In our business, failure to adopt new technology, adapt to new solutions, or to invent new ways of using it, usually results in ground lost to competitors. However, the financial sector is also famously cautious, relying on paper-based proposals for deals made verbally by phone. Traditionally, this resulted in the predominance of telex, although this is made to look cumbersome and old-fashioned by the standards of today s messaging systems. For Bank of America, corporate fax software meshed exactly the right combination of innovation with the established ways in which dealing is done. In late 1995, its capital markets dealers started to use Zetafax to send business proposals from their desktops.
Most people didn t know that faxing directly from a PC was even a possibility.
So we started with just a few desks in London, but the concept took off - it was very popular. Now we have 120 Zetafax users in London, and a further 250 in our other European offices. In the event, it was in the dealing rooms themselves that Zetafax made its biggest contribution. Most importantly they need it to go now. Zetafax means that they can send paper confirmations to other parties without leaving their seat, and also see whether or not the transmission has been successful.