This worldwide office supply company examined many options before choosing an AS/400-integrated fax product.

(Systems Management, February 1995)
By Gary J. Langton, Vice President, Quadrant Software

Imagine turning every AS/400 terminal into a fax machine. Think of the efficiency. Think of the savings. Think of the difference it would make in your day to day operations. That's what Michael Lance of Viking Office Products accomplished by integrating faxing technology with his AS/400s.

Lance is project leader/communications manager for Viking, a $400 million office supply company with 10 AS/400s located around the world. Lance faced a challenge: With the paper workload of dropship orders, purchase orders, order replenishments and general correspondence beginning to overwhelm this high growth company, he needed a more efficient and cost effective way to manage paper. Manually faxing was a stopgap measure, but was labor intensive and oftentimes more time consuming.

"We had a personnel overload: It wasn't efficient to keep adding people to send faxes," says Lance. Viking's transactions were time sensitive because each represented a replenishment order, a customer's dropship order or general communications. Faxing became a necessity to compete.

"I wanted the convenience of having a fax machine on every desk while providing the speed and efficiency of automated ordering and processing." explains Lance.

The Search

Lance brought four different AS/400 fax products into Viking Office products' Los Angeles headquarters for evaluation. He selected Quadrant Software's FastFax/Plus. Quadrant Software, headquartered in Mansfield, Mass., specializes in enterprisewide fax solutions on the AS/400. Lance says Viking selected FastFax/Plus because the product offers the most complete faxing solution. In particular, he needed real-time control of worldwide fax transmissions, with the ability to delay them during non-peak phone rate periods. He also wanted to incorporate and secure prestored forms and graphics to merge with his AS/400 data. He specifically wanted to empower his users so that they could send faxes without his intervention.

Because of Viking's global offices, Lance also wanted a company with a worldwide presence that could service his locations 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Lance tested and evaluated products from four vendors. While each had some of the features he sought, only Quadrant Software put all of them together. Upon testing, Lance quickly eliminated one product from contention because it lacked AS/400 software for controlling the large number of faxes that Viking would be sending on a daily basis. He found that the same product failed to offer any flexibility in creating faxes through multiple programming methods. "I was disappointed in the error reporting and felt the inability to have users resent or readdress faxes was a detriment to my operation," he says.

Lance eliminated a second product that would force him to call one vendor for a hardware problem and another for software. He also decided that the product fell several features short of FastFax/Plus, including lack of support for cost accounts and landscape (sideways) fax transmission.

Lance eliminated a third product after reviewing the flow and logical design of the system. Lance discovered that, compared to FastFax/Plus, it also was difficult to add more phone lines. He decided FastFax offered greater case of use, too. Although two vendors offered host-based control software, only Quadrant Software offered the look and feel of the AS/400 via their Systems Application Architecture-compliant screens.

Quadrant Software also offered simplified control and security that lets users control their own faxes.

"Before taking the AS/400 fax products in for evaluation. I thought that all products were going to be similar, but was surprised to find that each vendor chose a different way of sending and controlling faxes," Lance says. "I chose Quadrant Software because its software design offered me the greatest flexibility.

"It was important for me to be able to control my faxing from anywhere in the world. I don't have a programmer in the United Kingdom, I control their system from right here. In fact, if there is an error message on one of the U.K.'s fax transmissions. FastFax/Plus alerts someone here as well as there."

Knowing if faxes have been sent successfully is especially crucial to Viking, who promises customers next day delivery. Turn-around times on orders are critical. "Being short on inventory or late with an order is unacceptable," says Lance.

Delayed Transmission

Lance knew that to fully automate its orders, Viking would have to be able to delay faxing until all the AS/400 nightly processing and backup was done. Viking now routinely uses the delayed faxing feature to automatically fax order summaries to all its vendors, starting at 3 a.m. When vendors come into their offices first thing in the morning, orders await.

Aside from using FastFax/Plus to automate fulfillment, Viking also wanted to send memos and reports. Lance likes the ability to incorporate graphics and signatures into faxes and to develop individual broadcast lists for different users. "Any graphic I want can be designed by my art department and scanned right into the system. Every user could actually have a personal cover sheet that includes a signature," he says.

FastFax/Plus secures all graphics, forms and signatures against unauthorized access. Viking found this useful when faxing was rolled out to the user community. Sensitive items such as blank forms and manager's signatures can only be accessed and faxed by those who have the proper authority.

With the volume of faxes that Viking sends, FastFax/Plus has become a mission-critical application, fully integrated with its line of business applications. As a result, Lance considered 24-hour, seven-day technical support essential to choosing a fax vendor. "I could not be penalized for being on the West Coast. If something is going to go wrong, I need to know that I can call the vendor for support at any hour," he says.

"If I had to do it all over again, I'd still choose FastFax/Plus. It does whatever I want. It's quick, flexible and self maintaining," says Lance. He is keen on FastFax/Plus' built-in ability to purge old faxes without any operator intervention.

Users are also happy. "Our fulfillment manager is an advocate of FastFax/Plus: She can fax all six distribution facilities instantaneously using her own distribution list," says Lance.

Personnel Savings

Probably more important, Lance's management is satisfied, Viking has reduced the administrative staff responsible for faxing orders by three people, resulting in major personnel savings. The company enjoys significant savings in phone costs by taking advantage of the delayed faxing feature, and increased productivity allows users to serve their customers better.

Lance estimates that the payback for the FastFax/Plus system was less than three months. Lance and the rest of the management team at Viking were so pleased with the results at their headquarters location that they have rolled FastFax/Plus out to the U.K. Other countries will follow.

Lance says the increase in his personal efficiency is a bonus. "FastFax saves me time. Like everyone else, I used to print a document, find the fax number, find an available fax machine and manually fax it. Now I do it all from my AS/400 terminal in seconds," he says. "FastFax/Plus' on-line directory is like my own personal Rolodex that allows me to send faxes to a whole list of people anywhere in the world with a few simple keystrokes.