Davidson Consulting, a market-research firm, estimates there are more than 200 million fax machines worldwide sending more than 120 billion faxes each year.

Fax documents are essential to a range of key business processes across all industries in critical functional areas such as purchasing, finance, human resources, legal, and sales. One document technology spans both digital and physical paper realms: fax. Organizational Pervasiveness of Fax Documents Much of the emphasis of document management has focused on purely electronic documents:, word processing, presentation slides, etc. A cooperative partnership between these groups helps create the best possible levels of efficiency, service, and automation while rigorously complying with necessary statutes and guidelines. In fact, compliance requirements can even be a catalyst for systems that improve the efficiency of enhanced, automated business processes. Properly implemented, document management means more than following the letter of the law, it means: Smarter process flows Lower operational costs Increased productivity Enhanced risk management/mitigation While compliance expertise typically resides in legal and auditing disciplines and in the business units themselves, IT professionals can play a critical role in shaping how compliance efforts manifest themselves in the infrastructure. Aligning compliance initiatives with overarching business goals enables the business to benefit from compliance not merely succeed in spite of the hindrances that compliance can bring. Aligning Compliance with Business Efficiency In undertaking compliance initiatives, it's important for businesses to not lose sight of core goals: efficiency, customer service, and profitability. With their workflow, access control, version control, and search and retrieval features, document-management systems enforce the controls that companies seek to establish in their efforts to comply with legislation, regulations, or corporate-governance initiatives. According to Forrester, The combination of compliance, governance, and process efficiency has placed an increased focus on document imaging, document management, and records management. Those compliance needs dovetail with many of the features found in document-management solutions that bring greater organization and control of documents and serve as a foundation for numerous compliance-related initiatives. Regardless of their source or governing authority, compliance with these invariably painstakingly detailed regulations requires some basic elements: structure, repeatable processes, security, auditability, and archiving. Sarbanes Oxley) is either a priority or critical priority. A recent Forrester Research study of enterprise content management found that 54% of respondents stated supporting changes in corporate governance (e.g. 1 Why and How Fax-Document Management Plays a Central Role in Enterprise Compliance Strategies By Greg Gies, Market Development Manager October 2005 white paperĢ Table of Contents Compliance: The Driving Force Behind Enterprise Document Management.3 Aligning Compliance with Business Efficiency.3 Organizational Pervasiveness of Fax Documents.3 Common Fax Documents.4 Compliance and the Challenges of Fax Documents.4 Fax Server Solutions: A Higher Level of Document Management for Compliance.5 Brooktrout Enabling Fax Document Management Solutions.5 Brooktrout Technology 2ģ Compliance: The Driving Force Behind Enterprise Document Management Whether it s Sarbanes-Oxley, Freedom-of-Information Act, HIPAA, Basel II, SEC Rule17 (a) 4, or any number of other regulatory frameworks, legal and/or industry compliance has vaulted to the top of almost every company's agenda around the globe.

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