – will the product sit comfortably within the physical and technical infrastructure your company and your clients’ companies need?
ANALYTICS – does the product provide the information you need to run an efficient business and will the partner be able to provide the expertise to help you with that endeavor?
ENABLEMENT AND SUPPORT – does the partner think of themselves as a true partner or just a commodity technology provider?
TIME TO REVENUE – will the combination of the partner and the product enable you to implement and ramp quickly enough to start generating revenue with minimal investment?
MARGIN – does the offering allow you to make reasonable gross margins, not just at the start, but on a long-term basis?
Here are a few examples of specific services and solutions offered by our cloud fax service: automated document delivery, secure transmission, and seamless integration with existing workflows.
Whether you are new to the concept of cloud fax solutions or have lots of experience using them, hopefully this guide provides you with some perspectives on what to look for, not just in the product itself, but in the partner that stands behind the product.
If you’re interested in a deeper discussion about how reselling or integrating an online cloud fax service can benefit your business and your customers, reach out to us.