Challenge

Prince Castle needed an enterprise-level solution that would integrate seamlessly with BPCS and let them use email to deliver faxes as well. Their old fax solution simply couldn’t keep up with their need to increase productivity while also cutting costs. They were looking for a product that would enable them to automatically send IBM i documents both without the user intervention and with user intervention. They also wanted to be able to send user reports, like sales reports, as well as individual documents.

Solution

After conducting extensive research on a variety of IBM i (iSeries) faxing solutions, Prince Castle selected and installed Quadrant Software’s FastFax/ Enterprise.  In addition, they purchased Quadrant Software’s Acrobat PDF module for their ability to deliver mission-critical documents via email using a choice PDF or TIF attachments. The benefits of the FastFax/Enterprise solution became apparent almost immediately.  There was seamless integration between BPCS and FastFax/Enterprise.  At Prince Castle, when a customer service representative or a purchasing agent generates a new document, a window pops up within the application and asks if they want to deliver the document by fax, email, print, or any combination thereof. The end user never operates outside their familiar BPCS screens and can fully access FastFax/Enterprise’s many benefits with a few mouse clicks. On the LAN side, users can instantly fax multiple document formats by printing the document to the FastFax print driver and filling in the faxing details on the pop-up window. Recipient information stored within BPCS master files is easily available with Quadrant’s exclusive enterprise phone books. This level of integration is essential considering the demands that Prince Castle puts on their fax system.

Additionally, Prince Castle faxes over 3,000 business documents per month including purchase orders, order acknowledgements, invoices, and other reports and documents.   According to Nichols, the ability to deliver these faxes by email using FastFax/Enterprise has improved document management while also cutting costs. This all-around success story includes Prince Castle’s use of DID routing for the secure and dependable inbound delivery of sensitive documents. The company currently has 50 human resources and purchasing users set up to receive incoming faxes by email using Microsoft Outlook.

Result

“Our customer service reps were very busy and needed a desktop solution for faxing iSeries 400 documents so that they didn’t have to get up from their desk and go to the fax machine.  Using the FastFax system, I estimate that we have avoided 30,000 trips to the fax machine this year. And that’s not just in customer service, but in the purchasing area as well. This means that the buyers also don’t have to leave their desktops to send and receive faxes.   In addition to customer service and purchasing, FastFax/Enterprise also streamlines workflow in Prince Castle’s credit and accounts payable departments.”

“Using the FastFax system, I estimate that we have avoided 30,000 trips to the fax machine this year. There are many hours of work in there.”

“Of course, every document that we email (via FastFax) means that we spend nothing on it, as opposed to the cost of a phone call, we also have some major customers overseas. So, emailing these documents saves us a phone call that may cost anywhere from a $1 to $2. That’s a big cost savings when you’re sending faxes internationally, especially if they are multiple pages.”

“FastFax has received glowing reviews and it has really saved the end users a lot of time and energy.”

“Quadrant Software has done a lot to make our people more productive, and it didn’t cost us much to do it.”

“The customers enjoy it too, especially the ones that want to receive these documents by email. It’s much faster. It’s much cleaner, and they have a copy on their desktop now, as opposed to a paper copy. So yeah, I think it has been a success story all around.”

“Sensitive faxes, including resumes, job applications, quotes to purchasing, have less exposure through FastFax, the line has 50 fax numbers attached to it and is inbound to the FastFax server. Incoming faxes go through the inbound table get automatically disseminated to the right user every time.”

Mike Nichols, IT Director, Prince Castle

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