Years back I worked somewhere where we had to PDF documents to e-fax them to a supplier. We eventually found out that on their end it was just being received digitally and auto-converted to PDF.
It was never made paper.. So we asked if we could just email the PDF instead of paying for this fax service they wanted.
There was a comment here on HN, I think, that explained why enterprises spend so much money on garbage software. It turned out that the garbage software was a huge improvement on what they did before, so it was still a savings in time and money and easier than a total overhaul.
I wonder what horror of process and machinery the supplier used before the fax->PDF process.
I once worked on a janky, held-together-with-duct-tape-and-bubblegum distributed app written in Microsoft Access. Yes, Microsoft Access for everything, no central server, no Oracle, no Postgres. Data was shared between client and server by HTTP downloads of zipped-up Access .mdb files which got merged into the clients' main database.
The main architect of the app told me, "Before we came along, they wer doing all this with Excel spreadsheets. This is a vast improvement!"
Years back I worked somewhere where we had to PDF documents to e-fax them to a supplier. We eventually found out that on their end it was just being received digitally and auto-converted to PDF.
It was never made paper.. So we asked if we could just email the PDF instead of paying for this fax service they wanted.
They said no.