however, you need a special system to make sure they arrive at their destination safely and securely. Here is some brief information about the document sending options available out there (both antiquated and state-of-the-art) to help you in your decision-making process.
--Standard/Overnight Mail: Remember when being able to send a document overnight for next-day receipt was a big deal? It wasn't that long ago! Now with the worldwide use of electronic documents, even next-day service seems slow: they don't call it "snail mail" for nothing! Unless you are including promotional products or other such items with your documents, regular mail is not your option of choice: besides being slow, it is costly and can be unreliable.
--Fax: Fax technology allowed users to send documents in mere minutes, but the quality on the receiving end was generally considered unacceptable, and busy signals made faxing annoying and time-wasting. Documents with multiple pages could take up to a half hour to send, and if you were sending information of a sensitive nature it could also be an unsecured method since you were never really sure which employees on the receiving end might have access to it.
--Email: Once considered the be-all, end-all for sending electronic documents, it's hard to imagine that this option has now become all but obsolete --but it has! Businesses are limited by email to sending attachments that are only 10 MB or less and the ability of hackers to gain access to the information makes email unsecured.
--File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Sites: Once considered the answer to the file size problems associated with email, FTP is an improvement on antiquated systems but has issues of its own, namely: it can be complicated to set up, maintain and use, and it still a basically unsecured method for document sharing.
--Secure Server Sharing Systems: Today's best methods for file sharing use a dedicated secure server to share documents with participating users. The dedicated server is the key to security, and user-friendly features make such a system simple to use. These systems allow for huge files to be sent, can be shared from anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds, and contain additional features that make document sharing easy for virtually anyone.
When it comes to file sharing, your business must remain on the cutting edge of technology to remain competitive. There are many choices out there: choose wisely.
By Carolyn Ethington
