The three methods of communication used by small businesses are telephone, fax, and e-mail. Faxing will never ever go away, unfortunately. But if you can encourage your business partners and customers to utilize the power of e-mail more, you'll not just save paper, but become more organized and more efficient. If you must fax, don't despair, as there's an influx of software than can enable you to still manage those faxes digitally by receiving and sending faxes from your computer.

The phone is something that all of us will use. I'm using it less and less (thanks to e-mail) and saving a lot of money and time while doing it. However, technology can even assist with our telephone communications.

FAXING – There are a lot of products on the market to handle your faxing needs, like Norton Symantec's excellent WinFax Pro. This program makes it easy to send faxes right from your desktop. Send one fax or blast a few thousand. It can also work with your fax modem to receive faxes right into your PC with no more paper to chase or get cut on! With built in fax-on-demand your clients can call a number and request documentation be sent to them via fax. ToBit Software makes FaxWare, a product for the larger small businesses that need workgroup faxing. FaxWare allows each user connected to the server to send faxes, to view and edit incoming messages on their screen, to use the integrated address books, to quickly send broadcasts, to save sent and received messages in user-defined archives and much more. All this is done directly on their PC. If you're on the road and need to send a fax - check out Fax4Free. It is amazing and I use it all the time. I've used Efax, to receive faxes, for the past few months and have been, very, very pleased with it. I have a telephone number that people use to fax me, and in seconds the fax is in my e-mail in box!

E-MAIL - e-mail is THE "killer app" of this year, especially for the small businessperson. So many people complain and whine about spam, but I'd rather get 100 e-mails from "Get Rich Quick" scams - than 100 faxes (using MY paper and ink) or 100 phone calls! Any way, if you have an AOL account, you're pretty much (sorry!) stuck with what AOL gives you. But if you have a traditional Internet Service Provider, your choices of e-mail communication are amazing. I personally use Eudora and love it - it's simple and very powerful. Microsoft Outlook is a great program with a very pleasing Interface. If you need to access your e-mail remotely, just get an account with OneBox (my favorite, it makes HotMail look like a toy!) and you can reply to your e-mail from anywhere. When you send e-mail with OneBox the recipient just sees your regular e-mail address, not Joe@OneBox.com. In HotMail's case it would be Joe@hotmail.com

TELEPHONE - Yes, you may get tired of the phone, but technology can make your calls easier to manage and FUN! Try out PC based PBX's from 3COM (www.nbxcorp.com), Artisoft, Altigen and others. All of these PC based PBX's put the power of voice telecommunications in your hands. No longer do you have to have the telephone company's proprietary service. For much less you can install your own system with more features. These services offer easy manageability and user interfaces also. Of course if you're a small business with only a few employees and you think any size PBX may be too much for you then check out Symantec's TalkWorks. It's perfect for handling inbound and outbound calls. Many programs such as Goldmine and Act also have telephony features to handle incoming and outgoing telephone calls. If you have a tangle of chords and devices snaking from your desk, try out Centerpoint's Concero. It is a marvelous little product with powerful telephony management features. Call into your home office (local number) and dial out to make calls with no expensive calling card. Route incoming calls to a beeper or fax machine. It's amazing what this thing can do.

I just purchased Motorola's Star Tac 7760 cellular phone for a client of mine - it's a beautiful phone. It is small, easy to use, full of features and only costs $200. Using a cell phone in conjunction with a unified messaging service from Linx, General Magic, and Jfax? Check out www.telephonyworld.com for a lot of information on telephony products.

If you want to browse for some lists of fax, telephony, and e-mail, browse goto.com and CDW.com Ramon Ray - ramon@smallbiztechnology.com

http://www.smallbiztechnology.com?onasig Small business technology analyst and consultant Editor, Small Business Technology Report