Standard cloud faxing requires frequent app-hopping

In today’s fast-paced business environment, staying competitive and efficient is crucial. If you’re exploring cloud fax solutions, you’re already on the right track to modernizing your operations. The eFax API offers an exceptional opportunity to streamline your processes and give your employees a massive productivity boost.

Traditional fax machines are relics of the past, and the cumbersome process of printing, scanning, filing, and shredding paper documents is not only time-consuming but also hinders your team’s productivity. Cloud faxing is a game-changer, allowing your employees to send and receive faxes from anywhere, eliminating the need to trek back and forth to a physical fax machine.

However, even in the world of cloud faxing, there’s room for improvement. Many cloud fax workflows still force your employees to switch between various productivity applications, which can be a significant drain on their efficiency. Recent research, as reported in a 2022 Harvard Business Review study, sheds light on the hidden costs of app-hopping. It’s not just the time spent switching between apps that affects productivity; it’s the time and energy it takes to reorient oneself in each application after switching.

And yes, switching to a digital fax platform represents an enormous leap in efficiency — allowing your employees to fax from anywhere without printing, scanning, filing, or shredding… not to mention walking to and from a fax machine.

But as great as cloud faxing can be for your staff’s productivity, most cloud fax workflows leave a lot of potential efficiency gains on the table. That’s because they still force employees to jump back and forth between their productivity apps — such as a CRM or an EHR — and their fax app many times each day.

This study found that employees spend nearly four hours a week getting reacquainted with their work environment after toggling to a different application. Over a year, this adds up to five working weeks, accounting for 9% of their annual work time. This is a significant loss for any organization.

Research finds app-hopping saps company productivity 

According to a 2022 study in the Harvard Business Review, employee app-hopping costs companies tremendous time and productivity. 

The report explains that the efficiency drain isn’t caused by the act of switching between apps; that usually takes only a few seconds. The real loss of productivity happens because it takes employees time and energy to get reoriented after leaving one app to complete a task in another — for example, jumping out of their Salesforce account to send or retrieve a digital fax. This reacclimatization process interrupts the workflow and requires mental and cognitive adjustment, impacting the overall productivity of the employee.

After studying employee workflows across three Fortune 500 companies for a combined thousands of hours, here’s what the researchers found:

“People in these jobs spent just under four hours a week reorienting themselves after toggling to a new application. Over the course of a year, that adds up to five working weeks, or 9% of their annual time at work.”

-Harvard Business Review study, 2022

The eFax API can dramatically increase your productivity

One quick and affordable way you can fix the app-hopping challenge — and add significant efficiencies for your company — is by migrating to a cloud fax solution that integrates into the productivity apps your employees are already using every day.

The eFax API is a user-friendly, low-code tool that lets your organization embed digital fax capability right into your employees’ most important productivity tools. Here are a few examples of how these cloud fax integrations could create tremendous efficiencies in your employees’ everyday workflows:

1. Embed digital faxing right into your CRM.

Let’s say your sales reps regularly need to send contracts by fax, because many of your larger customers prefer exchanging important documents this way. 

With the eFax API, you can add a native digital fax workflow right into your company’s CRM applicationSalesforce account. Instead of having to leave the CRM every time they need to create and send a fax, your reps can now simply click a “SEND FAX” button right in Salesforce and, with just a few clicks, attach the relevant files and fill out a digital cover page.

2. Embed digital fax capability into your ERP.

Now let’s say you have employees across several departments who spend much of their day in an ERP platform — for accounting, inventory management, procurement, shipping, and other workflows. Let’s also assume these employees use fax frequently to exchange key forms with vendors and customers: RFPs, invoices, purchase orders, contracts, bills of lading, etc.

If you’re using a standalone cloud fax platform, your employees are probably jumping out of their ERP platform many times a day to send and receive these forms. And as you now know, those frequent task-switches are making your staff less efficient and productive.

With the eFax API, you can integrate a seamless digital fax widget into your employees’ ERP environment — so they can create, edit, send, digitally sign, and receive these important faxes with just a few clicks, and without ever having to leave their ERP.

3. Embed digital fax capability right into your EHR.

If you’re a healthcare provider, there’s a good chance your office regularly receives patient information either from an EHR system that doesn’t communicate seamlessly with the one your practice uses, or via fax. In either case, your staff probably needs to manually re-enter this data into your own EHR several times a day.

But if you deploy the eFax API, you can eliminate those inefficient workflows completely. That’s because our API integrates with nearly every EHR and makes it easy for your office to receive, digest, and process any inbound patient records — and send them directly into that patient’s record in your EHR — whether the information comes in as a fax or from another provider’s EHR.

The eFax API is your gateway to a more efficient, streamlined workplace. It’s time to see it in action. Book your free demo today and discover how the eFax API can revolutionize your business processes, reduce app-hopping, and give your employees the productivity boost they need to excel in today’s competitive landscape. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to transform your workflows and maximize your team’s productivity.

Ready to see it in action?

Book your free demo of the eFax API