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My CEO is a very public figure. She is at multiple events every night and rarely comes back with less than a huge stack of cards. I need to make sure the follow-up system is there, so I need all those cards in our Saleforce.com CRM.

I am definitely not letting a 1099er or off-shored contractor into my CRM. Two assistants we have are too busy already and it is too expensive to use W2er for that kind of work.

Would love to have those cards "magically" appear in an XLS I can import.

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Are they really that important? If you are getting that many of them I am skeptical of the quality of the contact information. It is probably better for your public figure CEO to have all the contacts email a dedicated address. Business cards are pretty much useless. Just have her give out an email address. – TimJ♦ Dec 20 '10 at 3:47
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Well if you're not letting an offshore contractor into your CRM platform, are you ok with sending them a copy of the cards so they can type the names into a spreadsheet which you can then import? – Henry the Hengineer Dec 20 '10 at 5:36

5 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

Here are couple of options

  1. Use a solution like Scan2CRM

  2. Use CloudContacts, which helps you digitize the business cards. It also has integration with various other applications including Salesforce so that you can export contacts.

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up vote 1 down vote

there are business card readers for smart phones you should be able to export your phone contacts in xml format

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up vote 0 down vote

An idea: Scan them all in at once with a large format scanner and then use Copy2Contact for Salesforce.com to grab each one into a new lead or contact record.

Disclosure: I am the founder and creator of Copy2Contact.

It's not an ideal solution as Copy2Contact is not exactly designed for that purpose (e.g. you have to enter them one at a time), but you might find it works for you.

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up vote 0 down vote

I just heard on "This week in startups" that some folks are very happy with Evernote for that.

Apparently the ocr is really good and people can, for example, associate a group of cards with a particular event. The DB is search-able by location, date, etc.

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up vote 0 down vote

Use shoeboxed. Your CEO (or you) drops the business cards in a prepaid envelope (ala Netflix). They scan them and human verify the results. You can then export in many formats (including salesforce.com).

You also have the option of using the shoeboxed mobile app to take a picture of the business cards instead of mailing them in.

I don't work for them, but I'm a fan. I use them to keep track of my receipts (personal & business).

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