Leavitt Group Uses MyFax to Insure Greater Productivity: Insurance brokerage switches to Internet fax service to improve document flow, reduce fax costs

One of the challenges many growing organizations face is making sure that the availability of its resources matches the head count. That has certainly been the case at The Leavitt Group, one of the largest insurance brokerages in the United States. As it has grown to approximately 1,500 employees in 115 offices, the urgency to continually reevaluate all of its business processes and technologies has grown with it.

OTTAWA (Business Wire EON) December 6, 2007 -- One of the challenges many growing organizations face is making sure that the availability of its resources matches the head count. That has certainly been the case at The Leavitt Group, one of the largest insurance brokerages in the United States. As it has grown to approximately 1,500 employees in 115 offices, the urgency to continually reevaluate all of its business processes and technologies has grown with it.

Unless a fax comes into the central number, no one has to deliver documents that come in on a machine or pass them through as they did when we were using a fax server. Our agents really like that, especially because they can even send and receive faxes when they're calling on a customer or otherwise out of the office.

One area that drew particular attention was the company’s faxing technologies. The Leavitt Group typically sends and receives roughly 20,000 faxed pages per month in its busiest office alone, either through a fax machine or fax server. When Randy Wilson, an IT consultant in the Leavitt Group’s service division, looked at the cost and productivity challenges surrounding the current processes for faxing documents he determined it was time to look into alternatives.

An Internet search led him to MyFax, one of the leading Internet fax services. MyFax allows users to send and receive faxes through their e-mail accounts or via a secure online server anywhere they can get an Internet connection.

“We had actually looked at Internet fax services before, but at the time we determined that the cost was too high,” Wilson says. “When we looked into MyFax we realized that the landscape had changed considerably. MyFax was able to show that they had the longevity, stability, and customer support we wanted to bring to our member agencies – and they really stepped up to the plate in terms of pricing. They had the ideal combination of everything we were looking for.”

Customer support was a key issue for The Leavitt Group. Because of the widespread nature of the member agencies, it was often difficult for the IT department to keep the various fax machines and fax servers running. Going with MyFax allowed the IT department to offload this ongoing support burden while giving users access to MyFax’s 24 x 7 technical support. The fact that MyFax was rated number one for customer support on the Top 10 Reviews Web site made the decision even easier.

Another important factor according to Wilson was the ability to integrate MyFax into the two agency management systems The Leavitt Group maintains.

“We run two separate agency management software platforms that are very different from each other,” he says. “Our IT group supports both, so we needed a fax solution that would integrate into both. Faxes are now centrally located in Microsoft® Outlook®, making it easier to import both the faxes themselves and the confirmation notes we receive for sent faxes. No matter which platform a given agency is using, MyFax works seamlessly with it.”

Since The Leavitt Group began deploying MyFax on a rolling basis they have found the productivity gains and cost savings to be significant. Wilson says one improvement has been that the need for a gatekeeper to review and distribute faxes has been greatly reduced, saving time while gaining efficiencies.

“All faxes are now sent directly to and from the individual user’s desktop,” Wilson says. “Unless a fax comes into the central number, no one has to deliver documents that come in on a machine or pass them through as they did when we were using a fax server. Our agents really like that, especially because they can even send and receive faxes when they’re calling on a customer or otherwise out of the office.”

One hard cost Wilson has seen reduced is the cost of a phone line. He estimates that the average cost for a phone line in a remote office is $40 per month. Paper and toner costs have also been reduced, although it’s more difficult to provide an exact figure due to paper’s use for copiers and standard printing.

“Overall, MyFax has been a huge success for us,” Wilson adds. “You can tell by the quick adoption rates. Our members have a choice of which fax solution to use. But when they see what it can do for them, overwhelmingly they’re choosing MyFax.”

About MyFax

MyFax is the fastest growing Internet fax service used by individuals, small, medium and large businesses to send and receive faxes using existing email accounts or the web. MyFax offers services in North America and Europe, including the United Kingdom to industries recognized among the fastest growing adopters of internet fax including finance, insurance, real estate, healthcare, transportation and government. More than 10,000 new customers subscribe to MyFax each month. Additional information is available at www.myfax.com and www.myfax.uk.com.