My wife used to complain to me every day that few of our taps were leaking. I overlooked it every day considering the amount I would have to pay if I had to call a plumber and get all the leaking taps replaced with new ones. I instead instructed everyone to tighten the tap as much as possible to ensure minimal water loss. Things were fine until one day I got up in the morning and saw an overflowing bucket. That made me realise that on an average we were losing 30 to 40 litres of water daily and did my calculations. I still overlooked it until one day our taps ran dry as we did not get our regular corporation water supply. I had to shell out Rs. 1000 for a tanker of water. The concern was not that I had to pay Rs. 1000 for the tanker but that I had to manage without water for one whole day as there was lot of demand for water tankers.
Moral of the story is that sometimes we lose valuable resources or lose money on daily basis because we look at the one-time expense of fixing the problem overlooking how much this small loss daily is compounding to.
I find this analogy similar to that of many IT and Finance heads in the corporate world who avoid buying a good solution only by looking at the capital cost (capex) involved.
Let’s take the case of fax. Everyone starts off by saying we don’t use fax at all but then any large corporate owns atleast 15 or 20 fax devices (could be fax machines, multi-function devices etc.) on an average. These devices are grossly under utilised (Pareto’s 80/20 rule) but for locational advantages / positions in the organisation, these devices are a must. Each of these devices have an analog telephone line connected to them, for which the organisation pays a monthly rental plus the usage charges. Also the need for consumables such as toner and paper (even if paper most of the times is used for purposes other than what they are kept for) is always lurking. If the toner isn’t used on regular basis it tends to dry out rendering it useless. These devices also need to be serviced periodically hence multiple AMCs are signed. If you do some simple math, you can calculate how much can all this amount to.
A centralised fax solution would be a one-time investment and would offer many advanced features like mail integration (send and receive faxes through mail), integration with SharePoint, with SAP, with CRM, with the VoIP infrastructure etc.
The choice of course rests with the organisation, whether to invest in a good Fax solution to avoid all these expenses, where maybe two or four fax channels would suffice for the organisation’s fax volume. A Fax solution does not need fax machines or the associated cost of consumables or AMCs, all that is needed are devices through which users can communicate with the organisations’ systems which could be the ubiquitous phone too.
Now is the time to take charge and fix the leaking taps in your home. For your organisation, we can help you with a fax solution. Do drop us a mail on sales@rincon.co.in
Contributed by Sujit Sunny