Are Your Customers Still Faxing You Orders? Here’s a Better Way

If you work in the e-commerce B2B space and still get your orders via fax, don’t worry, you’re not alone. It may seem dated, even a little funny, but it’s unbelievable how many fax machines are still being used in sectors like manufacturing, wholesale distribution, automotive, and health care. Remarkably, many companies are still sending purchase orders, invoices, and transactional paperwork via decades-old technology!

Here’s the reality: you are holding your business back by faxing. In a world where deadlines, efficiency, and real-time information are critical to success, you can be assured that your manual fax order management will lead to delays, mistakes, and missed opportunities.

What are some reasons why certain customers still fax orders? What are the hidden costs of continuing to support this channel? And what are the better and smarter alternatives available now?

Let’s explore.

Why Fax Is Still Alive in B2B Ordering

Despite its drawbacks, fax lingers in the B2B e-commerce companies for several reasons:

• Legacy systems: Many legacy ERP or procurement systems generate orders only as physical documents. 
• Comfort and habit: For many long-time customers, it is easier to fax an order rather than deal with the change of going digital. 
• Lack of digitization: Many small or traditional companies have not completely digitized the purchasing workflow, often in Word, Excel, or paper. 
• Security perception: To this day, it is still perceived to be more secure than email or web-based solutions. 

There are reasons faxing is appealing, but they do not outweigh the disadvantages. With that being said, let’s examine what fax ultimately costs your business.

The Hidden Costs of Faxed Orders

Faxing might seem like a harmless legacy system, but it introduces significant inefficiencies into your order management process.

1. Manual Data Entry

Your team has to manually review, read, and enter every fax order into your system. This is very time-consuming work & the potential for errors increases. A single mistake in reading a number or a typo can lead to the wrong package being shipped, backorders, or disputes on the invoice.

2. Slower Order Processing

Manual order intake delays fulfillment. Unlike digital orders that can flow straight into your Eclipse ERP system or CRM system, fax orders are just sitting in a tray waiting for their turn to be processed. This will create bottlenecks and delays in shipping times, especially during peak demand.

3. Poor Customer Experience

Customers expect fast, accurate service. If their orders take longer to process—or errors occur frequently—they may look elsewhere. Even if they continue to fax, they expect you to be responsive. Faxing doesn’t offer the visibility or communication speed that customers now take for granted.

4. Lack of Integration and Visibility

When you work with faxed documents, they do not integrate with your digital workflows. You lose out on automatic updates, alerts, and tracking. You do not have quick information about your order volumes, trends, or customer behavior.

5. Higher Operational Costs

Ultimately, manual actions, rework due to errors, and any additional time spent dealing with paper further increase costs. Supporting a faxing infrastructure also means dealing with old infrastructure—phone lines, toner, paper, and maintenance- that is both costly and impractical.

A Better Way: Digitize and Automate Order Processing

The fax order process shouldn’t hold you back. Ultimately, the goal is to change the way you take orders and process them digitally for better speed, accuracy, and scalability, without changing how your customers like to order.

Here’s how:

1. Adopt Intelligent Order Capture Solutions

Today, B2B distributors employ AI-powered order management platforms that process incoming orders received via email or fax and convert them into a structured data form based on common specifications. These platforms perform OCR and NLP to: 

Extract customer details, SKUs, quantities, pricing, and shipping info

Validate order data automatically

Integrate seamlessly with your ERP, CRM, or fulfillment system

This means that even if your customers still fax or email PDFs, you don’t need to process them manually. The system handles that for you.

Benefits:

• 80-90% faster order processing
• Drastically reduced data entry errors
• Improved team productivity and morale

2. Encourage EDI or Online Portal Adoption

For your more tech-savvy customers, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) or customer portals are far superior alternatives to fax. These systems allow direct, structured communication between systems.

Offer incentives or support to help your clients transition to:

• EDI – large-volume or recurring orders
• Self-service portals – small volume or one-off orders
• Punchout catalogs – customers that consume procurement platforms like Coupa or Ariba

In other words, we want to meet customers in their space, but try to expressly guide them toward more efficient, digital-native methods.

3. Integrate Orders into a Centralized Dashboard

Whether the order comes in via fax, email, EDI, or your portal, funnel all transactions into a centralized order management dashboard. This gives your sales, fulfillment, and customer service teams a unified view of:

• Order statuses
• Streamline Inventory
• Customer history
• Potential delays or discrepancies

With real-time visibility, your business becomes more agile and responsive.

4. Automate Order Acknowledgements and Notifications

Customers want to know if their order has been received, processed, and shipped. With digital workflows, you can automatically send:

• Order confirmations
• Estimated delivery dates
• Backorder alerts
• Shipment tracking details

This not only improves transparency but also builds trust and reduces support inquiries.

5. Train and Support Internal Teams

A successful transition from fax to digital isn’t just about technology. It’s also about change management. Make sure your teams:

• Understand the new tools and workflows
• Receive adequate training
• Know how to handle exceptions or escalate issues

Empower them to become advocates of this transformation, not victims of it.

6. Communicate the Change to Customers

If you want your customers to stop faxing, you’ll need a proactive communication plan. Don’t just tell them to stop—show them the benefits:

• Faster processing and fulfillment
• Fewer order mistakes
• Access to digital records and tracking
• Potential for bulk discounts or loyalty rewards.

You might start with a hybrid approach—automating fax processing while slowly transitioning customers to digital. Meet them with flexibility, not force.

The Time to Modernize Is Now

Continuing to accept faxed orders is not just a small bump in the road —it’s holding your business from achieving its full potential in today’s B2B space.

By implementing intelligent order automation tools and proactively directing your customers to digital channels, you should be able to:

Reduce costs

Increase speed and accuracy

Improve the customer experience

Gain real-time visibility into your operations

The goal is not to exclude customers who still use a fax but to create a new system that fits. A different order intake process considers customers’ wants while making back-end processes far more efficient.

Because by 2025, efficiency isn’t a luxury. It’s a must-have.

Ready to ditch the fax and digitize your order management? Go on and feel free to research modern order automation solutions for your B2B business so you can improve operations, make fewer mistakes, and please your customers no matter how they order.