As the saying goes, “time is money,” lead management has become increasingly important in today’s corporate ecosystem. One important aid that has made this easier is the CRM business card scanner.
With the use of business card scanners, contact details of potential users on physical cards are filled in the CRM system without the cumbersome process of typing in which takes time and may result to wrong input of information; clients can therefore be reached out faster.
With this technology, customer relationship management has significantly evolved allowing enhancement of productivity, optimal lead management and improved interaction with customers.
In this article, we will define what CRM business card scanners are, their workings, their advantages and how the firms can utilize them for efficient management of their customer relations.
What is a CRM Business Card Scanner?
CRM Business Card Scanner is a software and a technology tool used to convert Business cards into Electric format or Collection of Contacts stored on a given system. Typically, such a scanner incorporates the technology of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) that processes the business cards and retrieves the primary details including the name of the individual, telephone numbers, email addresses, and other companies associated with the card. After reading and saving the information, it will automatically call in the CRM and create new leads or change old ones.
A wide variety of business card scanners exist today, such as dedicated mobile applications, card scanning elements built within CRM systems, and handheld card scanning devices. Most of the popular CRM systems like Salesforce, Zoho CRM, and Hubspot already have such features integrated or can integrate external programs providing such services.
What Function Does a CRM Card Scanner Serve?
A CRM business card scanner works in a logical and straightforward manner. Generally, it goes as follows:
Take a Picture of the Business Card: The user captures an image of the business card either by using a smartphone, tablet, or scanning device. Some business card scanners allow batch scanning of business cards where users can scan several business cards at no additional charge but within the same concentration.
Decoding Data: The OCR scanners will be able to scan the specific information on the card including the name of the person, occupation, company, phone number, and email information on the cards.
Integrate with CRM System: Once the information from the business card is captured, the business card scanner integrates the captured details into the customer relationship management software. It usually consists of adding a new contact to the CRM or creating a new lead, or modifying an already existing contact’s record in case the person is already in the database.
Data Verification: Some sophisticated scanners also have the function of validation, where the retrieved data is validated with the original information for accuracy, assuring that all the details harbored are correct before entering to the CRM.
Organize and Manage: Once the contact details are uploaded into the CRM system, users are in a position to sort, tag and handle the leads better. Actions for follow-up such as emails, calls, and even campaign additions can as well be triggered from the CRM.
Advantages of CRM Business Card Scanners
There are various key advantages that businesses stand to gain from the usage of CRM business card scanners especially those in sales, marketing, and customer relationship. Below are some of taking advantages of deploying such technology:
Time Efficiency
Data entry especially from business cards is one aspect that takes a lot of time manually especially for sales persons who have been to many networking events, conferences, meetings etc. The reason is that the business has card scanner in such a way there will be no need for the employer or employee to jury- type the contact information.
With this focus, it leads to making the conversion of targeted numbers and capturing prospective leads easier. Due to the automated nature of tasks, the other end of the process is handling and deciphering constant flooding of quality potential customers.
Reducing errors
Mistakes often accompany manual entry, no matter how careful one is; they can be typos as in telling the person the wrong addresses or entering digits of a phone number wrongly. Such systematized errors are reduced by CRM business card scanners which contain high-tech OCR features to scan and process the information from business cards accurately. This means less data entry errors, and therefore less risk for businesses caused by misinformation on the consumers’ contacts.
Direct Link with Customers’ Relationships Management Systems
Most of the CRM business card scanners work with cloud based customers’ relationships management platforms such as Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Hubspot and Microsoft Dynamics.
Such integration eliminates the need to manually export the contact data and then import it into the CRM system as all the contact details go to the database automatically. As the contacts are available in the CRM immediately after the scanning, sales and marketing teams can follow up with new leads more efficiently.
Enhanced Lead Management and Tracking System
Organizational Leads are Expedited Once the details are entered into the CRM, conversion leads remain well within the control of the organization. For that, a sales rep will mark the newly added contacts as, a hot lead, cold lead, and needs to follow-up.
Furthermore, contacts can be grouped in this manner with some being grouped as per the industries, regions or specific product interests. This structure of the data also simplifies contact history tracking, sales pipeline management, and response timing depending on the quality of the lead.
Increased Efficiency of Networking Outcomes
Business Card scanners can be best utilized when a professional attends a networking event and has to gather business cards from different people within a very short period.
There is no need for professionals to have physical business cardholders and risk the loss of important contacts as one can just take a phone and scan the details that they need to save onto their CRM.
This helps ensure that all the leads have been acquired and preparation made for follow up to ensure successful achievement of the return on investment through such events or conferences.
Improved Customer Relationship Management Systems
Streamlining the task of adding the contact, companies will be able to create more extensive and detailed customer profiles. With more current and precise contact details, sales and marketing personnel can alleviate the customer dullness which enhances effective personalization, and sustains customer loyalty. Furthermore, having a history of all previous interactions and communications of customers helps the team to enhance customers’ understanding and engagement.
Popular CRM Business Card Scanner Tools
There are a number of CRM programs and external tools which provide business card scanning capability within the CRM system. Below are some of the well known applications:
CamCard
One of the common applications for the business card scanning solution is CamCard which collaborates with some CRM solutions and has capabilities like multi-lingual scanning and group scanning.
Hubspot CRM Scanner
Hubspot included its own business card scanner in its CRM. More exactly, it’s for business cards users – scan and add contacts to the Hubspot’s CRM.
ScanBizCards
The application offers different kinds of scans, including for Salesforce and various other American CRM applications. Team and Individual use is also supported for all members of a sales driven work group.
Zoho CRM Card Scanner
A ‘card scanner’ app available to Zoho CRM users allows to synchronize automatically created contacts with Zoho CRM. This makes it easy and efficient.
Conclusion
In the present times, where the world is more oriented towards digitalization, optimizing the management of customers becomes key to increasing the profitability of a business. And it has been proven that CRM business card scanners are very important tools in this field.
By eliminating contacts for business cards, these devices also increase the efficiency of the lead. Advanced lead management systems streamline business processes by automating the storage of contact details received from business cards into the CRM and vice versa.
For organizations that require constant networking and communication with customers, acquiring a CRM business card scanner is one of the best decisions to increase sales and improve customer relations.
