The Standard

Financial services company transforms fax system with cloud-enabled faxing. The Standard ensures stable, reliable faxing with OpenText RightFax Connect

Challenges

  • Lack of scalability to meet growing fax volumes
  • Rigorous data security requirements

Results

  • Eliminated delays caused by paper-heavy process

  • Automated onboarding to deliver real-time results

  • Improved client experience for a competitive edge

Story

Faxing is a critical process in The Standard’s business operations and key to ensuring the company provides fast and secure communications for its customers. “Basically, a lot of processes are still dependent on faxing, including customers who choose to submit claims via fax and medical documentation from doctors’ offices,” explained Scott Spearin, IT service manager at The Standard.

People sitting around a table discussing a topic.

Through this process, we’ve come to realize that faxing is still crucial for our business. RightFax is one of the most critical applications we have as a company.

Scott Spearin
IT Service Manager, The Standard

Background

When improving the telephony connections for their enterprise fax system became a strategic priority, The Standard turned to RightFax Connect for OpenText™ RightFax™—a complete end-to-end hybrid fax solution, backed by the strength of the OpenText Cloud—to achieve faxing reliability, scalability and security.

Solution

Secure, scalable and reliable cloud-based fax transmissions

The Standard recently introduced new products, including absence management services, which led to increased calls and faxes. To handle the fax volume, The Standard selected RightFax Connect to provide cloud-based fax delivery with the on-premises RightFax server. RightFax Connect simplifies a RightFax server deployment by eliminating the time, cost and complexity of configuring, troubleshooting and implementing connections to onsite telephony, including fax boards, gateways, channels and phone lines. The flexible cloud faxing from RightFax Connect scales automatically to provide capacity for large fax volumes, including bursts and peaks.

The RightFax Connect solution also met the company’s rigorous security requirements. “Security of data is something that we take very, very seriously. Our faxes contain sensitive data, including personal and medical information. Some people are filing claims from doctors’ offices. So that weighed heavily in this decision. But RightFax Connect came through with flying colors and its credibility in the security assessment was rated very highly,” said Spearin.

Installation

A helping hand from OpenText Professional Services

The Standard credits the OpenText Professional Services team for the successful deployment of RightFax Connect. “The OpenText team was very proactive. They were always communicating with me and always available. When we had a little hiccup early on, the OpenText team quickly created a custom solution to solve the issue. Their support has been very encouraging for me and my team,” said Spearin.

Benefits

Once deployed, the new solution enabled the company to move fax transmission to the cloud, eliminating their reliance on on-site telephony and providing the scalability and security required to support the growing business.

Unsurpassed performance and reliability

Using RightFax Connect, faxing errors, delays and busy signals are a thing of the past. During the proof of concept phase of the solution, the faxing error rate dropped to zero percent. “When you look at how crucial faxing is to our business, this is huge,” says Spearin. Flexible, scalable cloud faxing The Standard’s fax volumes are as high as 11,000 faxes per day depending on new product launches or special campaigns, but capacity planning is no longer a concern as the OpenText solution instantly scales to handle fax volumes without requiring additional infrastructure. Moreover, a new fax number can be added within minutes. “It used to take me anywhere from 30 to 60 days to add a T1 [high-speed phone line] to the old telephony system. Today, when I need a number, I can get a number from OpenText within minutes and it’s available to be used. I no longer care how much fax traffic is coming in—I don’t have to worry about it. RightFax Connect gives me that peace of mind,” added Spearin.

I no longer care how much fax traffic is coming in—I don’t have to worry about it. RightFax Connect gives me that peace of mind.

Scott Spearin
IT Service Manager, The Standard

Reduced costs via cloud-based delivery and simplified disaster recovery

Now that The Standard has moved to cloud-based telephony and can retire the previous telephony infrastructure for faxing, the company looks forward to realizing significant savings. According to Spearin, “We incurred significant monthly telephone fees in the past, in addition to the associated servers, the hardware and the networks.”

RightFax Connect, backed by the strength of the OpenText Cloud, has geographically dispersed data centers and multiple other points of presence, which assure The Standard of business continuity and failover for faxing in the event of a disaster. “The benefit of going to the cloud is not having to maintain dual equipment in two data centers, co-located geographically on other sides of the country, which you may never use, except in a disaster recovery exercise,” noted Spearin.

Conclusion

At The Standard, faxing is a critical channel for securely exchanging information with customers. Reflecting on the company’s recent journey with RightFax Connect, Spearin observed, “Through this process, we’ve come to realize that faxing is still crucial for our business. One of my senior directors came to me recently and said, ‘I just came from a meeting—apparently, RightFax is one of the most critical applications we have as a company.’” With RightFax and RightFax Connect, The Standard can continue to fulfill its longstanding commitment to providing customers with exceptional service and personal support.

About The Standard

Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, The Standard is a leading provider of employer insurance products and services—including life, disability, vision, and dental insurance products and absence management services—and disability insurance for individuals. The Standard’s asset management businesses offer retirement plans, products, and services for private and public employers, as well as individual annuities. Today, The Standard has more than 40 offices across the country, employs more than 3,000 employees, and serves some six million customers.