IT'S A FAX: MACHINES TAKING BUSINESSES IN U.S. BY STORM

Facsimile addiction is taking over the American office world.

It's a fact that faxes are getting longer, more businesses are using them, and more people are buying fax machines.

"Fax machines have become commonplace and virtually indispensable to many companies," said Jack Mehner, president of Advanced Business Systems in Cape Girardeau. He said large companies were first to buy fax machines, but smaller businesses have been getting into the market the past two or three years.

"They're more prevalent now than they were a couple of years ago," said Mehner, who estimated that more than half of Cape Girardeau businesses now have fax machines. "They are an integral part of business."

Pricing is also reasonable, Mehner said.

"It used to be you had to spend $2,000 to $3,000 to get a good office fax machine," he said. "Now you can get them for $1,200 to $1,500."

Individually, people can obtain less expensive fax machines for as little as $300 to $500.

"When the technology of a facsimile machine was first realized in the late 1940s they were giant machines," said Mehner. "They cost up to $10,000, and it took as long as six minutes to transport one page."

Now the machines are compact and they can whiz out a page of copy in 30 seconds.

A two-year survey by Gallup Poll recently revealed some interesting facts about American's fascination with sending and receiving documents.

Regular facsimile machine users at large companies send an average of 49 documents a day, each averaging 5.3 pages, or 260 pages. They receive an average of 62 pages per day, averaging 6.9 pages, or 428 pages. That's a total of 111 transactions a day involving 688 pages a day for one company.

A year ago large companies used their facsimile machines to submit about 40 documents a day, averaging 4.6 pages.

"That's a 41 percent increase in sending alone," said Kathleen Mufson, who provided the Southeast Missourian with a copy of the survey from Pitney Bowes Co., a Stamford, Conn., office-products maker that commissioned the Gallup folks to conduct market research on fax usage by large, Fortune 500 corporations and Dun & Bradstreet mid-sized companies in the U.S.

"The Gallup Organization contacted 400 of the Fortune 500 companies and 328 mid-sized companies that employ 100 to 500 individuals," said Mufson

Mufson said that as fax machines have gained in popularity, the Gallup Organization has discovered two things:

People love their fax machines.

But businesses are wasting money because of them.

Gallup officials said there is a relative lack of knowledge and sophistication about the cost of faxing. The officials conclude that companies are wasting millions of dollars annually, essentially because they are faxing more now but not using the full capabilities of the technology to save money.

The most striking finding is that two-thirds of all faxes sent or received are transmitted long-distance, and most companies have no policy to regulate the time of day when they are transmitted.

That might explain why all three major long-distance companies American telephone & Telegraph Co., MCI Communications Corp., and Sprint Corp reported first-quarter transmission gains.

A whopping 72 percent of fax machine users at Fortune 500 companies said they had no idea what it costs to send a fax.

It typically costs about 15 to 20 cents a minute for long-distance transmission on a machine requiring 30 seconds per page.

"In some cases you couldn't even make a telephone call and relate that information for that cost," said Mehner.

The Gallup survey also found that hardly anyone knows much about controlling fax costs. Nearly 90 percent of the respondents said they had never been trained in fax mechanics, so they may not know about memory buttons, delayed transmission speeds, and other cost-reduction methods.

Some facts about fax

Outgoing Fortune 500 fax volume increased 41 percent during the past year.

Incoming Fortune 500 fax volume was up 43 percent from 1993.

Fax users said they sent an average of 49 documents a day averaging 5.3 pages.

Incoming documents averaged 62 per day with an average of 6.9 pages.

Two-thirds of fax documents for both Fortune 500 and mid-sized companies were sent from a long-distance location.

47 percent of Fortune 500 companies have access to plain-paper fax.

42 percent of mid-sized businesses have plain-paper fax machines.

The number of fax machines at Fortune 500 companies increased by 25 percent, from 16 to 19.5 per building.

Mid-sized companies report an average of 2.5 fax machines per location.

93 percent of Fortune 500 and mid-sized company fax users have access to a computer.

Only 77 percent of the companies could fax from their computer.

The most wanted features for all fax users are more speed, faster dialing, faster scanning, plain paper and more memory.

72 percent of people using the fax do not know how much it costs to send a fax.

About 85 percent of all fortune 500 and mid-sized company users have never been formally trained to operate a fax machine.

85 percent of fax users agree that the fax machines make their work much easier.

92 percent of fax users said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the speed of their fax machines.

58 percent of Fortune 500 and 45 percent of mid-sized companies said their fax machine had broken down one to 10 times during the past year.

About 60 percent of the fax users said it usually takes less than two hours to fix the fax when it breaks down.