Fax – the 80’s office staple, could soon experience a revival as a survey conducted by Esker UK Ltd, one of the UK’s leading providers of end-to-end document automation solutions, has revealed that many UK companies are considering going ‘Back to Fax’ in a bid to beat the recent Royal Mail price hikes.

Almost three months after the implementation of increased Royal Mail postal charges, already hard-hit UK businesses are examining their quarterly results and have started to assess the true cost of inflated postal charges to their organisations pockets.

Keen to minimise the impact on their company’s bottom line, 84% of those surveyed said were seriously considering alternative methods of communicating with customers and suppliers.

Surprisingly, 22.5% of respondents opted for Fax as an alternative way of reaching their customers. The retro option proved a more popular method of delivery than its hi-tech cousin SMS (18.7%) or even the telephone (14.7%).

Although most people assume that Fax died out with mullets, Yuppies and the Berlin Wall, as with Dallas, 80’s fashion and cabbage patch dolls, it has seen something of a revival although there have been technological changes to the way todays systems operate.

Despite the advent of the Internet, fax persists as one of the most common business communication methods, particularly when it comes to critical production documents such as invoices, sales orders and purchase orders. Indeed, fax presents benefits where other communication means cannot compete: it provides immediate results, the delivery is reliable and secure, the content is neutral, it’s user-friendly and it’s universal.

The survey also revealed that almost 79% of respondents said that the increase in Royal Mail postal charges had impacted their business, with most companies reporting a ‘negative’ effect on their organisation (88%) and over one third of that figure citing the effect on their company as ‘extremely negative’.

Sam Townsend from Esker said: “The increase in Royal Mail Postage charges has forced many companies to take a really close look at the cost associated with communicating with suppliers and customers via traditional methods of delivery. For many, an increase in cost of up to 39% is just not sustainable and other, more cost effective alternatives are not just preferable – they are a necessity in these tough economic times.

“What this survey has shown, is that despite the march of technology, {{Fax may be an oldie – but it’s still a goodie offering a reliable, secure and cost effective means of document delivery}} at a time when companies need it most”.